With a number of special free sessions proudly presented in partnership with Southern Cross University, the 2026 Byron Writers Festival is celebrating 30 years of partnership, storytelling, and community.
Everyone is invited to visit these sessions across the weekend and connect with Southern Cross University staff, academics and students in a celebration of creativity, learning and lifelong curiosity.
SCU is a founding partner and Major Partner of Byron Writers Festival 2026.
Friday 14 August sessions
- Where We Swim (Bay St Stage), 10.30am – 11.30am. Free event featuring Ingrid Horrocks and Amanda Reichelt-Brushett. Chair Sarah Ndiaye.
- Learning from Ancestral Wisdom (Byron Theatre), 3:00pm – 4:00pm. Victor Steffensen in conversation with Kylie Day.
Saturday sessions
- Fighting Fossil Fuels (Beach Hotel), 10:15am – 11:15am. Richard Denniss, Ben Roche, Marian Wilkinson, Chair Isabelle Reinecke.
- Bees & Biodiversity (Market Stage), 11:00am – 11:45am. Free event with Cedar Anderson, Stuart Anderson, Anneliese Austin. Chair Leila McKinnon
- After Authoritarianism (Haven Gallery), 9:00am – 10:00am. Julio Carrasco, Julianne Schultz, Marika Sosnowski. Chair David Heilpern.
- Writing Climate (Wategos Room), 4:00pm – 5:00pm. Romy Ash, Dakota Feirer, Mark Smith. Chair David Heilpern
You can also visit Southern Cross University at the Artisan Marketplace over the festival weekend.
Mentorship
Byron Writers Festival is inviting writers to take your story from passion to page with a free one-on-one mentoring session with Dr Aidan Coleman.
Whether you’re just starting out or already working on your next manuscript, these 30-minute personalised sessions are designed to help build your craft, confidence and momentum.
Bookings are now open, with limited places available.
Learn more about the SCU sessions and mentoring here.
Page-turners that will keep you up at night
With crime and thrillers, whodunits and cult-hit authors, this year’s line up will send a shiver down your spine. If you can’t resist a tale well told, we have plenty to choose from at Byron Writers Festival ‘26.
Award-winning investigative journalist and novelist Louise Milligan discusses her latest crime novel Shellybanks, a haunting tale of secrecy and survival set in Ireland.
Four of Australia’s cleverest crime writers — Louise Milligan, Mark Smith (Where Truth Ends) and Lisa Walker (The Pact) and Matthew Condon (The Night Dragon) — come together for Crime Fiction, a conversation on what keeps us turning the pages.
For something more mysterious still, Michael Winkler, whose debut novel Grimmish became a self-published cult hit, discusses his latest, Griefdogg, a crazy-sane story of a Mildura man who decides to live as the family pet. With Kate Evans.
And Byron-bred novelist Nicholas Timms brings a heart-pounding, surf thriller home with The Lineup, set right here in Byron Bay.
Byron Writers Festival is celebrating 30 years of storytelling this 14–16 August 2026, now just two weeks away!
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
