With just two weeks until the Byron Writers Festival throws open its doors, there’s still time to get your tickets and see writers from around Australia and the world in one place on 14-16 August.

With requests for music by Bizet, Paganini, Puccini, and Nat King Cole singing Irving Gordon’s Unforgettable, and poems by Banjo Patterson, Joyce Kilmer and Clare Harner, Kate Smorty had everything in place, for the time when she was not.

The annual poetry competition run by Ballina Region 4 Refugees had its largest showing with more poetry entities than previously experienced and a strong showing from youth poets. 

Local community group Ballina Region for Refugees is having a big month, with a major anonymous donation amongst other news.

Lennox Head's Victoria King has taken out first prize in the 2020 Ballina Region for Refugees Seeking Asylum Poetry competition.

Young poets from across the Northern Rivers have competed in the Murwillumbah-based Poets Out Loud poetry slam and are now waiting for you, the public, to decide the People’s Choice Award.

The Ballina Region for Refugees (BR4R) is inviting submissions to the 2020 Seeking Asylum Poetry Prize. The prize celebrates the positive contributions refugees make to our communities and acknowledges the circumstances that forced them flee their homelands and request refuge in Australia. The prize is open to all Australian residents.

Local Lismore poet Peter Mitchell's collection Conspiracy of Skin was Highly Recommended at the Australian Centre Literary Awards last month.

Launching the free book exchange at Santos in Mullumbimby were the winners of the ballad of beauty poetry competition.

Supporting refugees in detention and those living in the community Dangerously Poetic Press will be doing a benefit evening in Mullumbimby on Saturday, 4 March.