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Byron Writers Festival interviews prize-winning poet Evelyn Araluen who will present her new poetry collection, 'The Rot', at the 2026 Byron Writers Festival.

On Sunday, a memorial was unveiled at the RSL Memorial Park, next to the Ballina RSL, to pay tribute to those lost on the night of May 4 on the Ballina Bar.

This year’s festival celebrates some of the most vital and impactful storytelling in Australian literature, with a dedicated program of First Nations writers whose work spans historical fiction, picture books and Indigenous knowledge and whose voices are reshaping how this country understands itself.