Opening Night: Magical Thinking

Authors

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  Solli Raphael

  Solli Raphael is an award-winning author and poet, advocate, and acclaimed keynote speaker. As an advocate, Solli sparks thought-provoking conversations, instigates change in the areas he feels are critical for attention and action, and mentors young people. Solli’s books have received accolades for their capacity to engage children and teenagers educationally. Solli has spoken at hundreds of schools, universities and events, and has been regularly featured on radio and TV shows, in printed media and in books, reaching a global audience of two billion people with his work.
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  Daniel Browning

  Daniel Browning is an award-winning Bundjalung and Kullilli writer, journalist and radio broadcaster. Currently the ABC’s Editor of Indigenous Radio, he also presents The Art Show and Arts in 30 podcasts. Hailed as “an outstanding contribution to arts journalism”, his first book, Close to the Subject: Selected Works won the 2024 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction and the Indigenous Writing Prize at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. In 2024 he was First Nations Writer-in-Residence and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge, based at Trinity Hall College.
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  Hannah Kent

  Hannah Kent is an award-winning novelist and screenwriter based on Peramangk Country in South Australia. She is the author of the bestselling novels Burial Rites, The Good People and Devotion, and her original feature film, Run Rabbit Run, starring Sarah Snook and directed by Daina Reid, premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Hannah is the co-founder of Australian literary magazine Kill Your Darlings and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, LitHub, The Sydney Morning Herald and Vogue Australia among other publications. Her most recent book is Always Home, Always Homesick: A Memoir of Iceland.
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  Nardi Simpson

  Nardi Simpson is a Yuwaalaraay storyteller and performer living in Sydney. Her first novel Song of the Crocodile was long listed for the 2021 Stella Prize and Miles Franklin Awards and in October 2024, Nardi’s second novel The Belburd was published by Hachette Australia. Nardi is a research associate at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, growing story and sound projects in both her Sydney and Yuwaalaraay communities.
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  Rumaan Alam

  Rumaan Alam is the critically acclaimed and bestselling author of the novels Rich and Pretty, That Kind of Mother and Leave the World Behind, which was an international bestseller, a finalist for the National Book Award and the Orwell Prize, and adapted for a major motion picture in 2023 starring Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke and Mahershala Ali. Alam’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, New Yorker, New York Review of Books and New Republic, where he is a contributing editor. He studied writing at Oberlin College and lives in New York with his family.
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  Samantha Harvey

  Samantha Harvey is the author of The Wilderness, All Is Song, Dear Thief and The Western Wind. She appeared on the longlists for the Bailey’s Prize and the Man Booker, and the shortlists of the James Tait Black Award, the Orange Prize, the Guardian First Book Award and the Walter Scott Prize. The Wilderness won the Betty Trask Award in 2009. She is a tutor on the MA course in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.