Who are we in conversation with?
Get to know the incredible literary minds that will be in conversation at our author events across the festival
Meet Our Authors
Rachael Johns
Once upon a time (briefly) Rachael was an English teacher, then her dreams of becoming a novelist came true. Now she spends her days writing romance and women’s fiction in the Swan Valley, Western Australia. Her book The Patterson Girls won the ABIA Award in 2016 for General Fiction and she has also won the prestigious Romance Writers of Australia RUBY Award twice.
When she’s not writing, you’ll find Rachael reading, occasionally sewing, hanging with her adorable Sheepadoodle or listening to audiobooks while driving around or cleaning up after her three sons. The only TV show she watches is The Farmer Wants a Wife and every year she says she’ll read more non-fiction but fails because there are too many good novels waiting to be devoured.
Rachael Johns
Kylie Scott
Kylie is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today best-selling, Audie Award winning author. She has sold over 2,000,000 books and was voted Australian Romance Writer of the year four times by the Australian Romance Reader’s Association. Her books have been translated into sixteen different languages. She is based in Queensland, Australia; living and working on land traditionally owned by the Jagera people.
Kylie Scott
Amy Andrews
Amy Andrews is a multi-award-winning, USA Today best-selling Australian author who has written over ninety contemporary romances in both the traditional and digital markets. With a passion for crafting stories that blend humour, emotion, and sizzling chemistry, Amy delivers sexy, heartwarming and swoon-worthy reads across a variety of romance sub-genres. She has been translated into 20 plus markets, including manga, and sold over 3 million books. She recently signed a 2 book deal with Harper Collins Australia for a romcom releasing in early 2026 and a ruro releasing later that year.
She lives in a pretty little coastal town in central Queensland where the rhythmic pulse of the ocean forms the soundtrack to all her happily-ever-afters.
Amy Andrews
Ally Blake
Award-winning Australian romance author Ally Blake has sold over four million copies of her more than forty published novels, with each translated into multiple languages worldwide. A popular speaker, and ambassador for romantic literature and Australian voices, Ally is co-creator of the ‘game-changing’ www.HowtoWriteLove.com online course, has presented at writing conferences and literary festivals all around Australia, and is a regular speaker at the Queensland Writers Centre, as well as host of several Book Clubs for Brisbane Libraries. Follow Ally on social media @allyblakebooks and find her books at www.allyblake.com.
Ally Blake
Louisa Duval
Louisa is a career counsellor and podcaster by day, and a former journalist, who loves to write romance set in an Aussie small town. She once wrote a short story to prove tractors are sexy, and it came second in the Spicy Bites competition with Romance Writers of Australia in 2022. Louisa’s novel, “Ignite” was pitched at Queensland Writers Centre’s Adaptable program and a finalist in the RWNZ Koru award. “Ignite” along with “Embers” were finalists in the Australian Romance Readers Association (ARRA) awards. Her short Christmas story “Chocolate and Orange” was published in the Sweet Treats ‘Chocolate’ anthology which won ARRA’s Members Choice award for Best Anthology. Louisa also writes as Sabrina Duval conjuring up witchy romance stories with a body count.
Louisa Duval
Elle Croxford
Author, Elle Croxford is a writer-producer, investor, and agent of change who is making the world even more extraordinary through wellness and feel good entertainment. Elle is the author of the Better Now Than Never book series and The Sentimental Blonde. She has been the recipient of prestigious awards such as the Lord Mayor’s Creative Fellowship and the Queensland Writers Centre Fishbowl Writers Residency.
Elle Croxford
HM Hodgson
Award-winning and best-selling Brisbane author, HM Hodgson, writes about romance (steamy scenes a must!), intrigue and magic. Magic that moves worlds and takes her to another place.
In 2021, HM Hodgson won the Romance Writers of Australia First Kiss competition with the first kiss scene from her novel, Keeper Of My Heart, as judged by producer and director, Tosca Musk. in 2023, Hodgson also won the Australian Romance Readers Association award for Favourite Continuing Romance Series 2022 with The Immortal Keepers.
When not writing or reading or daydreaming about her next literary hero, you can find her sipping coffee and eating chocolate (usually together).
HM Hodgson
Melanie Pickering
Melanie Pickering is an Australian writer of urban gothic romantic thrillers that seamlessly blend mystery, romance, and more than a touch of the supernatural.
A high school library assistant by day / writer by night, she is fuelled by dark chocolate and lives in a ninety-year-old house that is quite possibly haunted. She loves secrets, macabre facts, and is not afraid of the dark.
Melanie Pickering
Elena Moriarty
Elena Moriarty, a Brisbane-based indie author, flourishes amid a sea of unwritten plot ideas and endless caramel iced latte’s. She loves to write adult fantasy and romance novels full of tooth-rotting sweetness and hold-onto-the-headboard smut. Outside of her writing endeavours, she indulges in online shopping for glittery trinkets, watering her abundant collection of houseplants, dressing her two golden retrievers in sweater vests, and spending time with her son
Elena Moriarty
Demi Clorissa
Demi Clorissa is a romantic fantasy author. With her first series debuting in 2023 with the Daughter of the Wood trilogy. She crafts heart wrenching adult romantic fantasy, with body diverse main characters, with love, magic, intimacy, heat, and heartbreak.
When she is not writing, you’ll find her reading anything she can get her hands on (mostly fantasy), watching trashy TV shows, and spending her afternoons at the cinema. She loves food (but she is a self-confessed awful cook!) She has a dachshund called Della, who is often found curled around her feet.
Demi is a proud Indigenous woman, with connections to the Wiradjuri mob in Central New South Wales but calls Meeanjin (Brisbane) home.
Demi Clorissa
Meet Our Poets
Brett Dionysius
B. R. Dionysius was founding Director of the Queensland Poetry Festival. He has published five collections of poetry, two chapbooks, an artist’s book and a verse novel. His ninth collection, Critical State was published in September 2022. He was short-listed in the 2017 Montreal International Poetry Prize, teaches English & Literature, lives in Brisbane and in his spare time watches birds. In 2023 he was awarded a Queensland Writers’ Fellowship from Arts Queensland and the Queensland Writers’ Centre. His tenth poetry collection, The Eromanga Sea and his eleventh collection, Extinction Sonnets are forthcoming in 2025. Brett is proudly curating the inaugural Blussh poetry session: Love and Lattes on The lawn.
Brett Dionysius
Damen O’Brien
Damen O’Brien is a multi-award-winning poet. His prizes include The Moth Poetry Prize, the Newcastle Poetry Prize and the Peter Porter Poetry Prize. His poems have been published in seven countries, nominated for a Pushcart Prize and highly commended in the Forward Prizes for poetry. Damen’s latest book is Walking the Boundary, available through Pitt Street Poetry.
Damen O’Brien
David Terelinck
David Terelinck is notorious for holding words hostage on a page until they agree to become a poem. On rare occasions a ransom is paid in prize money. A lover of gin & tonic, along with long beach and rainforest walks, David feels we need more poetry less politics, and firmly believes dolphins should be running the planet. In a previous Sydney-based lifetime, David was a post-graduate clinical registered nurse and was also involved in academic writing. Many of his articles were published in peer-reviewed nursing journals. Now retired from paid employment, he lives and writes in warmer climes on the lands of the Yugambeh peoples. David has published two tanka collections (Casting Shadows, 2011 and Slow Growing Ivy, 2014), and co-authored A Shared Umbrella with Beverley George in 2016.
David Terelinck
Vanessa Page
Vanessa Page is a Queensland poet. She has published six collections of poetry, including ‘Confessional Box’ (Walleah Press, 2013) which was the winner of the Anne Elder Award for best first book of poetry. Her latest collection is ‘Salt River: Poems from the Larapinta Trail’ (Calanthe Press, 2024). Vanessa’s work has been widely published online and in journals and anthologies, and she has performed her poetry at events and festivals including the Queensland Poetry Festival, USQ Bookcase and the Sunshine Coast Hinterland Writers Festival. Vanessa was twice runner-up in the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Prize for an unpublished manuscript, and her poems have won the Martha Richardson Prize (twice), the Henry Kendall Poetry Prize, D’Amour Prize and Ipswich International Poetry Feast overall winner’s prize.
Vanessa Page
Jarad Bruinstroop
Jarad Bruinstroop’s debut poetry collection, Reliefs (UQP, 2023) won the Wesley Michel Wright Prize, the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award and the Five Islands Poetry Prize. He is the recipient of the Val Vallis Award, the Queensland Writers Fellowship, and the Fryer Library Creative Writing Fellowship. His work has appeared in The Best of Australian Poems, Meanjin, Overland, HEAT, Island, Westerly and elsewhere. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from QUT where he now teaches.
Jarad Bruinstroop
Jane Frank
Jane Frank is an award-winning Brisbane poet, editor and academic. Her most recent poetry collection Ghosts Struggle to Swim was published by Calanthe Press in 2023. She regularly appears in journals and anthologies in both Australia and internationally— most recently in Westerly, Other Terrain, Live Encounters, Poetry of Change (Liquid Amber 2024) and The Memory Palace (The Ekphrastic Review, Canada, 2024). She runs writing workshops, has appeared in a number of poetry podcasts here and in the UK, is Reviews Editor for StylusLit Literary Journal and teaches communication and creative industries at the University of the Sunshine Coast.
Jane Frank
Madeleine Dale
Madeleine Dale grew up on Tamborine Mountain and now lives in Brisbane. She holds first-class honours and a Masters degree in Creative Writing from the University of Queensland, where she is currently completing her PhD. Her first chapbook, On Fire with Dangerous Cargo, was published by Queensland Poetry in 2023. Her first full-length collection, Portraits of Drowning, won the 2023 Thomas Shapcott Prize. She was a 2024 MacDowell Fellow.