Surprise!
Meet our first authors for BRWF 2024!
You can almost smell the ink in the air, almost hear the sound of typewriters clacking away as the June long weekend edges ever closer.
We’re back at the Memorial Hall, bringing you the most exciting names in Australian literature … and for proof, look no further than our first author reveal for 2024!
Matthew Reilly
Matthew Reilly is the internationally bestselling author of the Scarecrow series, the Jack West series and numerous standalone novels.
Reilly wrote his first book, Contest, at the age of 19, and self-published it in 1996. It was rejected by every major publisher in Australia, leading him to self-publish 1,000 copies using a bank loan. He was discovered when Cate Paterson, a commissioning editor from Pan Macmillan, found a self-published copy of Contest in a bookstore. Pan Macmillan signed Reilly to a two-book deal. He wrote his second book, Ice Station, while studying at the University of New South Wales. It was quickly picked up by publishers in the US, UK and Germany.
He has since sold over 8 million copies of his books worldwide, in over 20 languages.
Matthew also directed the no.1 Netflix film Interceptor, an action thriller film, which he co-wrote with Stuart Beattie. Matthew is based in Los Angeles.
Tracey Spicer
Tracey Spicer AM is a multiple Walkley Award winning author, journalist and broadcaster who has anchored national programs for ABC TV and radio, and Network Ten.
The inaugural national convenor of Women in Media, in 2019 Tracey accepted the Sydney Peace Prize alongside Tarana Burke for the Me Too movement and won the national award for Excellence in Women’s Leadership through Women & Leadership Australia.
Her first book, The Good Girl Stripped Bare, became a bestseller within weeks of publication, while her TEDx Talk, The Lady Stripped Bare, has attracted more than six million views worldwide. Tracey’s essays have appeared in dozens of books including Women of Letters, She’s Having a Laugh, Father Figures, Unbreakable, and Bewitched & Bedevilled: Women Write the Gillard Years.
Her latest book Man-Made: How the bias of the past is being built into the future, is about artificial intelligence.
Tony Birch
Tony Birch is the author of four novels, five short fiction collections, and two poetry books. In 2022 his book Dark As Last Night was awarded the Christina Stead Literary Prize and the Steele Rudd Literary Award. The book was also shortlisted for the 2022 Prime Minister’s Literary Award fiction. In 2017, he became the first Indigenous writer to win the Patrick White Award.
His most recent book is the novel, Women and Children.
Tony Birch holds the Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at Melbourne University.
Hannah Moloney
Hannah Moloney is the lutruwita/Tasmanian host for ABC TV’s Gardening Australia, a permaculture educator and designer, a community worker and best-selling author.
She’s spent the past two decades getting her hands dirty in the garden, with community change projects, political and community environmental and climate activism. Driven by radical hope, she’s happiest in the garden, hugging her daughter, yarning with mates and by herself in the bush where the only sounds are her breath and the birds.
Hannah’s book The Good Life: How to Grow a Better World (2021) is all about how to live a good life in the face of the climate emergency and her book Good Life Growing (2023) provides the inspiration and know-how to grow your own fruit and veg in any Australian climate.
