Libraries Literacy Festival 2025

Sabrina Hahn

Sabrina Hahn is a master gardener, horticultural professional, award winning radio presenter, podcaster and writer. She has passion for the creation of sustainable landscapes that make cities more liveable. Her aim is to educate listeners in the importance of creating biodiversity in their own backyards.

She believes that the diminishing green spaces in urban areas are making our cities sterile hot spots. Urban gardens play a vital role in returning biodiversity into our cities and offering people a space for physical and mental wellbeing.

Rachael Johns

Rachael Johns is an English teacher by trade, a mum 24/7, a Diet Coke addict, a cat lover and chronic arachnophobe.

She is also the bestselling, ABIA-winning author of The Patterson Girls and a number of other romance and women’s fiction books, including her recent bestseller, Something to Talk About.

Rachael is currently Australia’s leading writer of contemporary relationship stories around women’s issues, a genre she has coined ‘life-lit’.

She has finaled in a number of competitions, including the Australian Romance Readers Awards. Jilted (her first rural romance) won Favourite Australian Contemporary Romance in 2012, and The Patterson Girls won the 2016 Romance Writers of Australia RUBY Award and also the 2015 Australian Book Industry Award for General Fiction.

Paul Hardisty

Canadian Paul E. Hardisty has spent 25 years working globally as an engineer, hydrologist, and environmental scientist. His diverse experiences include working on oil rigs in Texas, gold exploration in the Arctic, geological mapping in Eastern Turkey (where he formed connections with PKK rebels), and water well rehabilitation in remote regions. In 1991, he was in Ethiopia during the fall of the Mengistu regime and narrowly missed one of the final flights out of Addis Ababa, displaced by fleeing bureaucrats and their families. In 1993, he survived a café bombing in Sana’a.

Paul is a university professor and the CEO of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). He is the author of the critically acclaimed Claymore Straker series, which includes The Abrupt Physics of Dying, The Evolution of Fear, Reconciliation for the Dead, and Absolution. The Abrupt Physics of Dying was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger and Telegraph Thriller of the Year. An avid sailor, private pilot, outdoorsman, and conservation volunteer, Paul resides in Western Australia.

Kylie Howarth

Kylie Howarth is an award-winning, bestselling, internationally published author and illustrator from Western Australia. She was raised in the country alongside her brother, dog, sheep, several orphaned kangaroos and one very cheeky echidna. Her obsession with animals also extends underwater as she has braved lion fish in Egypt, piranha and pink dolphins in the Amazon, marine iguanas and hammerhead sharks in the Galapagos Islands and swum with whale sharks, manta rays and humpback whales at Ningaloo, Western Australia. The textures in Kylie’s book illustrations are created with her two adventurous young boys during their backyard art sessions.

Kylie recently won the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award - Writer’s Fellowship, the WAYRBA Hoffman award and KOALA Honour award. She has been shortlisted for the SCBWI Australian Picture Book Illustrators Award, CBCA Book of the year awards, WAYRBA and the YABBA awards.

Karys McEwen

Karys McEwen is a school librarian, bookseller, vice president of the Victorian branch of the Children's Book Council of Australia, and education advisor for the Melbourne Writers Festival. 

She is passionate about the role libraries and books can play in the wellbeing of young people, and she writes the Substack I Read A Lot.  

Her debut middle grade novel, All the Little Tricky Things, was published by Text Publishing in 2022 and her second middle grade novel, The Paperbark Tree Committee, is being released on 1 April 2025. 

Michael Trant

Michael lives in the small WA farming town of Three Springs where he writes with an authentic rural voice.

He still works on farms driving tractors , mostly to annoy those teachers who told him no one will pay him to stare out a window all day. 

His action-packed thrillers are set in remote Australia, and include mystery, intrigue, a bit of romance and a final twist in the tale.

He is the author of Ridgeview Station, Wild Dogs, No Trace and Blood and Gold. 

Dianne Wolfer

Page to Stage

Dianne Wolfer's award-winning WWI "Light" series has been reimagined in songs, theatre, and most recently adapted for CineStage.  

So how does it work?

After a fun introduction to the series (inspiration, research. archival objects, character development and editing) Dianne shares the joy of creative collaboration, and gives a behind-the-scenes peek at Theatre 180's The Lighthouse Girl Saga. 

She will also show her new title, Soaring with the Sugarbird Lady, the Robin Miller story. 

Aśka

A hugely engaging and popular presenter, Aśka (pronounce ‘Ash-ka’) is passionate about visual literacy. She has published more than ten books and graphic novels. Her recent titles include the CBCA Notable and ALIA Graphic Shortlisted YA graphic novel Stars in Their Eyes, (with Jessica Walton), which has been re-released for the US market by Scholastic in 2023. She is also a recipient of several government Arts grants, prizes, and the May Gibbs Fellowship.

When she’s not creating children’s books, Aśka is travelling across Australia teaching drawing-as-a-language to anyone who’ll listen.