Dispatch #005
Byron's famous book festival comes home, the Top 10 debut releases of 2025 revealed, Book Festivals, Book Events, and books we're excited about.
The Byron Writers Festival is moving back to Byron!
This truly is wonderful news, not only for festival lovers but for the organisers of an event that has been knocked around far too many times over the past five years. It got cancelled by Covid in 2020 and 2021, moved to the Bangalow showgrounds in 2023, and then washed out by storms in 2025.
Everyone was devastated, but the plucky team, led by the inimitable Jessica Alice, has been determined to rebuild.
Byron is one of Australia’s oldest festivals that started 30 years ago when a handful of passionate volunteers decided that a creative hub like Byron deserved its own event. It was, at one point, attracting more than 65,000 happy book lovers every year.
International guests often say it’s the best festival they’ve ever attended.
Moving the event back to Byron means you’ll be able to get a coffee and a morning swim, pop into the surf club to see a speaker, dive back into the water before wandering around to see what else is on. So, put the dates in your diary: it will be on between 14-16 August, at multiple venues, including the Byron Bay Surf Club, the Beach Hotel, and Haven. You’ll find more information here.
Behold, the debut crew!
Our friends at QBD Books have compiled the top-selling Australian debut authors of 2025 (data from NielsenIQ Bookscan), and it’s quite the list:
1. Melaleuca by Angie Faye Martin
2. The Wolf Tree by Laura McCluskey
3. The Other Brother by Tierney Page
4. The Turing Protocol by Nick Croydon
6. The Butterfly Women by Madeleine Cleary
7. The Golden Sister by Suzanne Do
8. The Worst Thing I’ve Ever Done by Clare Stephens
9. The Heir Apparent by Rebecca Armitage
10. The Farm by Jessica Mansour-Nahra
Fun fact: eight of the 10 are by female writers! So there’s probably never been a better time to get to work on your own Aussie debut.
Speaking of debuts, look at the gorgeous promotion for Every Wild Soul by Tasmania’s Katherine Johnson (video below).
This book was still in manuscript form when it won the inaugural The Australian Fiction Prize. I was lucky enough to be a judge, along with literary agent Samuel Bernard and bookseller Letitia Davy from the mighty Gleebooks in Dulwich Hill.
We loved, loved, loved this tale of a free-spirited girl growing up with her over-protective father on a remote Tasmanian island. The manuscript has been in the hands of the devoted editors at HarperCollins Australia for more than a year now, and I cannot wait to see the book on shelves in April.
Robin Barker is a Bondi treasure. More than 30 years ago, she wrote a book called Baby Love, and it was THE BIBLE for new mothers in Australia for decades.
Robin wrote the book after working as a baby nurse at the Bondi Baby Clinic on Wairoa Ave.
I went there myself when my own children were just six weeks old. I was put in a Mother’s Group … and some of the women I met are still my best friends today.
We’ve been through it all together.
We all had a copy of Baby Love, and we loved it, because it was written by a warm, kind, no-nonsense Australian woman, who had personally handled thousands of babies, and it had a brilliant index, so you could look up things like: why is my baby’s poo green?!
And she’d tell you.
The book had practical tips on sleeping and feeding, and it reassured you that you were probably doing a very good job, even if you felt like you were drowning.
Robin retired some years back. She’s now 82, and she still swims at Bondi about three times a week. I was lucky enough to join here this week: we swam out to the Big Rock together and saw a groper, and afterwards had a bit of a chin wag … and it was just so great to see her.
Thank you for all your advice over the years, Robin. Your book was always the best. And if you’re a new Mum reading this, you can still buy Baby Love! Let’s hope you always can.
I don’t know about you, but my Instagram feed tends to be chock-full of Books content. This week: a video from a deceased estate, filmed by the trauma cleaners. The owner had more than 14,000 books when he died, and the cleaners are now in the process of having them analysed, to see what can be stored, what can be donated, and what will (sadly, but inevitably) end up in landfill.
Also, simply for your viewing pleasure, a wonderful book sculpture in Budapest:
Only a handful of Australian writers have ever had the honour of being shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Steve Toltz is one of them. He’s a gorgeous writer, and his new novel, The Rising of the Lights, which I’m in the process of reading, is an absolute hoot. Warm, funny, wry, dry, clever … it’s just a triumph, and really is there anything the world needs more right now than a genuinely funny book?
I’m going to talk to Steve about his work at a launch event at the Bondi Pavilion on 26 March. You’ll find tickets here. Please do come along - and pick up some tips for writing your own great Australian novel.
Should food be of more interest to you, then you’ll be pleased to know that we’re hosting two cookbook author events this month. The first is with the incredible women behind Monday Morning Cooking Club to launch their new cookbook A Year of Jewish Cooking on Monday, 16th of March. The second is with Every Night of The Week star, Lucy Tweed, who’s launching her third cookbook, Tender, on Tuesday, 31st of March.
Plus, Rory Warnock, author of Unlock Your Breath, will be hosting an author evening and breathing practice this coming Monday, the 9th of March, with Sydney Swan’s Dane Rampe. Rory’s book is a transformative guide on breathwork: beat stress, sleep better, elevate fitness, boost focus, uplift mood, breathe better.
How Will I Ever Get Through This? by Lucy Hone: How are human beings supposed to cope when the unimaginable happens? Lucy Hone lived the worst nightmare of any parent when her glorious little girl was killed in a car accident when she was just 11 years old. Lucy has since devoted her life to studying the question that is now the title of her wonderful book, which is infused with wisdom, but also a valiant, practical guide to getting through.
I Eat The Stars by Sarah Wilson: You may have noticed that your news feed consists of headlines about catastrophic wildfires, unprecedented flooding, the threat posed by AI, rising interest rates, and unaffordable housing. What is a human being supposed to do? Should we be having kids? Or prepping?! How do we make financial decisions? Most importantly, how do we avoid succumbing to doom and despair? Sarah is the best-selling author of I Quit Sugar, and while she now lives in France, she’s returning to Australia to launch this beauty. Being multi-talented, she designed the cover herself!
A Hymn To Life by Gisèle Pelicot: Five years ago, Gisèle’s husband was called to a local police station in France, having been caught by a supermarket guard filming up women’s skirts. On his phone and computer, police found shattering evidence: for nearly a decade, he had been secretly drugging and raping his wife and inviting dozens of strangers into their home to abuse her. This is Gisele’s story of courage, resilience, and new love.
Theo of Golden by Allen Levi: the sleeper hit of 2025, this book has become a word-of-mouth sensation, with readers saying they wept openly while reading the story of an elderly Portuguese stranger who arrives in the town of Golden and begins transforming lives one intentional act of kindness at a time. The reviews are astonishing: it’s a book that is credited with changing lives, with one reader saying, “It made me want to be a better person.” You can’t ask for more than that, surely!
And that’s all for today, folks! Thank you for reading, and please do send it to your friends so we can build our community here.
Have something you’d like to include? Our newsletter is compiled by a Bondi local, Caroline Overington. You can follow her on Instagram or Facebook and get in touch here if you’ve got news to share.
Thanks for another great read - and that insta clip!! What a character he must've been to have that many books (a story there). I'm looking forward to reading Steve Toltz's new book too. xx
Thank you Caroline! I’m so excited to be sharing this story - sending this from the wilds of Tasmania’s Gordon River