Search this site

b0115087-5334-421f-a886-48663cf9311a Liz Deep-Jones ABOUT < VIEW ALL HOSTS Liz Deep-Jones Liz Deep-Jones is an author, journalist, producer, presenter, filmmaker, curator and the inaugural Freilich Arts/Media and Activism Fellow at the Australian National University with her We Bleed the Same exhibition and documentary. Her best-selling young adult novels, Lucy Zeezou’s Goal and Lucy Zeezou’s Glamour Game, were re-released in 2023 for the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. Liz is a champion for human rights, inspiring young people to act through her mentoring role at the ANU in media and arts activism. She is currently writing her third novel, a children’s picture book. Liz is one of the first female television journalists to break the mould in sports reporting having covered numerous national and international sporting events including the FIFA World Cup. < PREVIOUS HOST NEXT HOST > ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY The Manly Writers' Festival acknowledges and thanks the original storytellers on the lands on which our events take place, the Gameraygal people of the Eora Nation. We acknowledge and respect their continuing connection and culture, and we pay our respects to ancestors and Elders, past and present, as well as emerging leaders.

1e41f206-29c3-4bce-bb37-4a8e0485d6d0 Jack Heath ABOUT < VIEW ALL AUTHORS Jack Heath Jack Heath is the award-winning author of more than forty books, which have sold half a million copies in ten languages. He lives on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country in Canberra. < PREVIOUS AUTHOR NEXT AUTHOR > ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY The Manly Writers' Festival acknowledges and thanks the original storytellers on the lands on which our events take place, the Gameraygal people of the Eora Nation. We acknowledge and respect their continuing connection and culture, and we pay our respects to ancestors and Elders, past and present, as well as emerging leaders.

Our program is organised into pathways to help you navigate the areas of most interest to you. PATHWAYS As we bring you stories across Manly, the program is organised into pathways or themes to help you navigate the Festival. Each pathway brings together sessions with shared themes or interests, but they’re not meant to be followed from start to finish. They’re simply a way to explore what’s on offer, mix and match sessions, and create your own Festival experience. The program also encourages you to choose your pathway across subject areas, genres, sessions, venues, formats, private stories, and public life. Australia In the World Conversations about global conflict, diplomacy and disorder, exploring Australia’s place inan unsettled international landscape through policy, lived experience and creative response. Sessions Country and Who We Are Sessions that explore how place, history, culture and inheritance shape identity, belonging and the stories Australians tell about themselves. Sessions Living Today Sessions that grapple with the pressures, choices and contradictions of contemporary life, from money, housing and masculinity to faith, family and sport as lived culture. Sessions Personal Reckonings Intimate conversations about lives shaped by loss, break-up, belief and moral choice, where private experience meets wider questions of meaning, responsibility and resilience. Sessions Power, Truth and Accountability Sessions that examine how power operates, how truth is contested or concealed, and what accountability looks like when institutions, systems and leaders are tested. Sessions So, You Want to be a Writer? Practical sessions and workshops for aspiring and emerging writers, focused on craft, process, publishing and the realities of turning writing into a finished work. Sessions Stories and Storytellers Conversations about how stories are told, shaped and received across contemporary, literary, historical, romance, spy thrillers and crime fiction, exploring voice, genre, memory and imagination. Sessions

f2b8ecdf-3d7a-4dcf-93b1-1317e770d2d6 Daniel Nour ABOUT < VIEW ALL AUTHORS Daniel Nour Daniel Nour is an Egyptian-Australian journalist and a member of the Sweatshop Literacy Movement. His writing has featured in The New York Times, SBS Voices, Meanjin Quarterly and Eureka Street. In 2020, he won the New South Wales Premier’s Young Journalist of the Year Award. He dabbles in improv comedy. < PREVIOUS AUTHOR NEXT AUTHOR > ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY The Manly Writers' Festival acknowledges and thanks the original storytellers on the lands on which our events take place, the Gameraygal people of the Eora Nation. We acknowledge and respect their continuing connection and culture, and we pay our respects to ancestors and Elders, past and present, as well as emerging leaders.

f0641a6b-cc78-464a-9219-dd461836b9f4 Nikki-Lee Taylor ABOUT < VIEW ALL AUTHORS Nikki-Lee Taylor Nikki Lee Taylor is an Australian author. In 2025, she was awarded the Sisters in Crime Scarlet Stiletto Award for Crime Fiction. Her latest title, Wildling Road, also won last year’s Hawkeye Manuscript Development Award. Nikki has written three independent titles, including international bestseller The Secrets We Keep, The Truth We Tell, and The Alibi. Nikki is a former news journalist, coffee addict, and dog trainer, and she competes in canine scent work trials with her dog Saxon. She lives in Newcastle, NSW. < PREVIOUS AUTHOR NEXT AUTHOR > ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY The Manly Writers' Festival acknowledges and thanks the original storytellers on the lands on which our events take place, the Gameraygal people of the Eora Nation. We acknowledge and respect their continuing connection and culture, and we pay our respects to ancestors and Elders, past and present, as well as emerging leaders.

a93029a6-e58f-4e21-a343-e0c59d71a0c2 Trevor Thompson ABOUT < VIEW ALL AUTHORS Trevor Thompson Trevor Thompson is a retired journalist, working mainly in radio but also in television and online over a career spanning four decades. He was Chief of Staff in the ABC’s Sydney newsroom for more than ten years. He has written four books on football history and enjoys recruiting and training young reporters. His previous books are One Fantastic Goal (2006), Playing for Australia: The First Socceroos, Asia and World Football (2018) and Burning Ambition: The Centenary of Australia-New Zealand Football Ashes (2022), the latter co-authored with academic, Dr Nick Guoth. < PREVIOUS AUTHOR NEXT AUTHOR > ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY The Manly Writers' Festival acknowledges and thanks the original storytellers on the lands on which our events take place, the Gameraygal people of the Eora Nation. We acknowledge and respect their continuing connection and culture, and we pay our respects to ancestors and Elders, past and present, as well as emerging leaders.

< Back Living Today Sessions that grapple with the pressures, choices and contradictions of contemporary life, from money, housing and masculinity to faith, family and sport as lived culture. Sessions in this Pathway The Night Shift Heather Morris, Cory Alpert, Candida Baker, Amy Coomer, Cocoa Deep-Amek, Amy Hutton, Daniel Nour, Con Campbell, Deborah Conway, Max Holzner, Willy Zygier View Session Beyond the Hot Flush: Rewriting Midlife with Michelle Bridges Michelle Bridges View Session Feature Conversation: Democracy Under Pressure with Amy Remeikis Amy Remeikis View Session Just Saying: In Conversation with Hugh Mackay Hugh Mackay AO View Session Money, Confidence and Choice Melissa Browne View Session Boys, Masculinity and the Online World Ashley Kalagian Blunt, Sarah James, Jack Toohey View Session The Stories that Sport Forgot Paul Nicholls, Trevor Thompson View Session The Great Australian Dream: Housing, Wealth and Australia’s Future Saul Eslake View Session Previous Next

08ac18e5-d1ba-4c02-b399-fad0d27adc9c Antoun Issa ABOUT < VIEW ALL AUTHORS Antoun Issa Antoun Issa is a Lebanese-Australian journalist and co-founder of Deepcut News. After completing his Master of International Relations at the Australian National University, he moved to Lebanon in 2011 where he worked as News Editor for Al-Monitor during the heights of the Arab Spring. In 2015, Issa relocated to Washington DC, where he spent two years at the Middle East Institute, a US thinktank, before joining The Atlantic as an editorial strategist. He returned to Australia in 2020, joining The Guardian Australia until his departure in 2024. < PREVIOUS AUTHOR NEXT AUTHOR > ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY The Manly Writers' Festival acknowledges and thanks the original storytellers on the lands on which our events take place, the Gameraygal people of the Eora Nation. We acknowledge and respect their continuing connection and culture, and we pay our respects to ancestors and Elders, past and present, as well as emerging leaders.

3772d214-d3d2-4bfe-a9ab-1bd3d0a16266 Nadia Wheatley ABOUT < VIEW ALL AUTHORS Nadia Wheatley Over a forty-year career, Nadia Wheatley has published several award-winning works of fiction, history, and biography. Her most recent books are the memoir Her Mother’s Daughter (winner of the 2019 Waverley NIB Literary Award), Radicals: Remembering the Sixties and The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift (winner of The Age’s 2001 Non-Fiction Book of the Year and the 2002 NSW Premier’s Australian History Prize). Nadia is also the editor of Sneaky Little Revolutions, Selected Essays of Charmian Clift and of Clift’s previously unpublished novella, The End of the Morning. In 2014, the University of Sydney awarded Nadia an Honorary Doctorate of Letters, in recognition of ‘her exceptional creative achievements in the field of literature, her work as a historian and her contribution to our understanding of Indigenous issues, cultural diversity, equity and social justice and the environment through story’. < PREVIOUS AUTHOR NEXT AUTHOR > ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY The Manly Writers' Festival acknowledges and thanks the original storytellers on the lands on which our events take place, the Gameraygal people of the Eora Nation. We acknowledge and respect their continuing connection and culture, and we pay our respects to ancestors and Elders, past and present, as well as emerging leaders.

826d44da-a542-4b01-b02b-152b21d5717c Kate Horan ABOUT < VIEW ALL AUTHORS Kate Horan Kate Horan’s debut novel, The Inheritance, was an instant Top Ten Australian Bestseller, and was chosen as QBD’s Fiction Book of the Month in January 2025. Her professional background is in corporate communications, helping executives to pitch and present. Before that, she taught English and Drama at high schools in Western Sydney where she relished inspiring teenagers with a love of reading and writing. She graduated from the University of Sydney in 2001 with an Honours Degree in English Literature. < PREVIOUS AUTHOR NEXT AUTHOR > ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY The Manly Writers' Festival acknowledges and thanks the original storytellers on the lands on which our events take place, the Gameraygal people of the Eora Nation. We acknowledge and respect their continuing connection and culture, and we pay our respects to ancestors and Elders, past and present, as well as emerging leaders.

9e238cff-ebaa-4148-a2d0-d23e0eace6b9 Cocoa the Conscious ABOUT < VIEW ALL AUTHORS Cocoa the Conscious Cocoa Deep-Amek is a poet and hip-hop artist from Sydney, of Ghanaian and Lebanese heritage. Cocoa uses poetry as a creative outlet to express his experience and utilises his words and music to combat racism. Cocoa has been writing and producing music since 2018 with his debut album The Age of Aquarius released in 2021. < PREVIOUS AUTHOR NEXT AUTHOR > ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY The Manly Writers' Festival acknowledges and thanks the original storytellers on the lands on which our events take place, the Gameraygal people of the Eora Nation. We acknowledge and respect their continuing connection and culture, and we pay our respects to ancestors and Elders, past and present, as well as emerging leaders.

5f3a9411-1eab-45d2-9afb-57b941c6270a Bob Bowker ABOUT < VIEW ALL AUTHORS Bob Bowker Bob Bowker retired from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 2008 after a 37-year career working mostly on the Middle East. He was posted to Saudi Arabia from 1974 to 1976, and Syria from 1979 to 1981 with short-term assignments as Chargé d'affaires in Beirut. He was the Australian Ambassador to Jordan from 1989 to 1992. He was Director of External Relations and Public Information, and later Senior Adviser, Policy Research of UNRWA in 1997-1998, based in Gaza and Jerusalem. He was the Australian Ambassador to Egypt (2005-2008) and non-resident Australian Ambassador to Syria, Libya, Tunisia, and Sudan. Bowker is the author of six books on Middle East matters, including a professional memoir with his reflections on key issues, Tomorrow There will be Apricots: An Australian Diplomat in the Arab World, which was published in 2022 and shortlisted for the 2023 ACT Book of the Year. < PREVIOUS AUTHOR NEXT AUTHOR > ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY The Manly Writers' Festival acknowledges and thanks the original storytellers on the lands on which our events take place, the Gameraygal people of the Eora Nation. We acknowledge and respect their continuing connection and culture, and we pay our respects to ancestors and Elders, past and present, as well as emerging leaders.