Melbourne
Jewish
Book Week Festival
2024
17 – 21 August

SYDNEY EVENT: Eleanor Reissa in conversation with Scott Whitmont

A very special in-conversation event starring sensational New York playwright, director, songstress, actress, and author Eleanor Reissa with our very own man-about-books, Scott Whitmont.

Wednesday August 14, 2024
2.00pm—3.30pm

Melbourne Jewish Book Week Opening Night Gala: Of Ghosts and Golems

Step into an evening of grand theatricality as our writers and performers dazzle us with mystical tales, dipping their toes in the dark landscapes of ghosts and golems. Prepare to be enchanted, entertained, and transported across the shtetls and oceans of your dreams, all the way from Prague to Ripponlea. Hosted and curated by award- winning author,...

Saturday August 17, 2024
7.30pm—9.30pm

MJBW 2024 Sunday Day Pass

Buy the 'Festival Sunday' full day pass and get 8 sessions for the price of 5. 

Sunday August 18, 2024
9.20am—6.20pm

Hila Tells Stories: Max and The Wild Things — Children’s Session

Max and The Wild Things – an Interactive Theatre Show based on Maurice Sendak’s iconic book, that invites children to Max’s wild world where big emotions rule! The show follows a boy named Max who takes the audience on an adventure to a magical land filled with strange and wonderful creatures known as The Wild...

Sunday August 18, 2024
9.30am—10.20am

JQ live – Whitewash: The Jews and Poland

Jan Grabowski, world-renowned Holocaust historian, discusses his ground-breaking essay ‘Whitewash’ with Jewish Quarterly Editor, Jonathan Pearlman. Grabowski examines how museums, schools and state institutions have downplayed and denied the role of Poles in the destruction of the country’s Jews. He recounts how his work led to him becoming the victim of a notorious lawsuit, and...

Sunday August 18, 2024
9.30am—10.20am

Laugh a Little: An exposé on resilience

All of us go through good times and bad and develop coping mechanisms through life’s experience. But how much of our resilience is in-built and how much can be learnt with positive behavioural techniques, self-care and mindfulness? Hear from the experts about the power of laughter, the importance of alone time, and the ability to...

Sunday August 18, 2024
9.30am—10.20am

Journalism and its Discontents

In The Constitution of Knowledge Jonathan Rauch argues that the key institutions of liberal democracies – academia, law, government and journalism – all build knowledge through gathering evidence and testing it against different viewpoints. But journalism appears to have lost its way. So what has gone wrong, how did we get to this moment and...

Sunday August 18, 2024
10.30am—11.20am

The World According to Idan — Children’s Session

Idan Ben Barak’s Do Not Lick This Book! can be found in most homes around Australia. Idan likes writing about things in the world – and ourselves – that we normally don’t pay attention to. Come and find out about what your brain can and cannot do; how many senses you really have (hint: more...

Sunday August 18, 2024
10.30am—11.20am

In conversation with Marina Benjamin: Secret Messengers – housework, sleepless nights and midlife crises

What do these experiences all have in common? They are times when uninvited introspection and reflection rise from the shadows to unsettle us. These are the deep waters in which British author and journalist Marina Benjamin bathes. Senior editor at Aeon, a digital magazine of ideas and culture, her insightful and lyrical writing deftly explores...

Sunday August 18, 2024
10.30am—11.20am

In conversation with Hila Blum: On Love and Literature

Israeli novelist Hila Blum will speak to Tali Lavi about love and literature. Delving into How to Love Your Daughter, a masterful story of intense psychological suspense which dissects a fractured relationship between a mother and daughter, they will further explore the profound relationship between readers and literature and the ways upon which stories might...

Sunday August 18, 2024
11.30am—12.20pm

The Ultimate Betrayal: When children are prey

Since time immemorial, people in power have sought to take advantage of their innocent subjects. This is no more prevalent than within religious institutions, where the semblance of piety, coupled with the naivety of the young and faithful, provides a perfect cloak and cover for child sexual abuse. Michael Visontay discusses the ultimate betrayal with...

Sunday August 18, 2024
11.30am—12.20pm

Scratch and Sniff with Tami — Children’s Session

Tami Sussman’s hilarious and heart-warming debut So That Happened … tackles leaving your childhood home and memories behind, how to be a good friend (and realise when you have been a bad one) and most importantly, how to get back up when it feels like the world has knocked you down. Aspiring (and reluctant) writers...

Sunday August 18, 2024
11.30am—12.20pm

Arnold Zable: A life in words

Few Australian authors are as greatly loved or widely revered as Arnold Zable. Recently recognised with the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature, he continues to chart new territory on the map of our national consciousness. Join Arnold in conversation with Bram Presser as they discuss his storied life at the forefront of...

Sunday August 18, 2024
12.30pm—1.20pm

A View From the Couch: Lifting the lid on mental health

When Hilton Koppe was diagnosed with PTSD, the much-loved country doctor had no choice but to retire from general practice. In this session Hilton chats with courageous authors, Roz Bellamy and Jonathan Seidler about their own personal and familial experience with mental health, as well as with social worker, Romi Grossberg whose work with street...

Sunday August 18, 2024
12.30pm—1.20pm

For the Love of Bubba

Oma, bubba, nanna, gran – whatever we know them by, our grand and great grandmothers leave an indelible mark. Yet their matriarchal reach and rich histories are often untold or defined by stereotype, undermining the complexity and vibrancy of their lives. In this panel, three writers re-imagine their grandmothers’ lives across genre, from poetry to...

Sunday August 18, 2024
12.30pm—1.20pm

Shaping Identity, Writing the Soul – Memoir

How does our sense of self form, and how much of our identity is shaped by our genes, by the imprint of our forebears and by our own life experience? In this session, Debbie Lee speaks with Hilton Koppe, Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo and Michelle Scheibner, three authors who follow different paths but find common ground in the...

Sunday August 18, 2024
1.30pm—2.20pm

When Fact Becomes Fiction: Bringing history to life

The scale of history can be overwhelming. Fiction allows us to focus on the individual. Our panel of Australian Jewish authors has recently published four acclaimed novels all with Jewish protagonists. A life in middle-class Vienna upended by the Great War; a woman leading an extraordinary spy ring in Palestine; a self-effacing Japanese diplomat saving...

Sunday August 18, 2024
1.30pm—2.20pm

Revelations: Poetry as Performance

Poetry lends itself to being lifted off pages and into the air. When asked to read their own work poets might consider how and why some verses wield performative power in terms of theme, rhythm and sounds. Some resonate and echo — travel through space with striking clarity or confounding chaos. Join Alex Skovron, Louise...

Sunday August 18, 2024
1.30pm—2.20pm

Don’t Look Away: New contemporary fiction 

Unflinching, raw, honest. Hear from three of the hottest new voices on the contemporary literature scene, Nadine J. Cohen, Elise Esther Hearst and Jonathan Seidler, in conversation with Elissa Goldstein. They will be discussing their latest novels, books which don’t shy away from the beauty and the heartache of the human condition.

Sunday August 18, 2024
2.30pm—3.20pm

Modern Family: The ties that bind

Three authors, three very different books. But one common thread: families in the 21st century. From parenting together and apart, to how the concept of “family” has changed, to what happens when pregnancy doesn’t end with a baby, this session -featuring Katia Ariel, Isabelle Oderberg, Marina Kamenev, and Roz Bellamy as moderator – delves into...

Sunday August 18, 2024
2.30pm—3.20pm

Yiddish hauntings in new fiction and film

Join Tali Lavi in conversation with Eleanor Reissa, Dr. Leah Kaminsky and Professor Rebecca Margolis as they speak of the power of Yiddish in representing the Ashkenazi Jewish experience in new fiction, television and film. What happens when today’s artists employ Yiddish in their work? This session will draw upon the mysterious and the uncanny in reimagining Jewish pasts....

Sunday August 18, 2024
2.30pm—3.20pm

Unforgotten: The Shoah and ancestors lost

Australia has had the largest influx of Holocaust survivors post war outside of Israel. Those survivors are now few in number leaving second and third generations to piece together their family’s stories. Rachelle Unreich has captured her mother’s story in A Brilliant Life. Tess Schofield -Peters’s book, Dear Mutzi tells of her grandfather’s experience fleeing...

Sunday August 18, 2024
3.30pm—4.20pm

On Being Jewish

Michael Gawenda’s arresting memoir, My Life as a Jew, preceded October 7 yet eerily prophesied the difficult questions that confront Jews today, in terms of identity, place and time. Hear Gawenda as he cuts to the core of what it is to be a Jew, then and now, in a heartfelt, honest conversation with former...

Sunday August 18, 2024
3.30pm—4.20pm

Writing as a Jew: A practical workshop 

Creative writing that draws on our various identities has been flourishing in recent decades. We can write as women, as queer people or migrants, and so on. But what specifically does it mean to be writing as a Jew, especially in the current wake of widespread antisemitism where our identity has been systematically devalued? This...

Sunday August 18, 2024
3.30pm—5.00pm
Free

The Beth Din of Books: Best reads from those in the know

Now an annual fixture on the Melbourne Jewish Book Week calendar, The Beth Din of Books brings together writers and critics Tali Lavi, Elissa Goldstein and Bram Presser as they preside over some of the best new Jewish books around. Fun, irreverent but deeply imbued with a love of the written word, the Beth Din...

Sunday August 18, 2024
4.30pm—5.20pm

Mark Raphael Baker: His Literary and Intellectual Legacy

Mark Raphael Baker was a Holocaust scholar, an inspiring teacher and the critically acclaimed author of The Fiftieth Gate and Thirty Days. He was also a much-loved member of the Melbourne and Sydney Jewish Communities. In this session, panellists who knew Mark well, will speak on aspects of his life and work and Michelle Lesh...

Sunday August 18, 2024
4.30pm—6.00pm

SOLD OUT: Melbourne Jewish Book Week Literary Dinner, featuring Eleanor Reissa (US)

Don’t miss Melbourne Jewish Book Week’s inaugural literary dinner with international femme celebre, Eleanor Reissa — actress, songstress, director, playwright and author, in conversation with MC, Gary Abrahams, Executive Director of Kadimah Yiddish Theatre.

Sunday August 18, 2024
6.30pm—9.30pm

Raheen cocktail soiree: Deborah Conway, Willy Zygier and Alma Zygier

A life in music, a life in song, a life in the public eye, a life as child, a mother, a Jew and a Zionist and always a truth telling iconoclast… Melbourne Jewish Book Week is proud to present this exclusive event at Raheen, featuring Deborah Conway discussing her candid memoir, Book of Life with daughter...

Tuesday August 20, 2024
6.30pm—9.30pm

The Dressmakers of Auschwitz

MJBW is delighted to bring you this special event in partnership with The Melbourne Holocaust Museum and The Shrine of Remembrance. At the height of the Holocaust, twenty-five young inmates of the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp – mainly Jewish women and girls – were selected to design, cut, and sew beautiful fashions for elite Nazi women...

Wednesday August 21, 2024
6.00pm—7.00pm

Alex Skovron

Alex Skovron is the author of seven collections of poetry, a prose novella and a book of short stories. He was born in Poland, lived briefly in Israel, and migrated to Australia as a boy. His most recent collection is Letters from the Periphery; his earlier volume of new and selected poems, Towards the Equator,...


Alma Zygier

Alma Zygier is bewitching and idiosyncratic. The Melbourne born jazz and blues performer brings grit and grime to her vocals. Playful and peculiar, Alma portrays her power and fragility simultaneously at every turn bringing an emotional maturity to her performance that belies her years.


Anne Manne

Anne Manne is an Australian writer, essayist and social philosopher. A former columnist for The Australian and The Age, she has written many essays about contemporary culture, especially for The Monthly magazine. Her books include Motherhood, So This Is Life, The Life of I and a Quarterly Essay, ‘Love and Money: The Family and the...


Arnold Zable

Arnold Zable is an acclaimed writer, novelist, much-loved storyteller, and recipient of an Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. His books include Jewels and Ashes, Cafe Scheherazade, The Fig Tree, Scraps of Heaven, Sea of Many Returns, Violin Lessons, The Fighter, The Watermill, and forthcoming, The Glass Horse of Venice, beautifully illustrated by...


Barbara Kamler

Barbara Kamler is a Melbourne-based poet and university educator. After publishing nine academic books and countless research essays, her heart turned to poetry. Leaving New Jersey (2016) is a memoir told in prose poetry. Love, regardless (2022), a gallery of fourteen long-love portraits, is based on interviews but told in syllabic verse. Sophie Stories (2024),...


Bram Presser

Bram Presser is a semi-reformed punk rocker, recovering academic and lapsed lawyer. His novel, The Book of Dirt, won the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction (USA), the Voss Prize and three categories at the NSW Premiers Literary Awards. In his spare time, Bram reads, reviews, blogs and judges literary prizes.


Dassi Erlich

Dassi Erlich is a high-profile lobbyist, justice campaigner and advocate for sexual abuse survivors. Given the hardships she has faced, her trajectory is extraordinary. In Bad Faith is Dassi’s powerful memoir.


David Slucki

David Slucki is the Loti Smorgon Associate Professor in Contemporary Jewish Life and Culture, and the Director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University. He is the author of Sing This at My Funeral: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons (2019), and The International Jewish Labor Bund after 1945: Towards a Global...


Debbie Lee

Debbie Lee is Festival Director, Melbourne Jewish Book Week. She has worked in the publishing industry for over 30 years, primarily with academic publishers such as Cambridge University Press, UNSW Press and Elsevier. More recently she has been instrumental in building the profile of ‘indie authors’, and has convened the Indie Publishing Forum and the...


Deborah Conway and Willy Zygier

Deborah Conway & Willy Zygier have been musicians for more than 40 years, 33 of them collaborating together. During these decades they have released 10 albums, played a countless number of live shows from stadiums to lounge rooms; recorded a lot of songs, some of which have raised eyebrows, some of which have been played...


Diane Armstrong

Diane Armstrong is a child Holocaust survivor from Poland who arrived in Australia with her parents in 1948. She is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author. Her first book, Mosaic, was short-listed for several major Australian literary awards. The Voyage of their Life was short-listed for the NSW Premier’s Award. Her first novel, Winter Journey,...


Dr Breann Fallon

Dr Breann Fallon has been working in the cultural sector, educating on the Holocaust and other human rights issues since 2013. The granddaughter of non-Jewish survivors of Nazi persecution, Breann is focussed on ensuring we communicate the past to ensure a better present and future for all. As Head of Programming and Exhibitions, Breann leads...


Dr. Leah Kaminsky

Dr. Leah Kaminsky is a physician and award-winning writer. Her debut novel, The Waiting Room, won the Voss Literary Prize. The Hollow Bones won both the Literary Fiction and Historical Fiction categories of the 2019 International Book Awards, and the 2019 American Book Fest’s Best Book Award for Literary Fiction. She is the author of ten...


Eleanor Reissa

Eleanor Reissa is a storyteller in English and Yiddish – her first language. She is an award- winning director and playwright, actress, singer, translator, choreographer, and author. She was last seen on Broadway in ‘Indecent’, plays the matriarch in ‘The Zweiflers’, winner of the Cannes TV Series Award 2024, and has an anthology, The Last...


Elise Esther Hearst

Elise Esther Hearst is an award-winning Melbourne-based playwright, author and performer, working and living on Boon Wurrung country. Her debut novel, One Day We’re All Going to Die, was published by Harper Collins in 2023 and was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year Award 2024. Her theatre work has appeared at various theatres...


Elissa Goldstein

Elissa Goldstein is a writer, editor and collector of library memberships (her most recent acquisition is a Library of Congress researcher card). She has an MFA in creative writing from Brooklyn College and previously worked at the ABC and Tablet. She is currently a digital producer at The Age.


Elizabeth Finkel

Elizabeth Finkel is a biochemist who switched to journalism. She co-founded Cosmos Magazine, serving as Editor in Chief from 2013 to 2018. She authored ‘Stem Cells which won the Queensland premier’s Literary award and ‘The Genome Generation’. In 2019 she received the Medal of the Australian Society for Medical Research and an honorary doctorate from Monash University She serves as...


Erica Frydenberg

Erica Frydenberg AM (MA, Dip Ed, Dip Clin Psych, PhD, Grad GAICD) is a clinical, organisational, and educational psychologist and Principal Research Fellow (Honorary) in psychology at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. She has authored over 150 academic journal articles and chapters, developed programs, and published books on coping, resilience, parenting, adolescent coping, and...


Eva Collins

Eva Collins is a writer and photographer. Her memoir, Ask No Questions, was shortlisted for the 2023 CBCA Book of the Year Awards, the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards and the Mary Gilmore Award. Her poems appeared in the Best Australian Poems, Quadrant, Southerly, Westerly, Cordite Review and the New Castle Poetry Prize Anthology.


Evelyn Krape

Evelyn Krape is artistic Director of the Kadimah Yiddish Theatre. In 2023 she completed a highly successful season of Bloom and also A Very Jewish Christmas Carol for the Melbourne Theatre Company. In March this year, Evelyn performed in the award-winning production of Yentl at the Malthouse Theatre, and will be reprising her role at the Sydney...


Foong Ling Kong

Foong Ling Kong is Publisher at Melbourne University Publishing. Over a two-decade career, she has worked in-house at Penguin, Hardie Grant and Allen & Unwin. She was Chair of the Feminist Writers Festival, on the boards of the Stella Prize and Overland, and managing editor of Anne Summers Reports. She spent the last seven years...


Gary Abrahams

Gary is the Executive Director of Kadimah Yiddish Theatre and a freelance Director and Playwright. He has directed the Australian premieres and National tours of several large-scale commercial shows, as well as classic texts, contemporary plays, new Australian scripts, and devised projects. His work encompasses large scale commercial plays and musicals, main-stage works, independent shows and self...


Hila Ben Gera

Hila Ben Gera is a professionally trained Theatre-maker (Actress, Director, Playwright) and children’s storyteller since 2007. She graduated from Yoram Levinstein’s Performing Arts Institute in Tel Aviv and completed the Herbert Berghof Studio – Playwriting and Directing training in NYC. Her diverse artistic practice has led to original plays, theatre productions, and festivals in NYC,...


Hila Blum

Hila Blum lives in Jerusalem where she was born and raised. In her youth she also lived in Hawaii for two years. She began her professional career as a journalist, writing feature articles, profiles, personal columns and book reviews. Hila has been a literary editor for the past 27 years. Her second novel, How to...


Hilton Koppe

Hilton Koppe is a writer, educator, podcaster and doctor living on Bundjalung Land. Hilton facilitates reflective writing workshops for doctors and other health professionals with the goal of deepening their compassion, overcoming professional isolation and reducing risk of burnout. The workshops have been adapted for people living with chronic and mental illnesses, as well as...


Idan Ben Barak

Idan Ben Barak writes science books, usually for children; they’ve been translated into over twenty languages and won a few awards. He lives in Melbourne with his wife and their two boys. Sometimes, after they go to bed, he plays his guitar a bit. He has degrees in microbiology and in the history and philosophy of science, a diploma...


Isabelle Oderberg

After growing up in Hong Kong, Isabelle Oderberg went to university in Melbourne. She has worked as a journalist for two decades in newswires across Europe, Asia and Australia, where she was the country’s first social media editor for Melbourne’s Herald Sun. Her work has appeared in The Age/SMH, Guardian, ABC, Meanjin and elsewhere. She...


James Button

James Button was a feature writer, deputy editor, and Europe correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. In 2009-2010, in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, he wrote speeches for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, detailed in his book Speechless: A Year in My Father’s Business. He authored Comeback: The Fall and Rise of...


Jan Grabowski

Jan Grabowski is a Polish-Canadian professor of history at the University of Ottawa, specializing in Jewish–Polish relations in German-occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust in Poland. Co-founder in 2003 of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, in Warsaw, Poland, Grabowski is best known for his book Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and...


Jana Firestone

Jana Firestone is a therapist with over 17 years’ experience working in grief and trauma and with families and young people. Jana is the host and executive producer of The Curious Life Podcast and The Days That Follow and is author of two books – Plot Twist: a personal guide to surviving life’s unexpected curveballs,...


Joe Reich

Dr Joe Reich is the author of five novels and a cowritten biography. His most recent books are historical fiction. In Ein Stein (2021) the elderly unreliable protagonist has lived as a holocaust survivor for many years. Beyond Berggasse (2023) takes us back to the glittering Vienna of the turn of the last century through...


Jonathan Pearlman

Jonathan Pearlman is the editor of The Jewish Quarterly. He is also editor of Australian Foreign Affairs and world editor of The Saturday Paper. He previously worked at The Sydney Morning Herald, covering foreign affairs and politics, and as a correspondent in the Middle East. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Diplomat,...


Jonathan Seidler

Jonathan Seidler is an author, creative director and music critic. His work is published frequently in The Guardian, The Age and The Australian. Jonathan launched two nationally syndicated fiction series for Broadsheet and edited an Unyoked nature writing anthology. His memoir, It’s A Shame About Ray, was adapted for an immersive live performance for SWF...


Josh Szeps

Josh Szeps is one of Australia’s most influential, innovative interviewers. As a founding host of HuffPost Live in New York, he interviewed the world’s biggest names and was a regular on NBC’s TODAY Show. In Australia, he anchored the ABC’s weekend breakfast television show and, on ABC Radio, Afternoons with Josh Szeps. He left the...


Julia Levitina

Julia Levitina grew up in Moscow with her Ukrainian Jewish mother and grandmother, who were both Holocaust survivors. She studied design and worked as a theatre designer before immigrating to Australia in 1991 with two children and $200 to her name. Julia completed a Masters of Theatre Design at University of Technology, Sydney. While teaching...


Julie Szego

Julie Szego is an independent journalist who writes on Substack, a self-publishing platform.A former lawyer, she has spent much of her 25-year journalism career writing for The Age as a senior writer, leader writer and until last year as a regular columnist.


Katia Ariel

Katia Ariel is an author, book editor and educator from Melbourne/Naarm. She was born in Odesa, Ukraine. Katia has been published in a variety of literary journals, including Womankind, Archer and Antithesis. Her memoir, The Swift Dark Tide, was shortlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize. Her second book, Ferryman: The Life and Deathwork of Ephraim Finch, is forthcoming with...


Kerri Sackville

Kerri Sackville is an Australian author, columnist, and social commentator. A long-time contributor to the Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne Age and Sunday Life Magazine, Kerri’s columns are regularly amongst the most widely read across the sites. Kerri has written five works of non-fiction and contributed to three anthologies. Her latest book is The Secret Life...


Krystiyna Duszniak

Krystyna Duszniak is the owner of Lost Histories, a Polish-Jewish research bureau. She has an MA in History from the University of Melbourne, where she was a student of Mark Baker’s and later went on to be his research assistant for The Fiftieth Gate. Lost Histories was born thanks to Mark sending everyone Krystyna’s way...


Lee Kofman

Dr Lee Kofman is the author of six books, including a book on writing, The Writer Laid Bare (Ventura Press, 2022), memoirs Imperfect (Affirm Press, 2019), which was shortlisted for Nib Literary Award, and The Dangerous Bride (Melbourne University Press, 2014). She is the co-editor of Rebellious Daughters (Ventura Press, 2016) and editor of Split...


Linda Margolin Royal

Linda Royal was born in Sydney. Her family received life-saving transit visas from Chiune Sugihara in 1940, allowing them to escape the Holocaust – and find a permanent, safe home in Australia in 1941. The remainder of her family, numbering in the hundreds, were murdered. Her debut novel, The Star on the Grave, historical fiction...


Louise Helfgott

Louise Helfgott is an award-winning writer with a PhD in Creative Writing from Edith Cowan University. Recent credits include Thistledown Seed, published July 2022 by Brandl and Schlesinger and shortlisted Dorothy Hewett Awards, 2018, WA Premier’s Book Awards 2023; Potchnagoola, commissioned and staged by the Katharine Susannah Prichard Centre, October 2019; Light of her Eye...


Lucy Adlington

Lucy Adlington is a writer and social historian, specialising in women’s history in the 1940s. Her recent history, The Dressmakers of Auschwitz – The True Story of the Women Who Sewed to Survive was a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into 22 languages. Her new Holocaust history Four Red Sweaters will be published in March 2025. Lucy...


Magdalena Ball

Magdalena Ball is a writer, reviewer, moderator, interviewer, Vice President of Flying Island, and Managing Editor of Compulsive Reader. Her writing has appeared in a wide range of journals and anthologies, and has won many awards. She is the author of several novels and poetry books, most recently, Bobish, a verse-memoir of her great-grandmother Rebecca...


Manny Waks

Manny Waks is Host of PTSD Nation, a podcast series addressing the issues associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Manny has held numerous senior leadership positions in the Jewish community in Australia and globally. As a survivor of child sexual abuse, Manny founded organisations to deal with this issue, most notably VoiCSA. Manny is a former...


Marina Benjamin

Marina Benjamin’s books include the memoirs Last Days in Babylon (longlisted for the Wingate Prize), The Middlepause (finalist for the Art Foundation’s Creative Non-fiction Award) and Insomnia. Her essays have appeared in Granta, Aeon and the Paris Review and her journalism is published in Prospect, The Guardian, The New Statesman and New York Times. Her...


Marina Kamenev

Marina Kamenev is the former deputy arts editor of the Moscow Times and has been widely published in the Atlantic, Time, Sunday Life, The Monthly and Marie Claire, often writing about family. Kin: Family in the 21st Century is publsihed by UNSW Press. She lives in Sydney and is the mother of two.


Michael Gawenda

Michael Gawenda is one of Australia’s best-known journalists and authors. In a journalism career spanning four decades, Michael has been a political reporter, a foreign correspondent based in London and in Washington, a columnist, a feature writer and an editor. He has won numerous journalism awards including three Walkley awards, the Australian equivalent of the...


Michael Visontay

Michael Visontay is the Commissioning Editor of The Jewish Independent and was Editor-in-Chief from 2017-22. With 40 years of experience as a journalist, editor, author, and lecturer, he has held roles including Assistant Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, Deputy Editor of the Sun-Herald, and columnist for The Australian Jewish News. Michael has created and...


Michelle Lesh

Michelle Lesh is a Senior Fellow at Melbourne Law School. She worked at the United Nations as an international lawyer, and for many years in Israel as a legal advisor at governmental, inter-governmental and non-governmental levels. She is on the board of Australian Red Cross International Humanitarian Law Advisory Committee, on the International Council of...


Michelle Scheibner

Michelle has spent the last three years researching how we inherit a genetic blueprint from our family of origin, influencing our decisions, choices, and legacy. Her memoir, Hush, decodes these links, illustrating how history, culture, beliefs, and genetics intersect to shape lives through unhealed inherited family trauma. Michelle is a published TEDx speaker with over...


Nadine Cohen

Nadine J. Cohen is a Sydney-based writer working across media, screen, and literature with bylines in The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, SMH/Age, ABC, Harper’s Bazaar, and more. Her debut novel, Everyone and Everything, was released in 2023 to critical acclaim, nominated for two Australian Book industry Awards and named Booktopia’s debut release of the year....


Professor Rebecca Margolis

Professor Rebecca Margolis is the Pratt Foundation Chair of Jewish Civilisation at Monash University. Her scholarship focusses on Yiddish linguistic continuity and cultural production to include education, publication, performance, and cinema in Canada has appeared in Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil: Yiddish Culture in Montreal, 1905-1945 and Yiddish Lives On: Strategies of Language Transmission. Her latest...


Rachelle Unreich

Rachelle Unreich has been a journalist for 38 years, contributing to publications including The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and Harper’s Bazaar. Her first book, A Brilliant Life, tells the story of her mother Mira, a Holocaust survivor, and has been published in Australia, NZ, the US, UK, Canada and South Africa. It was...


Raimond Gaita

Raimond Gaita is Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at King’s College London and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.The University of Antwerp awarded him the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa “for his exceptional contribution to contemporary moral philosophy and for his singular contribution the role of the intellectual in today’s academic world”....


Ramona Koval

Ramona Koval is a writer and journalist. Her most recent books include A Letter to Layla: Travels to our deep past and near future (Text, 2020), Bloodhound: Searching for my father (Text, 2015). Her essay ‘Goodbye and Good Luck’ appeared in the collection Split: True Stories of Leaving, Loss and New Beginnings, Edited by Lee...


Romi Grossberg

Romi Grossberg is an Australian-born social worker, public speaker and author of two self-help books, who has been living in Asia since 2010. Romi has spoken at TEDx Phnom Penh 2011, SXSW Austin Texas 2023, and numerous festivals and international conferences in between. She appears regularly on television, podcasts and radio, including with Cambodian Princess...


Ros Ben-Moshe

Ros Ben-Moshe is a Laughter, Wellbeing and Positivity author and Adjunct lecturer at the School of Public Health and Psychology at La Trobe University, where she coordinates the Laughter, Resilience and Wellbeing online short course for professionals. Ros is author of the international bestseller The Laughter Effect – How to Build Joy,...


Roz Bellamy

Roz Bellamy is a writer and researcher based in Melbourne. Roz’s first book, Mood: A Memoir of Love, Identity and Mental Health, published by Wakefield Press in 2023, explores the intersections of mental illness, Jewish and queer identity, and intergenerational trauma. In 2022, Roz completed a PhD exploring the impacts of engaging in life writing...


Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo

Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo is the author of My Father’s Shadow (Monash University Publishing, 2023). She grew up in St Kilda and spent time in New York City. Her short stories and poems have been published in Griffith Review and Westerly, among others. Her novel, The Book of Rachel, was published by Allen & Unwin and later translated into German. Sandra’s business,...


Sarah Krasnostein

Sarah Krasnostein is a multi-award winning writer and critic. She is the best-selling author of The Trauma Cleaner, The Believer, the Quarterly Essay, ‘Not Waving, Drowning‘ and ‘On Peter Carey‘. She holds a doctorate in criminal law and is admitted to legal practice in Australia and America. Her awards include the...


Shoshy Rockman

Shoshy Rockman began to write three years ago — an exponential leap into work that is edgy, raw and humourful. A feminist humanist slant. A scientific twist. A steely desire. To bridge gulfs. Brave wolves and ride dragons bareback. National and international awards trail. In the wake. Of her words.


Steven Cooke

Dr Steven Cooke is the CEO of the Melbourne Holocaust Museum. He has over 30 years’ experience in the cultural heritage sector across both museums and academia, and has published extensively on both the historical evolution of Holocaust museums and memorials, and new approaches to sharing Holocaust survivor testimony. His work has led the Australian...


Tali Lavi

Tali Lavi is a writer, critic and public interviewer whose work has appeared in The Jewish Quarterly, The Saturday Paper, Australian Book Review and other publications. Her essay ‘Counting’ was published in Marina Benjamin’s Garden Among Fires: A Lockdown Anthology. She has an MA in Creative Writing (RMIT University), has written a play (Tales of...


Tami Sussman

Tami is a Sydney-based author with background in theatre, comedy and spoken word poetry. She facilitates creative writing workshops for school students and contributes humorous op- eds for online and print magazines. Tami wrote the best-selling picture book Tiny Tradies and her debut middle grade novel So That Happened … But Maybe You Already Knew...


Tess Scholfield-Peters

Tess Scholfield-Peters is a Sydney–Eora based writer and academic currently based at the University of Technology Sydney where she teaches creative writing. Tess began her writing career in community journalism and has since completed her doctorate, for which she wrote her first book Dear Mutzi (NLA Publishing), a hybrid narrative non–fiction about her grandfather’s migration...


Hila Tells Stories: Max and The Wild Things — Children’s Session

Max and The Wild Things – an Interactive Theatre Show based on Maurice Sendak’s iconic book, that invites children to Max’s wild world where big emotions rule! The show follows a boy named Max who takes the audience on an adventure to a magical land filled with strange and wonderful creatures known as The Wild...

Sunday August 18, 2024
9.30am—10.20am

The World According to Idan — Children’s Session

Idan Ben Barak’s Do Not Lick This Book! can be found in most homes around Australia. Idan likes writing about things in the world – and ourselves – that we normally don’t pay attention to. Come and find out about what your brain can and cannot do; how many senses you really have (hint: more...

Sunday August 18, 2024
10.30am—11.20am

Scratch and Sniff with Tami — Children’s Session

Tami Sussman’s hilarious and heart-warming debut So That Happened … tackles leaving your childhood home and memories behind, how to be a good friend (and realise when you have been a bad one) and most importantly, how to get back up when it feels like the world has knocked you down. Aspiring (and reluctant) writers...

Sunday August 18, 2024
11.30am—12.20pm