Welcome to your 2026 Riverina Readers Festival

On Saturday 11 July, Riverina Readers will spend the day meeting 13 Australian and internationally bestselling authors from your favourite genres of Crime Fiction, Mystery and Family Drama, Romance, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Romantasy & more!

AND on Sunday 12 July, learn how to write Fantasy Worlds with Tigest Girma in an exclusive 4-hour workshops.

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2026 Festival Program

Attending Authors

Tigest Girma is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Immortal Dark and Eternal Ruin. She is an Ethiopian writer based in Melbourne, Australia and splits her time between writing and teaching. Passionate about exploring East African characters and myths, her work weaves Black stories with the dark and fantastical. In her free time, she can be found rewatching her comfort shows where the villain gets the girl. The third and final instalment of the Immortal Dark series is set to release later in the year.

Ayesha Inoon is a Sri Lankan-Australian writer whose work is shaped by her rich cultural heritage and lived experience. Born in Colombo, she travelled widely and worked as a journalist in Sri Lanka before migrating to Australia in 2013. Her writing explores themes of identity, belonging, and the resilience of women across cultures.
Her debut novel, Untethered - winner of the 2022 ASA/HQ Commercial Fiction Prize and Highly Commended in both the 2024 ACT Book of the Year and the ACT Literary Awards for Fiction - draws partly from her own journey as an immigrant Muslim woman. The novel was also supported by the inaugural Penguin Random House Write It Fellowship in 2019. Ayesha’s 2026 debut fiction is called The Sisters of Serendib, will be released on 26 May, 2026.

As a year 11 student, Zoe Gaetjens attended a life drawing workshop where she failed to plan anything significant. She has since traded her charcoal for a laptop and writes books for children and young adults. When Zoe is not writing, she works as a high school English teacher. She believes that the books you love as a teenager stay with you forever. Zoe’s debut young adult fiction, Drawing Nudes While Making Other Plans was released on 5 May, 2026.

Published in English in Australia, the UK and the US, and in the translation in more than a dozen territories, Sulari Gentill is the author of The Hero Trilogy and the multi-award-winning Rowland Sinclair Mysteries, ten historical crime novels (thus far) chronicling the life and adventures of her 1930s Australian gentleman artist.In 2018, Gentill’s After She Wrote Him won the Ned Kelly Award and was shortlisted for the Davitt Award,The Woman in the Library, published in 2022, was a USA Today Bestseller, nominated for an Edgar Award (US), an Amazon Editor’s Pick, a Goodreads Most Anticipated Read and won the CrimeFictionLover Award (UK). The Mystery Writer was released in March 2023, Five Found Dead released in 2025 and her latest re-release of The Hero Trilogy is set to hit shelves in late May 2026.

Mary Colussi is an Australian American writer currently based in Sydney. She’s a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and the National Institute of Dramatic Art. She has held a wide range of roles across the entertainment and media industries, from internships in talent agencies, television production and publishing to working as a writer at BuzzFeed She currently works for the Australian Society of Authors. Her debut novel, Touch Grass, won the 2025 Penguin Literary Prize and will be released on 2 June, 2026.

Gabrielle Tozer is an award-winning writer based in regional New South Wales (aka. our Wagga local!). She is the author of eight books, including The Unexpected Mess of it All, Before We Met (with Sophie Beer), Can’t Say It Went to Plan, Remind Me How This Ends and The Intern. She loves sharing her passion for creativity with aspiring writers of all ages at festivals and schools around the country, and has worked as a mentor for the Regional Arts Network's Horizon program, Regional Arts Australia's Regional Scribes program and the ABC's Heywire initiative. Gabrielle’s most recent children’s picture book, Tiny Good Things, has instantly become a beloved story for every household.

Margaret Hickey is an award-winning author and playwright from North East Victoria. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and is deeply interested in rural lives and communities. She is the author of six crime novels - Cutters End, Stone Town, Broken Bay, The Creeper, An Ill Wind and Cold River - and a collection of short stories, Rural Dreams.
Cutters End was awarded the BAD Crime Sydney Festival’s Danger Prize, and was also shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award for First Fiction. Margaret won the Ned Kelly Award for Best Fiction in 2025 for The Creeper.

Bron is a lifelong booklover, reader, reviewer, and Aurealis Award judge, who has been talking about books online for about a decade and gets especially excited about Australian writers and their stories.
You can find Bron discussing her latest and most favourite reads on Instagram @bookishbron and on her website BookishBron.com

Dr Anita Heiss is an internationally published, award-winning author of over 20 books; non-fiction, historical fiction, commercial women’s fiction and children’s novels. She is a proud member of the Wiradyuri Nation of central New South Wales, an Ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and the GO Foundation, and Professor of Communications at the University of Queensland.
Her novel, Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray, about the Great Flood of Gundagai, won the 2022 NSW Premier’s Indigenous Writers' Prize and was shortlisted for the 2021 ARA Historical Novel Prize and the 2022 ABIA Awards. Anita’s first children’s picture book is Bidhi Galing (Big Rain), also about the Great Flood of Gundagai. Anita released Dirrayawadha (Rise Up) in about the frontier war in Bathurst in 2024. Her most recent novel is The Paradise Pact was released in March 2026.

Ali Lowe is the author of four acclaimed novels: The Trivia Night, The Running Club, The School Run, which was a WHSmith Book of the Month in Australia, and most recently, The Private Island.
Ali is a journalist by profession: she was Features Editor at OK! in London and has written for bridal magazines, parenting titles, websites and newspapers. She has dual Australian and British citizenship and lives on Sydney's Northern Beaches with her husband and three children.

Tim Ayliffe’s thriller novels have been informed by his 25-year career as a journalist in Australia and around the world. He writes about espionage, extremism, and the global power games at play in the 21st Century. He has been the Managing Editor of Television and Video for ABC News and also Executive Producer of News Breakfast. He is the author of the standalone novel, Dark Desert Road, and the ‘John Bailey’ series including The Greater Good, State of Fear, The Enemy Within, Killer Traitor Spy and The Wrong Man. Tim's thrillers are also in development for TV. When he's not writing or chasing news stories, Tim watches rugby and surfs.

Jeremy Lachlan was born and raised on Wiradjuri country, in Griffith, New South Wales, Australia. A former bookseller, he completed his honours degree in creative writing at the University of Canberra, and now calls Sydney home. His debut novel, Jane Doe and the Cradle of All Worlds, was the Australian Book Industry Award winner for Book of the Year for Older Children, and its sequel, Jane Doe and the Key of All Souls, was shortlisted for the same award. The Jane Doe Chronicles have been published locally and internationally. But all this pales in comparison to the $100 he once took home in a karaoke competition. He came up with the idea for the Jane Doe Chronicles while lost in the Cairo Museum.

Amy Doak writes mysteries filled with action, adventure, fun and heart. Her debut Young Adult novel Eleanor Jones is Not a Murderer won the 2024 Davitt Award for Best Crime Novel; was a CBCA 2024 Notable Book; and was shortlisted for both the 2024 ABIA Book of the Year for Older Readers, and for the 2024 Davitt Awards Best Debut Crime Novel. The sequel, Eleanor Jones Can’t Keep a Secret, was shortlisted for the 2025 Indie Book Awards, the 2025 ABIAs and was a CBCA 2025 Notable Book. Eleanor Jones is Playing with Fire is the third book in the series and winner of the 2026 Indie Book Award for Young Adults. She also released standalone YA mystery What Have They Done to Liza McLean? in 2025.
The sixth installment in the Eleanor series called Eleanor Jones is Not Drowning will be released on 30 June, 2026.

Bridie Blake spent her childhood dreaming of escaping up the magic faraway tree, her teen years lost in the angst of many a YA novel, and her twenties waiting for her chosen one journey to begin. Her imagination eventually spilled onto the blank pages in front of her and creating stories became as important as breathing.

She lives and writes in Melbourne, Australia. She works in administration and is a self-confessed daydreamer, who can sniff out chocolate like a bloodhound and will never turn down a cup of coffee or the opportunity to listen to Taylor Swift.

Tigest Girma Workshop

Secure Your Workshop Ticket

Write with Tigest at an exclusive 4-hour workshop on Sunday 12 July at the Wagga Wagga City Library, where she will:

focus on how to build a fantasy world through the lens of your main character
explore the symbiotic relationship between internal character arcs and external world elements
provide generous tips and techniques on where to begin and where to weave your protagonist’s journey

From culture to magic, Tigest will create a safe and inclusive space for all types of writers to enjoy this creative environment together.

This workshop is suitable for people aged 18+ years.

This workshop is proudly funded by Eastern Riverina Arts and presented by Riverina Readers Festival Inc.