The Next Big Thing: Melbourne Writers Festival 2026 Edition

Raya Goldtwig was born in Warsaw and spent her early childhood moving through Russia and wartime Europe, later living in a refugee camp in Germany. She arrived in Melbourne in 1950, speaking six languages. She studied linguistics at Monash University, and her translations of poems by Osip Mandelstam and a creative nonfiction story have appeared in Australian literary journals. She lives in Melbourne and will turn ninety in 2026.

Emma Hardy is an Australian writer based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her writing has been published in Guernica, The Monthly, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Lifted Brow, Voiceworks and Going Down Swinging. Emma lives with premenstrual dysphoric disorder, which is the topic of her debut book, Periodic Bitch. She often writes about women, animals, madness and the lines between. She has recently returned from three years living and writing in Nevada, where she was an MFA candidate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She taught university-level English and creative writing and was the nonfiction editor at Witness Magazine.

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. Issa relocated to Washington in 2015 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 and worked for the Guardian until his departure in 2024.

Emily Lighezzolo has worked in Australian publishing for nearly a decade. Life Drawing won the Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer at the Queensland Literary Awards and is her first book. She lives in Meanjin/Brisbane.

Soolagna Majumdar is a Kolkata born, Perth/Boorloo raised comic artist and illustrator. Comics and art are a means for her to explore self awakenings, to find the magical and mystical within the mundane, and to make sense of the world around us.

After the success of Marge Simpson Anime (a zine documenting the spiritual awakening of the iconic matriarch), her comics have been featured on Vice, Cordite Press, Tale Town, DJED Press, The Westerly Magazine, and have been a part of anthologies like the Ledger award winning Neither Here Nor Hair by Petrie Press, Comic Sans by Liminal Publications, and Cartoonists For Palestine. She’s currently working on her graphic novel and love letter to urban fantasy, Food Bird, which was workshopped at the Comic Arts Workshop residency of 2022, and the Milktooth Comics residencies of 2023 and 2024.

Olivia J. Wood is a writer born and raised in Naarm. She has three baby teeth and writes a blog dedicated to them. John Marsden forgot her name once.

Artist, creative worker, and culture junkie, Pranati is a staunch supporter of the arts. They have worked with emerging, independent BIPOC artists, and are the founder of local initiative South by South East Asian (SXSEA ...