About the Event
We open the Mandurah Readers & Writers festival this year, with Stephen Daisley, winner of the 2024 Premier’s Book of the Year award for his novel A Better Place. Stephen will discuss his novel in conversation with Kathy Heys.
The Readers’ and Writers’ Festival is an annual adult literature event presented by City of Mandurah Library Services. In 2025 it will be held from 16 – 18 January at the Seashells Resort Mandurah. The aim of the festival is to foster a love of reading and literature and encourage creativity in our community. This year the festival brings together an array of established and emerging storytellers from across Western Australia. The free to attend three-day festival includes author talks and panel discussions.
Stephen Daisley
Stephen Daisley was born in 1955 and grew up on the North Island of New Zealand. He has worked on sheep and cattle stations, on oil and gas construction sites and as a truck driver, among many other jobs.
His first novel, Traitor, won the 2011 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction. Coming Rain won the Ockham Prize in 2015. Stephen’s novel A Better Place was awarded Book of the Year in West Australian Premier’s Book Award for 2024. Stephen lives in Western Australia.
A Better Place
In a novel of stark and lyrical beauty, award-winning author Stephen Daisley portrays the brutal effects of war on two New Zealand brothers. The old people in the district would often say that Roy was not quite the same after he come back. There was a brother. A twin brother, Tony. Tony Mitchell, different boy but a good rugby player. Bit of a mental case, they said, but Roy would have none of it. He always stayed close to Tony when they were growing up. They both went off to fight, must have been 1940. Only the one come back, though. Crete, they thought. We lost Tony over there. From Stephen Daisley, winner of the Prime Minister's Award for Traitor and the NZ Ockham Prize for Coming Rain, a new novel about brothers at war. Beautifully written, brutal, tender and visceral, A Better Place is about love in its many forms.
Kathy Heys
Kathy Heys graduated from UWA with a degree in English Literature and a Graduate Diploma of Education and embarked on a career teaching in public schools. She is the Head of English at Coodanup College, a position she has held for eight years. Highlights of Kathy’s reading journey include meeting Markus Zusak and visiting Jane Austen’s house. Kathy is also currently studying Creative Writing at Curtin University.
What to Expect:
6.00pm: Drinks & Nibbles
6.30pm: In Conversation
7.30pm: Book Signing
Tea & Coffee provided.
Festival Bookseller is Dymocks Busselton
Places are limited. Bookings required. Book Now!
