Saturday 27 May, 2023
I’ve got an event coming up at Wollongong Town Hall as part of Sydney Writers’ Festival – Live and Local, thanks to the South Coast Writers Centre and Merrigong Theatre!
This day-long event includes a live stream of panels direct from Sydney Writers’ Festival, alongside in-person panels. I’m so excited to speak with my good friend Dinuka McKenzie, in an event titled ‘After the Dust Settles: two crime debuts discuss the first year of publication.‘
“Dinuka McKenzie (The Torrent, Taken) and Hayley Scrivenor (Dirt Town) both had successful crime debuts in 2022. A year on, the two writers sit down to discuss their publication journey, exploring what made their books stand out in a crowded market. Given the runaway success of the crime genre with readers, how do you keep readers guessing? What keeps writers coming back to crime? Join us as Dinuka and Hayley give us their take on these questions and more.”
Hope to see you there!
Dinuka McKenzie is an Australian writer. Her debut crime fiction manuscript The Torrent won the 2020 Banjo Prize for fiction and was published by HarperCollins Australia in February 2022. Her then unpublished manuscript Taken was longlisted for the 2020 Richell Prize and was published in 2023. Dinuka was the fiction judge for the 2021 New England Thunderbolt Prize for crime writing. When not writing, Dinuka works in the environmental sector and volunteers as part of the team behind the Writers’ Unleashed Festival.
Hayley Scrivenor is a former Director of Wollongong Writers Festival. Dirt Town is her first novel. An earlier version of the book was shortlisted for the Penguin Literary Prize and won the Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Award. Dirt Town (Dirt Creek in North America) published internationally in 2022, and is a #1 Australian bestseller. Hayley has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Wollongong.
Hayley Scrivenor 