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 books and holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Kylie Ladd is a novelist, psychologist and freelance writer. Her novel The Way Back, has been optioned for film.

She has also co-edited and co-authored two non-fiction books, and her essays and articles have been published in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, Griffith Review, Meanjin, O Magazine, Good Medicine, Kill Your Darlings and Reader’s Digest, amongst others.

Staged in partnership with Collins Booksellers on Lydiard.

This event takes place on Wadawurrung Country. The Ballaarat Mechanics' Institute acknowledges the Wadawurrung People of the Kulin Nation as the first inhabitants and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we work, learn and create. Always Was, Always Will Be, Aboriginal Land.