Speed-Meet the Authors – A Gippsland Showcase
Meet, chat, connect! Part of the 2025 Regional Writers Rise Festival, our Speed-Meet the Authors event brought together a fantastic line-up of Gippsland authors for a fun, fast-paced author showcase. It’s a little like speed-dating, but with books: short, one-on-one conversations where readers could ask questions, discover what inspires local writers, and find their next great read.
The energy on the day was wonderful, even if we should have remembered to bring arrows to help with directions! Once everyone warmed up (and we sorted the clockwise/anticlockwise confusion caused by the festival coordinator… sorry about that!), it was so rewarding to see local authors being heard, appreciated, and celebrated.
Writing can be a solitary experience, but events like this remind us how special it is to connect, to share stories, meet readers, and hopefully, gain new ones along the way.
Explore the authors below, check out their bios, and follow the links to their websites to learn more about the incredible local voices making a difference by telling, and publishing, their stories.
Cindy Tomamichel is a multi-genre writer of action adventure novels. Escape the everyday with time travel, science fiction and fantasy stories or romance. Discover worlds where the heroines don’t wait to be rescued, and the heroes earn that title the hard way.
Jemimah Halbert Brewster is a reader, writer and book reviewer living in Gippsland – Gunaikurnai country, where she writes short stories and poetry full of queerness and Halloween vibes. She loves imaginative books about found family, high concept sci-fi, and low-stakes fantasy. She writes The Brew monthly newsletter on pop culture and cosy nonsense, and also creates the podcast Tome & Tome Again with the lovely and talented Jess Gately.
Renee Conoulty is an Australian author and teacher’s aide who spends her days surrounded by kids, chaos, and quirky characters just begging to be let loose on the page. She writes feel-good stories full of humour and heart guaranteed to make you laugh out loud. Her uplifting books deliver smiles from the first page to the last. When not crafting mischief and mayhem for her books, Renee can be found sipping coffee, eating chocolate, and picking up after her teens.
Tracey Di Ciero is a long-term cancer survivor, author, educator and transformational life coach. She has lived in Gippsland all her life working as a primary teacher and later as a transformational empowerment and resilience holistic health and wellbeing life coach, where she supports women and also those who are navigating and coping with cancer. She is a motivational and inspirational keynote speaker both locally and internationally. Her signature Keynote Speech is titled, ‘Surviving Cancer. From Feeling Alone To Empowered And Resilient.’
Sandi Wallace’s dream to be a crime writer began at around the age of six. She is now living that dream on Millowl/Phillip Island with publications including four rural thrillers and two collections of short crime stories. Sandi has earned several Scarlet Stiletto Awards and commendations and been a finalist in other contests for her short crime fiction. Her debut novel Tell Me Why won the Davitt Award Readers’ Choice and was shortlisted for the Davitt’s Best Debut.
Kelly Wilson has been a dynamic Primary School Educator & Literacy Specialist for 30 years. Her varied roles have seen her teach all subject areas from Prep to year 12. She now works as an author and educational & wellbeing consultant in her own business, Wings for Grace, and in schools. She is a regular public speaker and workshop provider in areas such as literacy, wellbeing, mental health and life coaching. Kelly’s passion as an author is guaranteed to inspire young minds to write and read.
Janet Keane Bruce started writing seriously in 2012 and has completed a Master of Creative Writing in Publishing and Editing at the University of Melbourne, graduating in 2019. Her short story ‘Gun Down a Granny’ was published in the anthology A Nice Boy in 2017. Into the Dying Forest is her second novel and first YA novel. The novel is set in West Gippsland and its forests and abandoned gold mines have inspired the settings.
Mary-Clare Terrill is an Australian-Canadian indie author. Her debut historical romance novel, Maplecroft, is based on the true story of her great-grandparents and their treasured and preserved love letters. It is the first book in the Maplecroft family saga.
Welcome to Regional Writers Rise 