Our first event will be with

Debra Oswald,

March 11, 6 for 6.30pm,

Maleny Community Centre.

Tickets $27.50 and $18 students

and, introducing

Steve MinOn

We’re delighted to launch our 2025 season with the wonderful Debra Oswald. Debra is best known for being the creator/head writer for the first five series of the remarkably successful TV show Offspring. She is, however, also an Award Winning novelist and playwright, a children’s author and a performer.

Her new novel, which she’ll be talking about in Maleny, is 100 Years of Betty and, as the title suggests, it is the century-long saga of a strong, witty, intelligent woman born a bit early for her time. Through its pages we make an idiosyncratic and very personal journey through her life, experiencing just some of the remarkable cultural and historical changes we have undergone.

Geraldine Brooks says it best: ‘Debra Oswald fulfils a novelist's highest purpose in One Hundred Years of Betty. In a marathon exercise of imaginative empathy, she creates a life in full—all its aching sorrows, all its transcendent joys—unfolding amidst the convulsions of our tumultuous century. A rich feast of a novel, a perfect balance of sweet and sour. You won't want it to end.'

Debra Oswald is a two-time winner of the NSW Premier's Literary Award and author of the novels Useful(2015), The Whole Bright Year (2018) and The Family Doctor (2021).

Her stage plays have been performed around the world and her screen-writing credits also include award-winning episodes of Police Rescue, The Secret Life of Us and Wildside.

Her one woman show, Is There Something Wrong With That Lady? was performed at the Griffin Theatre in 2021 and The Ensemble in 2023.

She is married to Richard Glover.

Debra will be in conversation with Steven Lang.

Our introducing author will be Steve MinOn, speaking about his debut novel, First Name Last Name.

Steve was an internationally awarded advertising copywriter and a restaurateur before becoming a writer of fiction. He grew up in North Queensland and now lives in Brisbane. Steve has written often about outsiders and his family’s mixed-race ancestral history, and his articles and short stories have been published in SBS Voices, Mamamia and various anthologies. 

First Name Last Name won the Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer in the 2023 Queensland Literary Awards

The story begins when a man leaves a curious note by his deathbed, asking his sisters to take his body back to North Queensland. They, however, ignore his request, so his corpse must make the journey itself, travelling at night, bringing the tales with him of his Chinese and Scottish ancestors.  

Miranda Riwoe writes: ‘First Name Second Name is a glorious, inventive novel about the experiences of a Chinese–Scottish family, from the goldfields in North Queensland to 1980s Brisbane to the present day. You will be both entertained and moved by this wonderful novel.’