We are over the bookshelves excited to introduce you to the 2025 NYWF team!

We’re a brand new team of young (well, most of us) writers excited by the possibility of developing emerging writers and fostering a love of creation. 

The 2025 NYWF team consists of Myra Grierson, Festival Coordinator, Lay Maloney, Creative Producer, Huyen Hac Helen Tran, Creative Producer, Monique Wallace, Marketing & Digital Coordinator, Kayla McKenzie, Artist Liaison & Volunteer Coordinator, and Benjo Kazue, Vine Fair Coordinator.

The NYWF will be taking place from 3-6 October 2025 on the land of the Awabakal and Worimi peoples in Newcastle, NSW.

Follow us on Instagram, Threads and TikTok, or sign up to our mailing list to keep up to date with NYWF news, including our artist call out for this years festival. We’d love to have you join us. 

 

Meet the team

Myra Grierson, Festival Coordinator

Myra has been in love with the arts ever since she created her first A4-sized book in kindergarten—a story about walking her dog, Doogle. Myra set herself a challenge to follow the thing she enjoys most: storytelling. This passion led to her internship with the Newcastle Writers’ Festival, where she took on an active role to learn the behind-the-scenes operations of festival planning. Now, Myra is excited to further explore storytelling and contribute to the creative industries.

 

Lay Maloney, Creative Producer

Lay is a young genderfluid storyteller of the Gumbaynggirr and Gunggandji nations and South Sea Islander heritage based on Dunghutti Country. They are the recipient for the black&write! Fellowship with the State Library of Queensland for their LGBTQIA+ YA manuscript titled WEAVING US TOGETHER which is hitting the shelves August 2025.

They were also the Emerging Producer for the 2024 Blak & Bright First Nations Literary Festival and current Blak & Bright Literary Development Co-Ordinator. Lay is published in ‘NANGAMAY dream MANA gather DJURALI grow – First Nations Australia LGBTQIA+ Poetry collection’ edited by Alison Whittaker & Steven Lindsay Ross, Cordite Poetry Review ‘Tell It Like You Mean It’, and Soft Stir issue 3.

 

Huyen Hac Helen Tran, Creative Producer

Helen is a writer and arts worker currently living and working on Gadigal land. Her writing and research revolve around digital identities, cultural inheritance, the body, care, and personal narrative.

You can find her writing in Liminal Magazine, Meanjin, The Suburban Review, The Big Issue, and more. She is currently completing a Masters Degree in Literature and Creative Writing at Western Sydney University. She is the Digital Communications Officer for the Sydney Review of Books, and a recipient of the 2025 Whitlam Essay Residency.

 

Monique Wallace, Marketing & Digital Coordinator

Monique lives on Awabakal land and is an avid writer both in her professional and personal life. She has more than 12 years of experience in marketing & communications across several industries where she overuses em dashes and waxes lyrical about the importance of storytelling. 

Her work is featured in Kill Your Darlings, and Teacher, Teacher published by Affirm Press. Monique completed the 2024 Faber Writing Academy Writing a Novel – Online course with Carrie Tiffany and was shortlisted for the 2024 Newcastle Writers Festival Fresh Ink Prize for her unpublished young adult novel Something You Should Know which is about grief, love, and how there’s the right song for everything. 

 

Kayla McKenzie, Artist Liaison & Volunteer Coordinator

 

Kayla is an aspiring writer based in Newcastle on Awabakal land. Her writing leans towards coming of age and urban fantasy genres. She is half-Chinese and half-Australian, born in Bangkok and grew up in Vietnam. She has an interest in animals (particularly the misunderstood ones!) human nature, and mythology. She is currently studying a Bachelor or Arts at the University of Newcastle, majoring in English and Writing.
Kayla was a volunteer at the festival in 2023, and has now been welcomed back as part of the production crew. A proud Novocastrian; she is excited to show artists and visitors what Newcastle has to offer!

 

Benjo Kazue, Zine Fair Coordinator

Benjo Kazue is an interdisciplinary artist living and working on Bundjalung country west of Byron Bay. His work fuses elements of journalism, creative non-fiction, gonzo rock n’ roll, auto-fiction and armchair philosophy into tactile works of cut and paste inspired art which questions the point of reality, identity, home, and any meaning in the universe (or lack thereof). During his time, he has been published across a number of websites, blogs, literary journals, magazines, street press, and assorted conglomerate media incl. Monster Children, NME, BLUNT, Collapse Board, Bangaluru Review, Bali Sun, Brisbane Times and Joao Roque Literary Journal, and more.

Benjo is currently the editor and Genius at the Helm of DIY literary journal and publishing house, Cosmic Phallusy, which was shortlisted for the Broken Pencil International Zine Awards for Best Overall and Best Literary Publication, which is available/stocked across the world. He has appeared at the Asia Pacific Literary Festival, Brisbane Writers Festival, Ubud Readers and Writers Festival and Kyogle Writers Festival to talk on zines as an art form, independent publishing and street press; and his work has featured at The Blank Gallery in Tokyo, and Roxy Gallery in The Northern Rivers.

Benjo is the organiser of Byron Bay Print Fest, Northern Rivers Zine Fair and Lismore Print Fest, and runs writing and zine-making workshops across the region. Famous music critic Everett True once said Benjo could be Lester Bangs incarnate.