Chair: Cassandra Wunsch

Cassandra began her writing journey with a residency at the Tasmanian Writers Centre (now known as TasWriters) in 2015. Two years later she had trained her way up to coordinating the Twitch program for young writers, where she had her own start. 

With a background in blogging and theatre, Cassandra is passionate about providing others with the same life changing opportunities that the TWC gave her. Though she originally hails from New South Wales, Cassandra is in love with her home in Tassie and is dedicated to the strong literary community that lives here.

Cassandra was Director of TasWriters from early 2020 until April 2024. She was the Director of the successful 2021 Hobart Writers Festival.

Deputy Chair: Leigh Swinbourne

Leigh Swinbourne is a dramatist and fiction writer resident in nipaluna/Hobart. His work has been shortlisted for the Patrick White Playwrights’ Award, the Varuna Award and The Tasmanian Literary Prizes. He has six plays published with Australian Plays Transformed. Through Ginninderra Press he has published two critically acclaimed collections of short stories, ‘The Shark’ (2011) and ‘Away’ (2014), and a novel, ‘Shadow in the Forest’ (2019). In 2023 he was awarded an Australian Society of Authors mentorship for a second novel. In 2024 he published his third collection of stories, ‘The Lost Child’, longlisted 2025 for the Premier’s Prize for Fiction.

Early in his career, Leigh worked for the Australia Council and the Festival of Sydney. In Hobart he has been a reader for the Australian Script Centre, a judge for the Forty South Tasmanian Writers’ Prize and short story prizes for the Tasmanian Federation of Australian Writers. He has presented workshops for FAW and Ginninderra Press, and has been a panellist for the Hobart Writers’ Festival. For many years Leigh was a board member of Musica Viva Tasmania. He has been a board member.

Treasurer: Erika Thomson

Erika Thomson is a qualified accountant (CPA) and has worked in public practice for over 20 years. 

Erika has a Bachelor of Commerce with majors in Accounting and Human Resource Management and a Bachelor of Musical Arts with a major in Music History, both from the University of Tasmania. 

She held the position of secretary for seven years with the Moonah & Glenorchy Business Association, been a playing member of the Derwent Valley Concert Band and former director and treasurer of both the Glenorchy Community Fund Ltd and GASP.

Secretary: Sue Kennedy

Sue has extensive experience as an IT professional specialising in Project Management, Risk Management, Business Continuity, Cyber Security and Warfare, both as an industry practitioner and as an academic. Since retiring she works part-time as an academic, a technical writer, an editor and proof-reader.

After becoming Chair of the Board of Management in 2018, Sue was also Acting Director for 18 months. She was the Director of the successful 2019 Hobart Writers Festival.

When time allows, she plans to continue writing her first book of fiction and researching for a non-fiction book about a secret military operation of WW2.

Sue has a Masters in Computer Science and an incomplete Masters in English which she had to defer due to work commitments at that time.

Board member: Rayne Allinson

Dr Rayne Allinson received her BA and MA at the University of Melbourne and her DPhil in History at the University of Oxford. She is the author of numerous scholarly articles on sixteenth-century European history and her book, A Monarchy of Letters: Royal Correspondence and English Diplomacy in the Reign of Elizabeth I, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2012.

For fifteen years, Rayne taught Medieval and Early Modern History, Literature and Great Books at various universities in the UK and USA, before a chance encounter brought her home to Tasmania. She is now Assistant Publisher at Forty South Publishing and a bookseller at Fullers Bookshop, where she runs the Reading Group. She regularly contributes to the Australian Book Review and is a regular guest on ABC Radio Hobart's "Tassie Book Chat".

Board member: Kylie Carman-Brown

Originally from Western Australia, Kylie Carman-Brown moved to Tasmania in 2018. Prior to that, she spent 13 years living in Canberra where she completed a PhD in history, and worked in a variety of research based positions. After a short contract at 26TEN in the Tasmanian Library she gained permanent position in the State Planning Office  in the Department of Premier and Cabinet. She teaches occasionally for TasWriters, and is also a qualified florist.

Her book Following the water: Environmental history and hydrology in the Gippsland Lakes catchment was published by ANU Press in 2019.

For fun she swaps between growing and arranging flowers, and various fiction and non fiction writing projects. 

Board member: Meahd Farnaby

Growing up in a regional area of Tasmania and subjected to many yarns spun over fences and local gatherings, Meahd has always had a love of storytelling and reading and would quite often be found under the shade of a tree, nose in a book.  Her passion for words and literacy has grown throughout a diverse range of roles and qualifications including Diploma of Community Development, Project/Event Management (awarded Student of the Year for Aust Project Management Awards 2019), Business and Leadership, Guiding, and Teaching English as an Additional Language both in Tasmania and overseas.  She was Co-Admin Coordinator for the 2024 Tamar Valley Writers Festival and has performed marketing and coordination roles in various other cultural festivals.

She is currently in the Marketing team for Port Arthur Historic Sites, making the most of the archives and resources to research and interpret content for the three World Heritage listed locations in their care. Meahd also sits on the Management Committee of A Fairer World, as well as continuing to sit under trees reading her way through some of the remarkable Tasmanian literature that we are so lucky to have.

Board member: Nicola Ingram

Nicola Ingram (she/her) is a proud palawa and Wiradjuri woman based in nipaluna (Hobart). She is a recent graduate from the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), graduating in 2021 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (acting). 

In 2021 Nicola received the Emerging Tasmanian Aboriginal Writers Award and has continued to develop original works as part of Theatre Works First Stories program, ILBIJERRI’s 10 in 10 emerging artists festival and Melbourne Theatre Company’s emerging writers’ program First Stage. 

She is currently developing her writing practice with The Australian Theatre for Young People writing two new works for the Fresh Ink National Mentoring Program for 2023 alongside other emerging Tasmanian writers. This year Nicola presented Whiteout at two major Festivals, Yirramboi and Dark Mofo. Whiteout showcases a collaboration with Gunnai/Kurnai, Gunditjmara, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta essayist and screenwriter Nayuka Gorrie, playing with irreverence, notions of authenticity and experimentation, exploring what it means to exist despite the insistence you don’t.