Darcy Green for The Wheeler Centre: The Next Big Thing

Join us for an electrifying edition of The Next Big Thing as five emerging voices explore stories of power, control and self-discovery.  

The Next Big Thing series continues with a rich selection of emerging voices ready to be discovered.   

Ange Crawford presents her Walker Books Manuscript Prize-winning novel, How to be Normal, a contemporary YA novel about breaking free of coercive control.  Darcy Green’s After the Siren is a queer romantic comedy about inconvenient attraction, second chances and the joys of sport, set against the backdrop of the AFL.  Sophie Quick’s darkly funny debut Confidence Woman takes on the Melbourne property market in a satirical and all-too-relevant exploration of just how far a woman will go to buy her first home. Maithree Wijesekara’s The Prince Without Sorrow delves into a world of witches, curses and bloody revenge in an epic fantasy novel inspired by the Mauryan dynasty of ancient India. Frances Newbound’s ‘I Smell a Rat’, published in Voiceworks, tells the story of a mother and daughter as they navigate the distance and conflicts that come with growing older and further apart. 

Join us at The Moat to hear more from some of the most exciting new voices working in fiction today in the penultimate edition of The Next Thing for 2025.