OUR COMMITTEE
Elisabeth Grove OAM
President
Lis has lived in Williamstown for over forty years. She loves the closeness and warmth of the Hobsons Bay community and has been associated with Willy Lit Fest from its beginnings. As a reader and critic, her preoccupation with language and writing stretches back longer than she cares to remember. Her career has included teaching English, French and ESL at secondary and tertiary levels (Monash, Melbourne and Victoria Universities); research into second-language learning and assessment (Melbourne University); and consultancies in second-language proficiency, professional writing and editing. She considers the Willy Lit Fest as crucial to the cultural life of the community, and the power of literature as transformative across the generations. A past board member of Elder Rights Advocacy, she has an abiding concern for the human rights of all marginalised groups: the elderly, Indigenous, refugees and asylum seekers.
Helen Jarvis
Vice-President
Helen Jarvis lives in Williamstown, on Bunurong land, and teaches in Melbourne’s west. A committee member since 2022, she loves the diversity of writing the festival promotes, and the passionate reading community it fosters. Helen studied writing at RMIT, and has helped to organise and judge the writing prizes. Her first poetry collection, The Kindness of Water, was published in 2025 with 5 Islands Press.
Brian Christopher
Treasurer
As a chartered accountant Brian has had many years of commercial experience. He lives in Williamstown and is also the Treasurer of the Williamstown Little Theatre. When not engaged in “bean counting” Brian can often be found building sets and from time to time “treading the boards”, which he finds a refreshing antidote against anything relating to financial management. One of Brian’s long-term literary ambitions is to finish reading Ulysses, and wonders whether there is a self-help group that can provide support!
Rita Horányi
Program Co-Director
Rita Horányi is a Magyar-Australian literary critic and creative programmer with a PhD in Comparative Literature. From 2022-2024, she was the Artistic Director of the Northern Territory Writers Festival, curating three successful festivals, two in Garramilla/Darwin and one in Mparntwe/Alice Springs. She has published essays and reviews in Sydney Review of Books, Splinter and Limelight, among other journals, as well as short fiction in the anthology, If We’re Talking Budapest.
She has spent her career working with books and ideas, and is passionate about supporting writers, particularly those whose voices are less often heard, and about creating memorable experiences that inspire and inform audiences.
Alice Reid
Program Co-Director
Alice Reid is a writer and librarian living on Wurundjeri land in Naarm/Melbourne’s inner west. Alice has managed Williamstown High School’s Bayview Campus Library since 2018, and in 2024, she received a Vocational Service Award from Altona City Rotary Club for services to the school community.
During her non-librarian hours, Alice studies Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT. In 2023 she founded online literary magazine Two Wolves Digest, and in 2024, she directed the post-pandemic revival of Odyssey Literary Festival, a student-led initiative hosted by RMIT’s Capitol Theatre. Alice is passionate about future-proofing the literary sector by helping young people discover storytelling they will love.
Michael Anthony Lee
Secretary
Michael is a lecturer in the sociology of tourism, hospitality, and events. Having investigated the nature of authenticity in literary experiences among visitors for almost a decade, Michael often observes the critical tension between the imagined sense of place that readers have with the destinations that they seek to comprehend. His lectures in Festival and Special Events Planning offer insight into how the public showcasing of narratives might therefore be staged. He has been involved with the WLF since 2017.
Amanda Anastasi
Writing Prizes Coordinator
Amanda Anastasi is a Melbourne poet and event convener. Her work has been published locally and internationally, including in Best of Australian Poems 2025, Best Australian Science Writing, Griffith Review and The Massachusetts Review. Amanda is the author of Taking Apart the Bird Trap (Recent Work Press, 2024) and The Inheritors (Black Pepper, 2021). Amanda was Poet in Residence for three years at the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub. She is a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow and a two-time recipient of the Willy Lit Fest’s Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize. Amanda is the convener of La Mama Poetica at La Mama Theatre and Co-Founder and Committee Member of the Sonic Poetry Festival.
Nadjellah Mendoza
Marketing and Communications Coordinator
Nadjellah Mendoza is a Naarm/Melbourne-based copywriter and graduate of RMIT’s Professional Writing and Editing associate degree. She has published short stories for Bowen Street Press and Clover Press, and devised copies for RMIT’s 2024 Odyssey Literary Festival, Visible Ink, POUNDFORCE MMA, and now, Willy Lit Fest. When she is not making digital assets or running around filming content, you can find her in the confines of her pink bedroom — writing reflective pieces and working on her novel manuscript.
Pam Davison
Committee Member
Pam is a multi-media artist who has achieved recognition (and a number of awards) for her short stories, playwriting and poetry. Since 2009 she has concentrated primarily on photography. Her art has evolved through a series of major exhibitions/installations into a practice that combines photography, prose, found objects, fashion, and sound to service her exploration of families, memories and the natural world. She brings to the Committee a love of language and a strong visual sense. Pam lives in Williamstown with her husband and a greyhound.
Kate Marquard
Committee Member
Kate Marquard is a former teacher-librarian who, for 30 years, enjoyed introducing books and reading to her students. Kate helped develop a strong reading culture and celebration of literature in the schools where she worked. Kate is a long-term resident of Williamstown (where she walks and swims every morning), a regular Willy Lit Fest attendee, member of two book clubs, and an avid reader of a diverse range of literature.
Jacqueline Moore
Committee Member
Jacqueline Moore is Williamstown resident (35+ years) and loyal patron of the Willy Lit Fest. Many writers, designers, illustrators and creatives live in and around the special seaside village of Williamstown, and each June, Jacqueline looks forward to the coming-together of the best of these.
Jacqueline is excited to be amongst the hard-working volunteers of the Willy Lit Fest committee, and hopes to play a part in helping the festival thrive in 2026 and beyond.
Dr Lucia Nardo
Committee Member
Dr Lucia Nardo writes fiction and non-fiction and has published a range of both forms. In addition to her fiction and non-fiction titles, her short works appear in anthologies, magazines, and online. Lucia taught Professional Writing and Editing in the vocational education sector, and conducts writing workshops in community settings.
Dr Kay Souter
Committee Member
Kay was a lecturer in English for twenty-five years at RMIT and La Trobe universities, before moving into Teaching and Learning at Deakin and ACU universities for the last 5 years of her academic career. She retired to life as a farmer, working as a viticulturalist on her family’s small vineyard in northeast Victoria. On moving back to Melbourne, she has felt privileged to become a part of the vibrant literary life and wonderful seascapes of Williamstown.
Rebecca Green
Committee Member
Rebecca Green is an author, librarian and book reviewer, who loves horses and zorses. (A zorse is a zebra-horse hybrid.) In 2025, Rebecca won the Spiers Prize for her middle grade novel A Girl, a Boy, a Horse and a Zorse, which will be published later this year by UWA Publishing.