This event takes place during 2025 NAIDOC Week. This year’s theme, The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy, celebrates not only the achievements of the past but the bright future ahead, empowered by the strength of our young leaders, the vision of our communities and the legacy of our ancestors. This year also marks the milestone of 50 years of NAIDOC Week.

Attend in person

Entry to this event is free but bookings are essential.

The authors will be available in the Foyer for a book signing after the event.

Watch online

The conversation will also be available online. Please make a booking and we will send you a direct link to the livestream event via email. Or you can join through the Library's YouTube channel.

About A Good Kind of Trouble

A Good Kind of Trouble is a brilliantly warm-hearted new series full of high school longing, friendship, footy matches and dreams to change the world.

It's funny how your life changes. I used to be worried about playing footy and whether my first kiss would be with a boy or a girl. I used to worry about having enough time after school and putting my little cousins to bed to go for a run with my best friend Loz and whether she'd ever look at me the way she looks at my brother Poss. But a new girl came to school and there's something about her… I suddenly got the courage to stand up to our history teacher about teaching our true history with books written by blackfullas. And somehow she did too! At first we were on top of the world – and we might even have a chance to change it just a little bit. But now I'm banned from footy and I wonder… is it all going to be worth it?

About Brooke Blurton

Brooke Blurton is a proud Noongar-Yamatji [noong-ar yamatji] woman whose journey is one of deep strength, resilience, and purpose.

Brooke’s childhood was shaped by loss, hardship, and instability. She lost her mother to suicide at a young age and grew up in an environment impacted by trauma, grief and substance abuse. These early experiences could have defined her, but instead they fuelled her drive to create change.

Now, as a youth worker, advocate and speaker, Brooke channels her lived experience into action. She works with young people who’ve faced the kinds of challenges many turn away from, including homelessness, foster care, school exclusion and intergenerational trauma.

What makes Brooke’s work so powerful is her ability to meet people exactly where they are – with empathy, honesty and cultural understanding. Whether through community programs, conversations or storytelling, she creates spaces for healing, learning and connection, especially when it comes to mental health and wellbeing.

Brooke is a reminder that healing isn’t linear and leadership doesn’t always come from textbooks – sometimes, it comes from lived experience, and the courage to turn pain into purpose.

She’s also a published author, releasing her deeply personal memoir Big Love at just 27 years old, and recently co-authoring a coming-of-age fiction for teens, A Good Kind of Trouble, with the sequel due out next year. Brooke is the Boarding Coordinator at the Melbourne Indigenous Transition School, where she supports Indigenous students from remote and rural communities as they transition into city life for education.

She's a proud dog mum, a fierce advocate for LGBTQIA+ rights, and continues to use her voice and platform to champion equity, identity, and belonging, especially for young people finding their way in the world.

About Dr Melanie Saward

Dr Melanie Saward is a proud Bigambul and Wakka Wakka woman. She is a writer, editor, and academic based in Tulmur (Ipswich), Queensland. She’s the author of 2 novels, Burn and Love Unleashed, and has co-written a new book for young adults with Brooke Blurton called A Good Kind of Trouble. She is the coordinator of BlackWords at the University of Queensland and lectures in writing and Australian studies.