CANBERRA Writers’ Festival artistic director Jeanne Ryckmans is leaving the job, after having produced a “hybrid” festival in mid pandemic lockdown and a live festival in 2022.

Ryckmans joined the board of the festival in 2018 and stepped into the top job in 2019.

Raised in Canberra, she studied at the ANU before heading to France where she worked on the hit TV arts program, “Bouillon de Culture”, was later an arts reporter and presenter for SBS, before moving into the publishing industry, will return to her home in Sydney to complete her own book w for Upswell Publishing.

During 2020, she was subject to an attack on Twitter claiming lack of diversity, but survived to produce a highly credible live festival in 2022.

Following that experience, she told “CityNews” earlier this year, she had taken some very astute advice to “wipe the crap from your shoes and move on.”