The Emerging Writers' Festival is back for its 23rd year, bringing nine days of new writing to Melbourne and beyond.
Get your library card ready: the Emerging Writers’ Festival is bringing nine days of new writing to Melbourne this September.
Now in its 23rd year, the Emerging Writers’ Festival runs from 10 to 18 September across venues all over Melbourne and online. The program opens with RETRIBUTION., a night of Blak horror at Trades Hall in Carlton, where writers from around the country reframe the genre through the lens of Indigenous self-determination.
There’s plenty stacked in between. The Writer Aquatic takes poetry to Fitzroy Pool, Crush Cabaret serves songs and verse at JOLT Arts in Northcote, and the two-day National Writers’ Conference gathers established and new voices at The Wheeler Centre. The Paragraph Fellowship also hits a milestone, handing two 2026 fellows a one-off $25,000 stipend toward their works-in-progress.
Emerging Writers’ Festival
- Opening night RETRIBUTION. — 10 September, Trades Hall, Carlton
- Paragraph Fellowship — 11 September, The Wheeler Centre
- The Writer Aquatic — 11 September, Fitzroy Pool
- National Writers’ Conference — 12-13 September, The Wheeler Centre
- Closing night Litfair — 18 September, Abbotsford Convent
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
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The festival digs into craft, too. Workshops span Poetry’s Negative Space with Munira Tabassum Ahmed at Balam Balam Place in Brunswick and Prompt Making with Collage with Elena Hogan at Hope St Radio in Collingwood. Ruby Gill leads Yes, You Can Lie in a Song at Oddany Gallery, while writers’ salons and social sessions pop up at galleries and gardens across town.
Food and performance share the bill as well. Ocean Spells, a collaboration with Brunswick eatery Shop Bao Ngoc, folds storytelling into culturally rich snack plates, and Tapestries of Home unpacks our ties to people, places and rituals at Balam Balam Place. Over at JOLT Arts, Priceless Advice rounds up the worst tips ever handed to authors for a night of comedy.
Industry folk are covered on the professional development front, with the Lifecycle of a Book masterclass from Simon & Schuster and Pitch to Press marking 10 years of Grattan Street Press, both at The Wheeler Centre. A panel on how Australian media handles disability representation runs online, alongside sessions on writing memory, archives and arts criticism. The Emerging Writers’ Festival wraps on 18 September with closing night Litfair at Abbotsford Convent.
For more information, head here.
