The country's largest First Nations writers festival is back in Naarm this September, and the opening lineup goes hard.
Blak & Bright Writers Festival returns to Naarm from 3 to 6 September, gathering the country’s foremost First Nations storytellers.
Blak & Bright Writers Festival is the only event of its kind in Australia, built entirely around First Nations writers and storytellers. The 2026 edition runs under the theme EVERY:WHEN, which centres First Nations understandings of time as continuous and relational. Rather than treating past, present and future as a straight line, the program leans into stories and conversations that hold all of those threads together at once.
Blak & Bright Writers Festival 2026
- What: Blak & Bright Writers Festival 2026, EVERY:WHEN
- When: 3 to 6 September 2026
- Where: Naarm
- Program launch: 23 July, 7pm, The Wheeler Centre, 176 Little Lonsdale St, Naarm
- Tickets: launch is free; registration essential via blakandbright.com.au
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This first wave brings together five well-known figures working across screen, page and community. Broadcaster and former AFL player Tony Armstrong lines up beside fiction writer Tony Birch, with Goorie and Koori poet, researcher and editor Evelyn Araluen, novelist and actor Tasma Walton, and author, actor and youth worker Brooke Blurton rounding out the opening group. Between them they cover poetry, fiction, broadcasting, acting and frontline youth work.
The complete four-day program lands on 23 July, unveiled at a launch night inside The Wheeler Centre on Little Lonsdale Street from 7pm. The launch is free to attend, though a spot needs to be registered ahead of time through the festival website.
Blak & Bright started life in 2016 as a single flagship festival and has since expanded into year-round programming. Alongside the main event, it runs workshops, panels and performances designed to put First Nations writers at every stage of their careers in front of wider, more varied audiences.
This opening announcement is only the first slice, with organisers signalling that more writers, illustrators and thinkers will be added to the bill before the festival opens in September.
For more information, head here.
