Irish literary royalty and Booker Prize heavy-hitters headline four days of wordy goodness this May.
Melbourne’s annual word-nerd extravaganza is back with a vengeance, with Melbourne Writers Festival today dropping its stacked 2025 program that’s set to transform the CBD into a literary playground this May.
Under the trippy theme of Magical Thinking, new festival director Veronica Sullivan has assembled a cosmic array of bookish talent from home and abroad, with Irish superstar Marian Keyes, Booker Prize-winner Samantha Harvey and literary icon Colm Tóibín leading the international contingent.
Melbourne Writers Festival 2025
- 8 to 11 May
- Various venues across Melbourne CBD
- Tickets are on sale now
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The four-day word bender sees Sullivan’s first program at the helm, with the freshly-minted director promising “some of Australia and the world’s most brilliant and incisive writers and thinkers” will converge on our fair city to celebrate “the alchemy of storytelling and the power of imagination.”
Kicking things off on Thursday night, reigning Booker Prize champion Samantha Harvey joins a star-studded Opening Night event at The Athenaeum, before later unpacking her profoundly meditative novel Orbital over the weekend.
Commercial juggernaut Marian Keyes – who’s flogged more than 30 million books worldwide and just scored a Netflix deal for her novel Grown Ups – will front up for a special Mother’s Day event, spilling the tea on her decades-spanning career with Aussie crime queen Jane Harper.
Meanwhile, local literary luminaries are turning out in force, with Hannah Kent dropping her debut non-fiction work Always Home, Always Homesick, Kate Grenville diving into the deeply personal Unsettled, and media powerhouses Jamila Rizvi and Rosie Waterland teaming up for a raw chat about brain health with Clare Bowditch.
For those who prefer their culture with a hefty side of discourse, philosopher A.C. Grayling teams up with journo Osman Faruqi and cultural critic Tara Kenny to ask the eternally spicy question: can we separate the art from the artist? Expect scorching hot takes on legacy, celebrity and accountability at this lively debate.
In a particularly juicy get for festival-goers, Cold Chisel legend Jimmy Barnes will rock up to recount the batshit crazy adventures of his larger-than-life existence, while First Nations Curator Daniel Browning brings together Indigenous heavyweights to reflect on the Voice referendum and where the hell we go from here.
For the terminally online, podcasts Culture Club and The Psychology of Your 20s both hit the stage for live recordings, tackling everything from wellness industry cults to the eternal struggle of being hot.
The festival’s international roster also includes Leave the World Behind author Rumaan Alam, Korean fiction sensation Bora Chung and Argentine horror maven Mariana Enríquez, who’ll participate in a wild translation slam where two literary linguists duke it out over her unpublished work.
With four days of back-to-back bookish revelry across Melbourne’s CBD, including panels, performances, workshops and children’s events, this year’s MWF looks set to blow the minds of literary fiends city-wide.
For more on the Melbourne Writers Festival and to get your tickets, head here.
