Melbourne Writers Festival returns for its 40th anniversary edition, bringing together more than 150 writers and thinkers across the city this May.
Running from 7–10 May (with Opening Night on 6 May), Melbourne Writers Festival 2026 takes Visions & Revisions as its theme, a fitting frame for a milestone edition that looks both backward and forward.
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern kicks things off at Melbourne Town Hall on 7 May in conversation with Virginia Trioli, reflecting on crisis leadership, public motherhood and what she’d say to the next generation stepping into politics.
That same evening, R.F. Kuang, the powerhouse behind Babel and Yellowface, takes the same stage to discuss her new novel Katabasis with Shelley Parker-Chan, digging into academia’s dark corridors and the charge of speculative fiction.
Melbourne Writers Festival 2026
- When: 6–10 May 2026
- Where: Various venues across Melbourne, including Melbourne Town Hall, Scienceworks Planetarium, Cinema Nova and State Library Victoria
- Tickets: here
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
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International heavyweights
The international lineup is stacked. Booker Prize winner David Szalay arrives fresh from his 2025 win to discuss Flesh, his hypnotic novel tracing a man’s life from Hungarian adolescence to precarious London adulthood.
Yann Martel, back in Australia for the first time in a decade, presents his new novel Son of Nobody, a meditation on love, grief and the Trojan War told through an ordinary soldier’s eyes, speaking with Sarah L’Estrange.
Susan Choi brings her Booker-shortlisted Flashlight, a sweeping generational saga spanning the 20th century, and Palestinian writer Tareq Baconi shares his searingly personal memoir Fire in Every Direction, a three-generation story of displacement, queer identity and political awakening.
Japanese author Genki Kawamura makes his MWF debut, presenting his new novel One Hundred Flowers, hosting a screening and Q&A of his psychological thriller Exit 8 at Cinema Nova, and joining a conversation about the global rise of Japanese literature and cinema, conducted in Japanese with live English captions.
Mieko Kawakami, International Booker Prize shortlistee and one of Japan’s most celebrated contemporary novelists, presents her latest, Sisters in Yellow, with live translation.
Homegrown talent
On the local front, there’s plenty to get excited about. Antoinette Lattouf presents Women Who Win alongside Grace Tame, hosted by Tasneem Chopra, a fierce look at women who rewrote the rules without asking permission.
Stephanie Alexander joins Alice Zaslavsky to mark 30 years of The Cook’s Companion, tracing the evolution of Australian food culture and the painstaking work of updating a beloved classic.
Playwright Lally Katz, poet Ariana Reines and comedian Em Rusciano sit down with Marieke Hardy for a frank, wide-ranging conversation about modern womanhood, burnout and the search for meaning. And for something a little different, the MWF Translation Slam pits two translators head-to-head over a previously unpublished Japanese ghost story, with folklorist and cultural historian Hiroko Yoda on hand to weigh in.
Politics, journalism and civic life
There’s a strong thread of political and civic conversation running through the Melbourne Writer’s Festival program.
A panel on independent journalism features Antoun Issa, Antoinette Lattouf and Amy Remeikis discussing the rise of reader-supported media and what greater plurality might mean for democracy.
Canadian political commentator David Moscrop examines whether human brains are actually built for democracy in the digital age. And in Making the Victorian Treaty, curated by Daniel James, key figures behind Australia’s first Treaty with First Peoples reflect on its meaning and the decade of work that led to it coming into effect in December 2025.
Melbourne Writers Festivals outside the city
Beyond the headline events, MWF spreads out across the city.
Historian Robyn Annear leads Sunday walking tours through Melbourne’s lost bohemian haunts and forgotten cultural landmarks.
A free drop-in installation at the State Library Victoria forecourt, called The Book Factory, lets visitors write, print, press and bind their own books, powered by bike. And the festival heads to local libraries in Doncaster, Hawthorn, Kooyong, Melton and Moonee Valley, with writers including Dervla McTiernan, Benjamin Stevenson, Bob Brown and Anita Heiss appearing close to home.
Closing Night on 10 May belongs to Tony Birch, whose address draws on First Nations and other writers to consider what it means to read and write with courage and ethical imagination, a fittingly grounded note on which to close out four decades of Melbourne Writers Festival, one of Australia’s most beloved literary gatherings.
For more information, head here.
