The Emerging Writers’ Festival is here
The 2025 Emerging Writers’ Festival (EWF) kicked off today, Thursday September 11 – and it’s going to be brilliant!
Here is our Admin & Comms person Joanne with a guide to the program.
This year, EWF introduces the festival hub: a place to grab a cup of tea, work on your writing, read, socialise, and attend daily morning drop-in writing sessions. You may even find some backissues of Voiceworks to flick through…
The National Writers’ Conference
The National Writers’ Conference returns on 13–14 September at The Wheeler Centre and online. It’s a weekend of creative fire and professional insight, featuring publishing professionals, seasoned authors, and industry experts.
Enrich your craft, gain new perspective on the industry, and connect with fellow writers and publishing professionals. Come away with new ideas, fresh motivation, and a network to accompany you along the writer’s path.
DAY ONE: Beginnings (Saturday 13 September) is designed for emerging writers who are beginning their writing and editing journeys:
10AM – Pitch Perfect
11:30AM – Emerging in Print
1PM – Fanning the Flame
3PM – Writing Across Genre
4:15PM – Novel Structuring Workshop
Take what you’ve learnt from DAY ONE into DAY TWO: Enduring (September 14 September), which delves further into the world of publishing:
10AM – Tackling the Big Issues
11:30AM – Retrospectives
1PM – Creative Chaos
3PM – How to Self-Publish, Workshop
4:15PM – Currents & Trends
Pop into individual sessions or purchase a pass for the weekend, with concession and First Nations prices available.
Bend springs into action
Voiceworks celebrate the launch of their 135th issue, ‘Bend’, the first from new editor Joel Keith and new designer Alex Stevenson. Come hang out, peruse back issues, and be among the first to snag a copy of ‘Bend’; enjoy readings from some of this issue’s fantastic contributors:
🥨Blue Jordan
🥨Bridie Noonan
🥨Neha De Alwis
🥨Rachel Newbound
Saturday 13 September, 7:30pm at Jolt Arts in Northcote. Tickets are free / pay-what-you wish. See you there!
More program highlights
All free / pay-what-you-wish — shoutout to the EWF team for remaining committed to an accessible program.
Black Out Poetry
Friday 12 September 8:30am
EWF Festival Hub (The Wheeler Centre Workshop Space)
Do you seek to emphasise with erasure, delete with discernment, and shuffle selectively? Illuminate poetry hidden in plain sight in this black-out poetry workshop with August Moulang: writer, artist and, until very recently, Express Media’s Administration and Communications Coordinator / Schools Producer.
The 2025 Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers: A Celebration
Friday 12 September 6:00pm
Livestream + EWF Festival Hub (The Wheeler Centre Workshop Space)
Join Overland to celebrate the winners of the 2025 Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers. Overland’s Editor-in-Chief, Evelyn Araluen, will announce the winning writer and runner-up on the night.
Writing with Animal Joy
Tuesday 16 September 8:30am
EWF Festival Hub (The Wheeler Centre Workshop Space)
There is an incalculable spirit within poetry that connects us to the world’s aliveness. Join Voiceworks poetry edcommer Eartha Davis in a workshop that invites us to honour this spirit by experimenting with the shape, musicality, and essence a poem can possess.
Scene Transitions: Trans Playwrights in Conversation
Wednesday 17 September 11:00am
Online (Zoom)
How do you write a play about a life that defies traditional narratives? How do you make a scene in a scene that doesn’t want you – until it does? Scene Transitions is a discussion between premier trans women playwrights of Melbourne: Gabrielle Fallen, Dax Carnay-Hanrahan, Kikki Temple and Bayley Turner.
Quaver: Music and Text — Loom LIterary Journal Launch
Wednesday 17 September 7:00pm
The Mission to Seafarers Victoria, Norla Dome
To celebrate the launch of their first issue, Loom Literary Journal presents a night of readings and musical performances, in the beautiful Norla Dome. Featuring Manisha Anjali, Ender Başkan, Greer Clemens, Genevieve Fry and 2024 Kat Muscat Fellow Xiaole Zhan (詹小乐).
Loom is an interdisciplinary literary journal helmed by former Voiceworks editor and 2025 Kat Muscat Fellow Adalya Nash Hussein, crafted alongside Voiceworks alumni Selena Repanis, Hasib Hourani and Mira Schlosberg.
EWF at the Cinémathèque
Digital
Three writers creatively respond to three film seasons at the Melbourne Cinémathèque — Appetite for Deconstrictuion: Seijun Suzuki, Cine de Oro: Treasures of Mexican Cinema’s Golden Age and Mother Tongue: Australian Women in Animation. Head to Rough Cut after each season’s conclusion to read new writings born out of the cinema, as writers Laetitia Um, Liên Ta and Tara Grace reflect on memory, language and culture.
This is truly just a fraction of the events that excited us. Be sure to check out the EVENT GUIDE and FULL PROGRAM :-)