[Read] TWC Staff Picks: 2025 Emerging Writers' Festival

Join EWF for a vibrant evening of readings and celebration as The Wheeler Centre and Emerging Writers’ Festival join forces to spotlight five of Australia’s up-and-coming literary stars.

Crybaby is a collection of micro memoirs by Mabel Gibson. Sara Haddad’s The Sunbird is a timely and modern parable about Palestine. In Spite of You is Patrick Lenton’s wickedly funny queer romcom. Andrea Thompson’s Geraldine chronicles one woman’s journey to change a world that wants to change her. Poet Aylin Mulayim reads their work from Voiceworks #134 Vice.

^{Presented in partnership with The Wheeler Centre}

So often, Australian Publishing can feel stagnant, tedious and even humourless. This predicament provokes four of the continent’s most entertaining writers to interrogate the industry’s discomfort with alt-lit and its resistance to genuinely funny writing.

What does it mean to create literature that dares to be irreverent, playful and alive? A sharp, cheeky dive into what Australian literature is, and what it refuses to be. 

Embracing the cringe often alludes to you doing you: being yourself, overcoming shame and finding humour in such growing pains. As a writer, embracing the parts of yourself that you don’t like within your writing can alleviate writerly anxiety, and is an essential step in becoming better at what you do.

Take inspiration from this group of writers, who are willing to share writing from the past that makes them cringe - all so you can see that everyone has to start somewhere.

Bid EWF goodbye for another year at our closing night literary market. Join us at twilight on the majestic grounds of the Abbotsford Convent and wander through stalls selling zines, books and other handmade wares.

Mingle with writers, artists, small press publishers and grassroots collectives, and as night falls, gather for readings and performances from a handful of luminous word workers, surrounded by the awe-inspiring community that is EWF.