Nature. Place. Story.
Mountain Writers Festival returns to Wurundjeri Country (Macedon) from 13-15 November.
Featuring festival guests including Bob Brown, Debra Dank, Omar Musa, Maxine Beneba Clarke, Tony Birch, Jac Semmler and more soon to be announced.
Literature Alive: Schools Program
Mountain Writers’ Festival is bringing some of the greatest storytelling talent around to town to engage with school students.
Opening Night Gala: Wilder
Hear original reflections and performances from a lineup of exceptional festival guests including Bob Brown, Debra Dank, Omar Musa, Maxine Beneba Clarke, Andy Jackson and a special musical performance from cellist Mariel Roberts Musa, and enjoy a glass of local wine with our popup bar. Hosted by Jacinta Parsons.
In Conversation: Fierceland
In Conversation: Fierceland
The story of a family haunted by the ghosts of colonialism, the ghosts of family, the ghosts of language, and the ghosts of the forest itself. Winner of the 2026 Miles Franklin Award, Fierceland is a trailblazing journey across the globe that weaves the past and the present into a powerful family saga that plays out at a mythical scale.
(re)Writing History
History can be moving, intimate and unexpected - particularly when narratives new to us emerge from its pages. Writer and historian Tom Griffiths and award-winning, bestselling author Mirandi Riwoe have both drawn from the true stories of two little-known and deeply compelling historical figures in their latest books. Uncover the histories of 1850s Chinese bushranger Ah Yang and Alice Duncan-Kemp, who grew up on Mithaka Country on a remote cattle station in Queensland early last century, and to hear more about the process of writing history.
With Tom Griffiths and Mirandi Riwoe
Poetic Disobedience
Poetry is having somewhat of a renaissance. Could this be to do with the medium’s ability to hold complexity, to compress time and space and distil meaning? Hear from a lineup of exceptional contemporary poets about the kind of poetics we need for these times.
With Andy Jackson, Maxine Beneba Clarke, Ender Başkan, Evelyn Araluen, PiO hosted by Lucy Van
In Conversation: Hate You to Love You
Spanning Sydney, Dublin, Edinburgh and London, Hate You to Love You is a moving love story about nostalgia and yearning for what once was, and what it means to lose yourself in order to find yourself. Hear the author, writer and bookseller Josh Hortinela in conversation with author and journalist Patrick Lenton about Josh's heartwarming debut queer romance.
Salon: Dress Your Age
Who says getting older means pastels and a muted palette? Step into an inspiring salon event where fashion meets philosophy. Featuring co-authors of How to Dress for Old Age Peta Murray and David Carlin with host and author of A Wisdom of Age and A Question of Age Jacinta Parsons talking about ageing fabulously. Dress in your Saturday best and get a photo to take home, and enjoy a cuppa from local legend The Cottage Herbalist.
Featuring fabulous costumier Rose Chong, Peta Murray and David Carlin with Jacinta Parsons as host.
In Conversation: The Knowledge
Catastrophic wildfires have overwhelmed countries around the world from Australia, Canada and the United States to Greece and Brazil. Despite our growing climate crisis, changes to Western environmental approaches have been scant and many land management practices continue to destroy the land. It's time for a 'new' way of thinking. The solutions lie in the cultures of First Peoples, if only we're willing to listen.
With Victor Steffensen
Future History
What if the knowledge we need for the future comes from ancestral wisdom? From catastrophic wildfires and ecological destruction, to the ways in which language reclamation can connect more-than-ancient knowledge of Country to the present
The Story of Souls
Panel: The Story of Souls
History is happening right now - it’s alive and all around us, and it rarely fits into a linear narrative. Hear from two writers who rewrote what a memoir can be, weaving together stories of people, place and finding home in their remarkable, award-winning works of narrative non-fiction.
In Conversation: Henry Goes Bush
The price of genius is one hell of a hangover.
Wayne Marshall reimagines Henry Lawson’s 1892 trip to Bourke as a surrealist action movie where Lawson must outrun his own myth and a gunslinger known as The Rider, aka Banjo - a poet significantly better at being a legend than Henry is.
A Short History of Longans
Mirandi Riwoe’s latest novel has been described by Shankari Chandran as, “‘a profoundly tender, intricately crafted novel about ancestry, longing and the fragile threads that bind one life to another.” A dazzling novel spanning centuries and generations, A Short History of Longans unravels the secrets and memories of one Irish-Chinese family to explore what it means to belong – to place, to ancestors, to ourselves.
Hosted by Michelle Scott Tucker.
Tickets: Available with a Saturday or Full Weekend Pass (including Early Bird Pass)
The Next Big Thing: Regional
Want to meet tomorrow’s literary stars today? Let us introduce you.
For the first time, The Wheeler Centre’s celebrated event series The Next Big Thing goes regional! This is the place to be if you want to hear great emerging writers read from new and adventurous work.
Enjoy a delicious drink while sampling writing from tomorrow's best and brightest literary stars, and stick around after the performances to connect with other regional writers.
With Lulu Houdini, Joshua Hortinela, Dani Netherclift, Ryan Davies, Amaara Raheem and Wayne Marshall, hosted by The Wheeler Centre’s own Pranati Narayan Visweswaran
Presented in partnership with The Wheeler Centre
Tickets: Free, bookings encouraged
The Village Square
The Village Square is a show that combines live music performance and storytelling. Set in an imagined town some years ago (as all good fairy tales are), The Village Square presents narratives of love and loss, misfortune and mirth, the graceful and grotesque.
In Conversation: Defiance
For half a century, Bob Brown has been standing up to the powerful interests who would put profit before planet. In his newest book, Defiance, he draws on this experience to inspire a new generation of individual and collective action.
Bob Brown in conversation with Sophie Cunningham
Workshop: Yesterday Island with Sam Voutas
Stuck in a narrative loop? Join award-winning filmmaker Sam Voutas to explore how unconventional story structures can energize your writing.
Notes on (un)Belonging
From displacement to distrust and a pervading sense of doom - there is much in our current era to make sense of. Art has long been a frame through which we can refract the self and the world in our search for meaning.
Tracing the thought of many artists, philosophers and thinkers before them, join three writers scratching at the surface of the self and finding luminous answers to the question of how we should live.
With Cher Tan, Neha Kale and Antonia Pont hosted by Ilka Tampke
Tickets: Available with a Sunday or Full Weekend Pass (including Early Bird Pass)
The Whole Picture
From graphic novels to picture books, telling a story through words and visual art is quite an adventure. If you’ve ever been curious about the process of pulling together your own graphic narrative, come along to hear from Trace Balla, Simon Howe and Jasper Peach with host Jaclyn Crupi, followed my some acitivities. Suitable for all ages (including grown ups!)
ABC Big Ideas: Entanglement with Debra Dank
Dr Debra Dank is a Gudanji/Wakaja woman, an educator and academic, and one of the most brilliant minds and writers working on our continent today. She has spent 40 years working in education, in urban and remote areas across much of Australia, and completed her PhD in Narrative Theory and Semiotics. She is interested in multiform narrative and its practice in Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities and the role semiotics plays in that.
Her remarkable works include Terraglossia, Ankami and We Come With This Place - which won an unprecedented four NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Debra is deeply concerned about and works with her family to raise awareness and support for the environment and water security, especially as her Country and her homelands community on the Beetaloo Basin, is being impacted by hydraulic fracking.
Hear her in conversation with multi-award winning ABC journalist, radio presenter, podcaster and documentary maker - and host of ABC's popular Big Ideas program and podcast Natasha Mitchell.
Please note this session will be recorded live for broadcast.
Tickets: Available with a Sunday or Full Weekend Pass (including Early Bird Pass)
Workshop: Flower Power
A workshop with plant advocate Jac Semmler that will change the way you think about garden design. Jac’s philosophy for garden design is geared towards year-round wonder: a garden with layers of heroic and supportive plants and flowers; with textures and patterns; with resilience and delight - no matter the season or climate.
Panel: Speculative Visions
Grace Chan’s Every Version of You depicts a world where most people spend their time in a digital utopia to escape reality - an immersive, consumerist virtual reality called Gaia.
Rhett Davis’ Arborescence shows that standing still can be an act of defiance as cities decay and the world becomes greener in Arborescence. A book about trees, people, people who think they are trees, trees that might be people, and robots that decide they are people.
Johanna Bell’s Department of the Vanishing is set in a time of mass extinction, blending documentary poetry, archival image, and narrative verse to explore the vital questions: Can we live in a world without birdsong, and is it possible to create a new opus with the fragments left over?
In all of these imagined worlds, there is truth and a fierce love for the world. Hear these three exceptional writers in conversation about their work and the world that informed its creation.
Planting Joy
From plant practitioners practicing abundance, expect a combination of practical tips around how to grow productively, sustainably and to foster beauty and play in your garden - no matter the space. Hear from plant practitioner, director of the award-winning Super Bloom and author of Flower Power Jac Semmler, landscape architect, urban designer and author of The Productive Garden Companion Natasha Morgan, and herbalist, gardener, award-winning tea blender, author of The Medicinal Garden and the passionate voice behind The Cottage Herbalist Caroline Parker in conversation with gardener, garden educator, editor, bookseller and author of Planting for Native Birds, Bees and Butterflies Jaclyn Crupi.
Tickets: Available with a Sunday or Full Weekend Pass (including Early Bird).
Graphic Narratives
Featuring some of the most exciting graphic storytellers - part performance, part discussion of the art form and their latest works.
With Rachel Ang, Mike Greaney hosted by Eloise Grills
Wildlands
Grief, anxiety and rage are all emotions we often turn towards the natural world to find a salve for. In these three very different works, Ilka Tampke, Sarah Walker and Rose Michael are all tilting at questions of how we might hold ourselves, and the future generations that rely on us, in a world ravaged by climate change.
Hosted by Beth Atkinson-Quinton
Tickets: Available with a Sunday or Full Weekend Pass (including Early Bird Pass)
Bookclub: Books, Bakes and Brews
A cosy afternoons celebrating nature themed books, botanical bakes & herbal brews with author of The Medicinal Garden and award-winning tea maker as The Cottage Herbalist, Caroline Parker.
In a world that's increasingly digital, it feels like a timely pursuit to come together and celebrate the real, page turning, dog eared books on our shelves. Wander through plant-based recommendations across horticulture and herbal medicine: secret gardens, faraway trees, mycelial superhighways, clever crop rotations, backyard makeovers, physic gardens, compost tales, and love notes whispered through leaves.
Come along to share your favourite nature themed fiction, non-fiction, poem or screen media - anything that's ever made you want to press pause on the daily grind, get your hands into the soil, sniff a gum leaf or head outside to count the birds in your backyard. Enjoy a botanical bake and brew, grown and gathered from Caroline’s garden. You'll head home with a collated booklist of our reads, recipes, a tea blend, and a few new plant loving friends.
With Caroline Parker
Tickets: $30
In Conversation: ma-Li, Lulu Houdini
ma-li is the luminous debut poetry collection from Lulu Houdini - a sensual, lyrical vessel carrying the intimate stories and Gamilaraay language of the Blak matriarch in motion.
Closing Night: Ecotone
An ecotone is the transitional space between two plant communities, where these meet and integrate - such as an estuary, lagoon or the meeting point of grassland and forest. From a gradual blending of plant communities, to sharp boundary lines - an Ecotone is a space where ecologies are in tension.
Similarly, we might think of music and language as being in this kind of counterpoint, and productive tension. Closing the festival weekend, enjoy an evening of music and storytelling from a range of consummate performers including Ilka Tampke, Rhett Davis and Johanna Bell with music by Lotus Threads. Hosted by Jaye Kranz
Tickets: Available with a Sunday or Full Weekend Pass (including Early Bird).
Individual tickets will also be released for this event in coming weeks.
Program Launch: Sustenance
What sustains you? Stories contain worlds, and can be friends, teachers, confidants - and necessary sustenance.
Mountain Writers Festival returns to Wurundjeri Country (Macedon) from 13-15 November with the enduring theme of ‘Nature. Place. Story’. Join us to celebrate the 2026 program launch with special performances from local festival guests.
Featuring readings and performances from Ilka Tampke, Andy Jackson and music and performance by Robbie Melville.
Early Bird Festival Passes
An early bird pass will get you access to the full festival weekend, including the Opening Night Gala and the weekend talks program, with more than 20 curated sessions featuring some of Australia’s best-loved and most engaging writers, thinkers and artists. Early bird passes save you 15% on the full festival experience, and weekend passholders also receive a 10% discount to individually ticketed feature events and workshops.