About Writers' Week
“Quite simply, the model for what a book festival should be. Thoughtfully curated, casual, friendly, and best of all: free.”
Adelaide Writers’ Week is Australia’s largest free literary festival, offering both writers and readers a unique opportunity to spend time sharing ideas and literary explorations in a garden setting in Adelaide’s city centre. Each carefully selected program brings the world's most celebrated established and emerging writers together for a week that delights, surprises and enlightens audiences. Over the years, Adelaide Writers’ Week has seen some of the world’s greatest writers and thinkers in conversation about literature, politics, poetry, current events, biography, the short story and much, much more.
Adelaide Writers’ Week includes six days of free panel sessions that are presented live in the gardens, and made available online via podcast. The program also features a series of ticketed special events throughout the year, alongside other popular free program elements such as Young Readers' Day and Breakfast with Papers.
The Republic of Reading
Curating a celebration of reading and writing has been my privilege since 2023. I am often asked how the theme of AWW is established. In truth, creating a theme that captures the zeitgeist and represents a hugely diverse range of writers, subject matter and genres is an imprecise science. One ends up groping for generalities, for ideas so broad as to suit all comers.
The advent of AI and a plethora of filters now customise and limit our access to views that only accord with our own. Yet while we live with the illusion that we have agency, that we are the authors of our own stories, how much agency do we really have as hapless citizens? At a time when audiences are more divided than ever, what we can do, collectively and individually, is look to experts, to those who think deeply. Their creative imaginations can alert us to new ways of contemplating ourselves, our relationships and the world we inhabit.
So many books are published in Australia every year that the choices for AWW are exciting and bewildering in equal measure. We endeavour to offer you, our always generous, open-minded and open-hearted audience, the opportunity to encounter much-loved literary luminaries. But the books they write take time – it can be years between masterpieces. However, one of the many joys of a free festival set in glorious gardens is the chance to meet new writers.
Many years ago, I went to an event with the Canadian writer Carol Shields who, much to my embarrassment, I had not read. The discussion of her then new novel The Stone Diaries was enchanting and led me straight to the book tent and the purchase of her entire back catalogue. It was a chance encounter that enriched me immeasurably. The emerging writers joining us have passed the rigorous process of persuading sceptical and selective publishers to support them. They tell us they like to come to AWW because it’s an opportunity to connect with their audiences, or indeed to find an audience – it’s a chance to talk about their work, to share their process, the challenges of the craft.
So I want to encourage you to be curious, to sample unfamiliar writers, debut novelists, experts on subjects on which you are inexpert! Listen to the writers you do not know as well as securing a hard-won seat at the sessions overflowing because Helen Garner or Rachel Perkins or Trent Dalton or David Marr are on stage. Welcome to the Republic of Reading.
- Louise Adler AM, Director
FAQs
A first look at the program is revealed alongside the full Adelaide Festival program. The final AWW program and schedule is announced approximately a month before the event.
Thank you for your interest in appearing at Writers’ Week. Invitations are issued at the discretion of the Artistic Director. Our program is curated to include recent writing from both Australian and international authors. We work with established publishing houses who connect us with authors. We recommend that you contact your publisher to make a recommendation.
Each year Adelaide Writers’ Week receives many unsolicited submissions. There are so many wonderful books published every year that we have had to make the tough decision not to accept unsolicited proposals. We are not able to respond to submissions or return materials sent for consideration.
If you need advice on getting your book published, please visit the websites of Writers SA, The Australian Society of Authors or the Australian Publishers Association.
We are unable to pass on contact details for authors and cannot pass on messages. You can contact authors through their publishers.
Writers' Week podcasts are available on most major podcast platforms - just search for "Adelaide Writers' Week" through your preferred podcast app or website and listen back to your favourite sessions!
Adelaide Festival and Adelaide Writers’ Week acknowledge the rights of individuals to hold different and divergent views. Views held by our writers are not necessarily the views of the organisation. We respect freedom of speech and the respectful exchange of ideas. We will not tolerate any behaviour that is insulting, against the law, or racist in any form, and we have a zero-tolerance policy regarding racism towards our staff, artists, audiences, and the communities we serve. We will not permit commentary during our festival that is insulting or racist.
