Big skies,
Open minds
1~3 Nov 2024
80+ speakers
56 events
14 workshops
3 days
1 unmatched location
Festival Highlights
Markus Zusak
Noni Hazlehurst
Liane Moriarty
Dr Karl
Gina Chick
Yumi Stynes
Pip Williams
Tony Birch
Shankari Chandran
Chris Hammer
Nardi Simpson
Sara M Saleh
Alexis Wright
Benjamin Stevenson
…and many more
Award-winning Authors
Bright Minds and Big Ideas
Festival Tickets On Sale
While weekend passes and day passes have now sold out, we still have single tickets available for almost all of our events. You can buy individual tickets, or purchase tickets in bundles of four.
GOLD PASS INCLUDES ONE SCENIC WORLD EVENT
Scenic World Special Events
Writers in the Sky
Sail through the air at sunset in the Scenic World Skyway, accompanied by poets, authors and artists, who’ll entertain and delight you throughout your journey. Join Benjamin Stevenson for a choose-your-own-adventure crime fiction comedy, at Everyone in the Skyway Has Killed Someone. Delve deeper into poetry, community and how we mark history with Jazz Money and Charmaine Ledden-Lewis in Abundant Sunsets. Listen to three authors explore opportunity and trust, sharing personal stories of risk in Take A Chance On Me, featuring Emily Maguire, Tony Birch and Siang Lu, and hosted by festival director Maeve Marsden.
The Scenic World Skyway is wheelchair accessible.
Special Event: Friday 1 November, 5.30pm; 6.10pm and 6.50pm
Among the Trees
Take a heart-starting morning ride on the steepest railway in the world, before a meandering thirty-minute walk through the ferns and eucalypts to the Scenic World Rainforest Room. As the local birds serenade you in this open-air space, writers Viki Kramer, Dave Witty and David Lindemayer will share their stories and knowledge of the trees that tower above. Combining rigorous scientific inquiry with an artist’s capacity for awe and wonder, don’t miss this unique opportunity to look anew at the trees and environments that sustain us, and consider how we might work together to preserve their futures.
The Scenic Railway is not wheelchair accessible.
Special Event: Sunday 3 November, 7.30am - 9am
ONLY $20 WITH A FESTIVAL GOLD OR SILVER PASS
Beers and Books
Pairing bestselling books with an award-winning brew? It’s a no-brainer. Kick back for Sunday arvo beers (and a fried pickle or two) at Mountain Culture Brewery, just a stone’s throw from our festival hub. Chat with your favourite writers about knotty topics and big ideas, with more relaxed, casual vibes than your usual author talk.
Rated Australia's #1 brewery, Mountain Culture is one of the Blue Mountains’ greatest exports, and a proud Gold Event Partner of Blue Mountains Writers’ Festival.
Sex and Consent
Despite decades of progress when it comes to society’s relationship to sex, most parents still feel a bit nervous when teaching their kids about the birds and the bees. When Yumi Stynes and Dr Melissa Kang published Welcome to Sex: Your No-Silly-Questions Guide to Pleasure, Sexuality and Figuring it Out, a moral panic ensued, but this groundbreaking book went on to be a bestseller. Join them over a beer (or kombucha!) for a frank and fearless chat about guiding our kids through puberty, sex and consent. Ask questions, share stories and dispel myths with these two brilliant women.
Special Event: Sunday 3 November, 1:30 pm
News and Politics
Hop on your soapbox, beer in hand, and chat about what’s wrong with the world in this interactive session on news and politics, hosted by Rick Morton and Matilda Boseley. These award-winning journalists have dedicated their careers to exposing scandals, explaining systems, and telling stories that need to be told. If you want to know more about domestic policy, political personalities, social issues or the future of the fourth estate, join Rick and Matilda at Mountain Culture to ask the big questions and consider whether more than one answer might be true.
Special Event: Sunday 3 November, 3:00 pm
ONLY $20 WITH A FESTIVAL GOLD OR SILVER PASS
Bedtime Stories
Get ready for bed (pyjamas optional) as a collection of festival talent entertain and delight in the cosy surrounds of The Carrington, cup of hot chocolate (or whisky) in hand. Only at Blue Mountains Writers’ Festival can you book a room in the festival venue, the very place you’ve spent the day in, engaged by readings, discussions and fierce debates. Wind down and inspire the sweetest dreams at these intimate evening salons, featuring poetry, comedy, music and storytelling.
Friday Night
Who better to send us off into dreamland than Noni Hazlehurst, iconic star of stage and screen, and beloved host of Playschool for more than two decades? Join her and Festival Director Maeve Marsden, with local poet and musician Kate Fagan, known for her stunning voice and extraordinary lyrical sensibility, and award-winning author, playwright and slam poet, New Zealand’s Dominic Hoey. Final performer to be announced.
Special Event: Friday 1 November, 8pm
Satuday Night
We couldn’t resist asking Nardi Simpson to sing a few tunes (or perhaps a lullaby) from her incredible back-catalogue. For a different vibe, rapper, drummer and poet Dobby will deliver a more intimate performance than his usual shows, Yumi Stynes will read a witty and warm tale or two, and Ceridwen Dovey, author of Only the Astronauts, will send us into outer space, inspiring dreams full of weird space junk and big ideas, in this intimate salon hosted by Maeve Marsden.
Special Event: Saturday 2 November, 8pm
INCLUDED IN FESTIVAL GOLD PASS
Thank God It’s Friday
In a special festival broadcast live from The Carrington in Katoomba, join ABC Radio Sydney’s Richard Glover for all the fun and unpredictability of the infamous TGIF (Thank God It’s Friday!). Laugh alongside a star-studded line-up with all the hilarity of the infamous Wheel of Death, then settle in for a drink in the Carrington Lounge.
Special Event: Friday 1 November, 4:30pm
SPECIAL EVENT
Written in the Stars
Explore the dark skies of Dharug and Gundungurra land, away from the city lights, led by local astrophysicist Dr Dimitri Douchin. This award-winning stargazing tour will have a literary twist during the Festival, embellished with celestial readings. Commencing soon after sunset at Wentworth Falls, highlights include naked-eye astronomy, laser-guided constellation storytelling, state-of-the-art telescope viewing of the Moon, planets, star clusters and nebulae.
Special Event: Saturday 2 November
FREE KIDS EVENTS
Kids' Story & Craft Fest
Things get uncharacteristically noisy in Katoomba Library, on Saturday 2 November, as we welcome a brilliant line up of children’s authors to educate, entertain and delight, offering interactive sessions, story time, craft and creativity.
Saturday 2 November
Workshops
Memoir, poetry, illustration, and so much more . . .
This year's Festival workshop program features exceptional facilitators from all around Australia, each adept at discovering the writer — or illustrator — inside us all. Skills development workshops include memoir, poetry, crime fiction, nature writing, finding your voice, drawing, pitching, editing and lyric writing. We have two free workshops presented by Arts Law, focusing on legal issues for writers, and our popular one-on-one consultations with Varuna mentors Carol Major and Felicity Plunkett. Book now as workshops generally sell out fast.
