What’s on & where, in brief
- At Hadley’s Orient Hotel: A full program of entertaining and intellectually satisfying conversations, interviews, readings and more, with famous and not so famous (but ought to be) writers from all across the books and writing landscape. Use the menu to the right to explore some of the key themes of this year’s festival, or look under ‘Presenters’ in the top menu to see who’s coming and find the sessions where they’ll be present.
- On Parliament Lawns: loads of free and fun events for kids: book readings, conversations and activities. And across the way from the children Indi authors strut their stuff and launch their labours of love into lutruwita-Tasmania’s rippling spring air – more readings, more workshops, more entertainment.
- At the Maritime Museum: a very special line-up of marine-themed events on Sunday.
Get Tickets
Tickets are on sale now. Purchase links can be found on event description pages.*
By Popular Demand – Golden and Silver Tickets are available until sold out OR Sunday the 3rd of October. Golden Tickets allow access to 10 festival sessions over the weekend, Silver Saturday and Silver Sunday tickets allow access to 5 events over a single day.
Except where otherwise indicated, regular session tickets are priced at:
$18 for TasWriters members / $25 for non-members. JOIN HERE!
Several sessions are free (indicated below), and the More-Than-Human Poetry Project and ETAWA/Hidden Stories sessions, which are sponsored, are $8.
*To purchase multiple sessions please use this link. It will take you to an external page, TryBooking. Note: You can also use the above link to see all the session details and book, if your browser is preventing display of embedded data from external sites – all session description pages should show the session times and a booking link, if you can’t see these, this is probably why.
Hobart Writers Festival 2021 Program
[DOWNLOADABLE PDF PROGRAM HERE]
Click here for a compact online program – all the session times and locations briefly summarised in order of appearance, to help you find your way and figure out how much you can fit in.
Saturday 9th October 2021
At Hadley’s Orient Hotel
*Sessions take place in three different venues at Hadley’s, therefore running times may overlap. Sessions are generally 1hr long. Follow the links for full details.
9.30 am A Picture Saves a Thousand Words – Join Joshua Santospirito, Alyssa Bermudez and Jane Naqvi as they discuss what it’s like both to create graphic novels, and work as or alongside an illustrator to make a story come to life. Hear all about the similarities and differences between various forms of visual storytelling mediums, and the writing life.
9.30 am Island of Curiosities – Environmental Children’s Literature – Children’s writers and illustrators, Coral Tulloch, Christina Booth, Anne Morgan and Nicole Gill on how living in Tasmania has influenced their books. Chaired by Fiona Levings.
10.30 am Emerging Tasmanian Aboriginal Writer Award – Participants in the Award and Hidden Stories workshops held in the lead-up, discuss their shared experiences with judges, mentors and other writers. (Sponsored event).
11.00 am Good Indian Daughter, Ruhi Lee – Interview by Mark McLeod, with Q&A.
11.00 am Postcards from an Island Dweller – a reflective and poetic journey through writing life with Terry Whitebeach.
12.00 pm Robbie Arnott and Amanda Lohrey in conversation – 2021 Miles Franklin Award Winner, and recipients of many other accolades.
12.30 pm Danielle Binks, author of The Monster of Her Age, in conversation with Briony Kidd.
12.30 pm The Good Life with Hannah Moloney– on permaculture, activism and radical hope.
1.30 pm Mythical and Magical … writing extraordinary fictional worlds – Heather Rose, Shirley Patton and Rosie Dub on the delights and risks of using the metaphysical, mythological and legendary in fiction.
2.00 pm Embracing the Biome: The More-Than-Human Poetry Project – can poetry contribute to a deeper cultural valuing of the world we are part of? A conversation and poetry reading with leading Tasmanian poets. (Sponsored event).
2.00 pm Grace Williams – Arts for social change and transformation – a presentation by humanitarian activist, Grace, on writing, art and change-making.
3.00 pm Writing out Adversity: bushfires, tree pulling and the pandemic – writing in responding to the past and overcoming adversity, with Mary Lou Stephens (Last of the Apple Blossom), and James Parker (The Van Diemen Decameron).
3.30 pm Parting The Veil, by Bethamy Nader, book launch. (Free event.)
3.30 pm Children’s Book Creators’ Networking Event. An opportunity for children’s/young adult book writers and illustrators to meet other creators and share book news.
4.30 pm A Soldier’s Quartet book launch, by Colin Baldwin, with Rosie Dubb (free event).
On Parliament Lawns, Salamanca
Free Children’s Events
Indi Writers Fringe Fest
Tasmanian independent writers present their works in a stand on Parliament Lawns. Come and discover the energy, diversity and passion of the island’s independent writers.
Sunday 10th October 2021
At the Maritime Museum of Tasmania
9.30 am The Way of the Weedy Seadragon: reading and author talk with Anne Morgan.
12.00 pm LUME, with Danielle Wood and Kate Gordon: curator Annalise Rees will introduce the LUME project, with resident writers Danielle and Kate reading from their works.
2.00 pm Dear Mama, The diary of a German POW in Hobart, Bruny Island and NSW, 1914-1915 – Book Launch: Friends of the Bruny Island Quarantine Station launching this book. (Free event.)
At Hadley’s Orient Hotel
*Sessions take place in three different venues at Hadley’s, therefore running times may overlap. Sessions are generally 1hr long. Follow the links for full details.
9.30 am Karen Brooks and Danielle Wood: the authors of The Good Wife of Bath, Mothers Grimm, and many more tales, in conversation.
10.00 am Writing the Remote: Melissa Manning (Smokehouse), Robyn Mundy (Wildlight, Cold Coast) and Mary Lou Stephens (The Last of the Apple Blossom) on writing about remote locations.
10.30 am Rebellious Facts and Comforting Fictions: Henry Reynolds, Katherine Johnson, Jeanette M. Thompson and Ian Broinowski on the dilemmas of using historical facts in fiction.
11.00 am Making the Book – Five Mile Press and Franklin Direct printers join TasWriters Director Cassandra Wunsch to present the pros and cons of different options for getting a book to market.
11.30 am Ursula Dubosarsky, Children’s Laureate: on the role of Children’s Laureate and writing for children.
12.00 pm Short Story – writing on an island theme: Launching the Forty South Short Story Anthology 2021 (the best entries from the Tasmanian Writers’ Prize 2021), with readings from the authors.
12.30 pm Tongerlongeter, a conversation : Join historians Henry Reynolds and Nicholas Clements in conversation with Rissah Vox and Wendall Graham Pitchford, discussing their new book Tonglongeter: First Nations Leader and Tasmanian War Hero.
12.30 pm Music in literature: Blues Elder Laurie Gilbert on writing about music, with music by Jaala Still and Ange Boxall.
1.30 pm The Van Diemen History Prize – reflections on the Tasmanian landscape: Stefan Petrow, Kristyn Harman, and finalists from the Van Diemen History Prize 2020-21 reflect on history and our understanding of present-day Tasmania.
2.00 pm Writing, health and advocacy: Social justice advocates Grace Williams and Deborah Thompson on writing for change-making.
2.30 pm History, Nature and Hermits: A conversation about hermits, themed around the story of Jackey Stevens, the West Coast’s ‘last hermit’, as told in a new book by Geoff Harwood, with Katherine Johnson and Pete Hay.
3.00 pm Diversity in Publishing – A conversation with two innovative writers, publishers and communicators, Grace Williams and Mark Macleod.
3.30 pm Writing Residencies – Kate Gordon, Danielle Wood, Jeanette Thompson and Annalise Rees on the benefits and challenges of writers’ residencies and how to get the best out of them, from the perspectives of recipients and hosts.
3.30 pm Writing for Young People, a presentation by Danielle Binks, Lian Tanner and Shirley Patton, hosted by TasWriters’ Arianne James.
4.30 pm Writing for a World on Edge – poetry and reflection on writing in the Anthropocene, from the More-Than-Human Poetry Project – leading Tasmanian poets. (Sponsored event).
On Parliament Lawns, Salamanca
Free Children’s Events
Indi Writers Fringe Fest
Tasmanian independent writers present their works in a stand on Parliament Lawns. Come and discover the energy, diversity and passion of the island’s independent writers.