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It has been a turbulent time for writers’ festivals over the past few years.
In South Australia, the controversy with the Adelaide Writers’ Week boycotts and eventual cancellation are well documented. In Bendigo last year, dozens of authors quit the writers’ festival, leading to the cancellation of the opening night gala.
Meanwhile, in WA, it was announced in 2024 that the Perth Writers Weekend was to move to a standalone event to be held in spring 2026, having previously been part of the Perth Festival.
It is against this cultural backdrop that another festival returns to Perth’s literary scene this year, with its focus remaining firmly on the fiction aisles.
Perth’s Festival of Fiction has announced its line-up for 2026, with names on the billing including beloved children’s author Mem Fox, award-winning writer Christos Tsiolkas, alongside the likes of Sally Hepworth and Kate Morton.
Festival director Tess Woods said the appeal of festivals was clear – they offered a reprieve, an ability to get out and engage with those who write the books we love, or even loathe.
“We’re getting more and more divisive, and we’re seeing that you know across social media and in politics,” she said.
“And there’s very little nuance left now on both sides of the spectrum.
“So festivals are an opportunity for us to see each other face-to-face, to get away from our keyboards, and to see that, you know, maybe an author whose political opinion you don’t agree with, you see them on stage and you’re like, ‘You know this is a human, this is a person with feelings, who laughs and who has a family’.”
The benefit extends beyond the experience of readers. Writers, Woods notes, spend a lot of time by themselves, and festivals are a good way to meet others and expand their networks.
For Woods, who will finish up as director after this year’s festival, the prioritising of fiction was both a much-needed point of difference and a drawcard.
“I felt that genre fiction writers were often excluded from the more traditional mainstream literary festivals,” she said.
“They throw them a bone. You would have, your two or three crime writers, or your two or three, general fiction writers, and then they were mostly dominated by literary fiction, poets, non-fiction, journalists, memoir [writers].
“And so I felt that the books that you’re seeing in Big W and Dymocks that are making up that top 10, that are keeping the publishing industry alive, that your average punter is going out to buy – your crime and your romance and fantasy – they just weren’t represented enough at the big literary festivals.”
The festival has two Miles Franklin award-winners on the billing – Siang Lu and Sofie Laguna – as well as Toni Jordan, who was longlisted for the prestigious award.
And Fox, the author of Australian children’s classics such as Possum Magic, Time for Bed, and Where is the Green Sheep will be holding workshops on something she is no doubt an expert in – “how to find the right words”.
While major challenges revolving around freedom of speech and politics made headlines, Woods said the ever-present threat to writers’ festivals was funding.
“We have run this festival three years now with a committee of 20 volunteers, unpaid, and it’s just been a labor of love,” she said.
“We’re very lucky that the City of Joondalup have generously sponsored us, so we’ve got that Joondalup funding, but it’s just not enough to make it keep going.
“For the last two years, we haven’t had a Perth Writers Festival. I think we’re the only state in Australia after Adelaide had theirs canceled that hasn’t got one.”
The Festival of Fiction will return to Edith Cowan University’s Joondalup campus on November 21-22.
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