Addi Road Writers' Festival 2026
Schedule
Sat May 16 2026 at 01:00 am to 07:00 am
UTC+10:00Location
142 Addison Road, Marrickville, NSW, Australia, New South Wales 2204 | Marrickville, NS
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Addi Road Writers' Festival 2026Saturday 16 May, 11am to 6pm
Theme: “Truth Beauty”
Tickets: $50
Early Bird $40 (limited release);
Student/Unemployed/Others $20
Addi Road Writers Festival 2026 explores the theme 'Truth Beauty' in all its promise and challenges.
The event features...
= ten panels and talks across three venues
= an art exhibition in our gallery
= a series of live music and spoken word performances that we refer to as 'hotspots'
= a slice of theatre
= a live storytelling event narrated in comic book form using screen projections
At ARWF2026 words come to you alive, deep and different, electric and exploring all of the day. Come join us.
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All profits go to Addi Road's food relief programs and community work.
Addi Road is a community organisation engaged with humanitarian and human rights work across a spectrum of activities from food relief to arts and culture events like this festival. Thanks for any support you can give and please let your friends know about this year's Festival by sharing the news.
Our developing program for Addi Road Writers' Festival 2026 – with panel details and participants – is available below. Even more to come so please return here and scroll down for updates! Or check out our listing at Humanitix for more colour and information... https://events.humanitix.com/addi-road-writers-festival-2026
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LOCATION
Addi Road Community Centre, 142 Addison Rd Marrickville
The festival takes place across our Gumbramorra Hall, StirrUp Gallery and Greek Theatre
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Tickets provide open access to ALL events on the day pending hall, gallery, and theatre capacity for each panel.
Food and coffee available with an open green area for relaxing; family and pet-friendly outside on the green between our venues where talks and performances take place all day.
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2026 PROGRAM
First 7 panels | Full program coming soon...
1. Afterlife Animals | Art, Spirit and Loss
The relationship between art and grief has a long and complex history. How do we communicate our feelings of loss? Can we make it into something meaningful, perhaps even uplifting or spiritual in some way? Join us as three storytellers explore the ways that poetry, photography and music have opened up communications with the visible and invisible worlds around them and what this means to their creative process today.
Judith Nangala Crispin: acclaimed poet, visual artist, motorcyclist and volunteer firefighter
Vaughn Upward Garcia: Peruvian-Australian poet
Helen Franzmann: Australian songwriter, singer and musician
Moderator: Sarah Runcie former CEO of the Brisbane Writers Festival
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Are the Boys Alright? | Men’s Interior Life in Books Today
When the novel Flesh won the 2025 Booker Prize it ignited conversations about ‘the strange return of masculine interiority’ to literary publishing. But what does such rarified analysis really mean when a book might just be a one-off phenomenon? What does it mean locally? Are men/boys reading? Are their lives anywhere in the pages of our novels? What are the limits on how we represent men’s experiences in the present publishing moment with all its censoriousness and moralising can’t? Is the disengagement with fiction by male readers a matter of absence, unable to see their lives represented in ways that are believable and complex and true?
Dr George Haddad: award-winning writer, artist and academic
Jet Williams: writer and multidisciplinary practice
Moderator and participant: Luke Carman award-winning writer
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Attacking Anxiety | Writing Past Masks of ‘Normality’
Anxiety can be crippling, maddening, sad and failure-inducing. It can also be crazy, fun and beautiful at times. Most people suffer at some point from this highly prevalent mental condition. For a smaller number of us, anxiety rarely goes away. It challenges our mental stability, our ability to feel happy, and sometimes even our very existence. Many anxiety sufferers spend years covering up their condition from friends, employers and loved ones, leading to what can be a tortured double life. There is also an undeniable beauty to anxiety arising from the deep understanding of vulnerability that it brings. Knowing and accepting vulnerability is key to understanding our own humanity and that of others. But in the fast, harsh world of strangers and disconnection the masking anxious people do to avoid judgement is intense. There is constant pressure to appear competent, ‘normal’, the opposite to unhinged. Opening up about anxiety can enable connection, or reconnection, with others. It can help us believe we’re all in this together – in a world that seems bent on tearing us apart. This discussion with two anxious writers invites you all to bring your anxious selves along and take part in a candid, provocative, and, we hope, healing session.
Dr Sonya Voumard: nonfiction writer and former political journalist
Kim Kelly: novelist
Moderator: Dr Michelle Hamadache university Creative Writing teacher
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South to South | Latin American Literature Seen From Here
Since the Boom of the 1960s, Latin American literature has been a stimulating influence on English language writing. But things have changed since the heyday of Gabriel García Márquez. How? Who are the new leading figures? What new currents have emerged? How does the international book trade filter our access to what is written south of the Río Grande? What does contemporary Latin American literature have to offer readers and writers in Australia, specifically? What alternatives to straightforward realism does it propose? Why are short stories a major genre there but a minor one here? What exactly is a crónica? Where can you find this stuff? Join writer and former Parramatta Laureate in Literature Yumna Kassab, Uruguayan-Australian writer and translator Rosario Lázaro Igoa, and translator Chris Andrews to explore the diverse and dynamic world of new Latin American writing.
Yumna Kassab: novelist; author The House of Youssef, Australiana, The Lovers, Politica, The Theory of Everything and Goodbye, My Love
Rosario Lázaro Igoa: writer, literary translator, translation studies scholar; her short story collection Cráteres artificiales (2021) won the National Literature Prize in Uruguay
Moderator and participant Chris Andrews: poet and essayist; winner of the Valle-Inclán Prize and the French-American Foundation Translation Prize for his translations
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Mind Net | Imagining the Future
Where are we headed? If the present era is any indication, nowhere good. But the future is not just a matter of fears and premonitions, it is imagined and created concurrent with technology. How do novels, art and music answer this? What are the links between AI, online life and creative possibilities? Is there cause for optimism as we evolve with powerful new machines to meet our ecological challenges? Or are we being remade in an algorithmic reflection, turned into intellectually and spiritually degraded bio-bots farmed into market tribes to serve the interests of the billionaire tech-bros who are meanwhile reaching for their trans-human immortality. Can telling stories save us from such futureshock scenarios and totalitarian implications? Or are we evolving in ways that can’t be stopped, caught in a machine we can’t turn off?
Professor Jon Cattapan: arts practice spanning drawing, painting, and installation; exploring systems of control, mapping, surveillance, and the fragile intersection between the personal and the political
Ann Dombrowski: debut novel, After the Great Storm, is set fifty years in the future in Sydney
Chris Danta: professor of literature in the School of Cybernetics at Australian National University; his research operates at intersection of literary theory, philosophy, science and theology
Moderator Mark Mordue: journalist, author and poet worried about tomorrow's world
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Crime Scene Australia | Dossier #1 : Focus on Philip McLaren
Crime Scene Australia is a two-part session. We open with a focus on the life and writing of Philip McLaren. McLaren was born in the family home at Redfern, NSW, one of seven children. He's a Kamilaroi man. Both his parents are Kamilaroi from Coonabarabran in the Warrumbungle Mountain region of NSW. As far back as he can remember he has always been an artist and a storyteller. He is the winner of the David Unaipon Award for his debut novel in 1993, Sweet Water – Stolen Land (‘the historical settlement of Australia was not a peaceful thing”). His second novel Scream Black Murder was shortlisted for a Ned Kelly Crime Writers’ Award in 1995: “I chose to write crime fiction because it is a popular genre. I wanted my indigenous characters to portray real blackfella life in Australia, and to address the fact that indigenous murders were not being investigated properly… they were filed at the back of the bottom drawer.” McLaren has continued working in the crime writing genre, exploring everything from hardboiled and mystery to police procedurals and the legal thriller.
Please join us for an in-depth conversation with Philip McLaren about crime writing, life, politics, identity and art. This special session will be moderated by Sam Elliott, whose debut crime book Haze has just been published. Sam is also host of much-loved literary podcast, The Write Way.
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Performance Art
Addi Road Writers’ Festival incorporates the art of performance into its storytelling and writerly reflections. We try to make space for a living and breathing artistry that is coming from the fringes or operating outside of conventions, approaches that involve hybrid forms and new-old ways. Our program this year previews a few groups doing very special things in Sydney today...
Read to Me | Live Visual Storytelling
A live visual storytelling event, ‘Read to Me’ provides a platform for cartoonists, graphic novelists and other kinds of artists and creatives to share their stories and investigate performative aspects of their work. The combination of live storytelling with the storytellers’ own art and images is immersive and captivating in a totally unique way, layered with pathos and humour that emerges in the mingling of voice and image.
Fionn McCabe: cartoonist, printmaker and educator
Evie Hilliar: jack-of-all-trades artist
Gabriel Clark: visual communication design practitioner and academic
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Crossing the Line | A Journey in Theatre and Poetry Between Kabul, Tehran and Sydney's Merrylands
Dorr-e Dari Artistic Group is a joyful collective of young creators from Afghanistan who bring stories to life through theatre, poetry, music, and thoughtful conversations. Blending Dari and English, tradition and innovation, their work invites people into shared spaces of art, culture, and connection in this hybrid performance and panel discussion.
Kobra Sayyadi: Hazara-Afghan theatre-maker, writer, and interdisciplinary artist blending theatre, poetry, film, and audio. Her work explores feeling, belonging, and the spaces in between.
Zeynab Noori: Afghan Hazara actor, born and raised in Iran, whose cross-cultural upbringing informs her artistic voice and perspective.
Jawad: runs a plastering business, providing his services on construction sites all over Sydney. He was a member of ensemble PYT Fairfield for three years and made his debut as a performer at Griffin Theatre in the premiere production of PYT’s Tribunal.
Mahdi Mohammadi: trained as a theatre director at Kabul University, where he co-founded Papyrus Theatre. Under his leadership, the company was awarded First Prize at the Afghan National Theatre Festival and toured internationally to India and Sweden.
Moderator Sheila Ngoc Pham: writer, editor, producer, curator and researcher. Sheila previously co-directed the Addi Road Writers' Festival (2021-2023), and her other curation work includes an exhibition of Đông Hồ paintings (2019) for the State Library of NSW, and most recently, MÌNH (2023) for Fairfield City Museum and Gallery. She is the 2025 Imago Fellow at the State Library of NSW.
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Hotspots
Every year Addi Road Writers’ Festival offers ten-minute ‘hotspots’ to musicians, spoken word artists, animators, speakers and performers. It’s another way of expanding what we think of as writing and storytelling. It also energises the festival beyond talks and panels, making way for intense, concise and inspiring showcases that seize the day and change its rhythm. Here are just a few of our Hotspots for ARWF2026 with more to be announced soon...
Music / AJ Stanton is a singer-songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist from Sydney who blends blues, jazz, folk, and indie rock. Being a poet at heart, AJ has been described as “mature with a grain of madness”, credit due to her unapologetically quirky and honest songwriting and lyricism. AJ has performed as both a solo artist and with her band at various venues and events across Sydney including King Street Crawl, Lazybones, Ferragosto Festival, the Red Rattler and Summer Hill Festival.
Spoken Word / Vaughn Upward Garcia is a Peruvian-Australian poet from Queanbeyan, New South Wales. His work explores classism, mortality, diaspora, and the liminal spaces between the living and the dead, blending lyric intensity with narrative depth. In 2023, Vaughn won the prestigious Bankstown Poetry Slam ‘Grand Slam’ marking him as a distinctive voice within Australia’s contemporary spoken word and literary poetry scenes. In 2024, he published his debut collection, Poems from the Afterlife, followed by a national book launch tour across Australia. In 2025, Vaughn expanded his international presence, performing at Stories on Sunset Boulevard and North Figueroa Bookshop in Los Angeles. His practice bridges page and stage, drawing on oral tradition, personal history, and cultural inheritance to create work that is both intimate and expansive.
Music / Helen Franzmann is an Australian songwriter, singer and musician. One of six children raised on a Queensland farm, she played piano and sang from an early age. Franzmann sang classically until her early twenties, moving to London where exposure to alternative music and touring acts like the American post-rock band Low changed her direction. She was awarded the Grant McLennan Memorial Fellowship for song writing in 2009 which took her to Berlin. Franzmann has since released three acclaimed solo albums under the moniker McKisko: Glorio (2009), Eximo (2014) and Southerly (2019). In 2020, she formed Mess Esque with Dirty Three legend Mick Turner on guitar. They released their first album Dream#12 in 2020. It was followed by a self-titled second album in 2021 just after Covid lockdowns, blending advanced and lo-fi technology to assist their long-distance collaboration. Their 2025 third album, Jay Marie, Comfort Me, was deeply affected by the death of Franzmann’s sister and notes made from a dream diary at the time. Helen Franzmann will perform a short solo set.
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Where is it happening?
142 Addison Road, Marrickville, NSW, Australia, New South Wales 2204Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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