Category: Author Spotlight

Canberra Writers Festival has held its 10th anniversary with another record-breaking festival. More than 10,300+ tickets were snapped up over the main festival by book lovers from across the Canberra region and interstate, making a total of 13,000 tickets sold so far this year with more events to come. 

More than 200 authors were showcased across 110 events with many events sold out, and strong audiences for sessions across the program. 

Canberra Writers Festival Artistic Director Andra Putnis said the response across the community demonstrated continued demand for books and ideas. 

“To follow last year’s record-breaking festival with further growth is an extraordinary way to celebrate our tenth anniversary,” Ms Putnis said. 

“We heard people travelled from as far as Tasmania and Western Australia to listen to authors on our program. It’s a wonderful endorsement of the festival as a national event, and of Canberra as a place where books and ideas matter.” 

She also said that given the festival is a small not-for-profit organisation, the community support and strong partnerships that sit at the heart of the festival are vital. 

“Arts and cultural festivals and organisations including writing, music and theatre are in a difficult funding and ticket sales environment and continued support from across government, business and community really matters.” 

Best-selling books: The festival’s top 10 bestselling books spanned fiction, memoir, politics, history and children’s adventures showing the broad range of ages, genres and tastes of those who attended the festival.

1. The German Ward – Pip Williams 

2. She Who Tastes, Knows: A memoir of food, exile and awakening – Durkhanai Ayubi 

3. On Friendship – Andrew O’Hagan 

4. Tell Me Something True – Michael Robotham 

5. You and Me and the Peanut Butter Beast – Andy Griffiths, illustrated by Bill Hope 

6. Full Circle – Chris Hammer 

7. Three Shocks: Who We Are Becoming in the 21st Century – George Megalogenis 

8. Stuff the British Stole – Marc Fennell 

9. Before It Was Called Science – Corey Tutt, illustrated by Jaelyn Biumaiwai 10. Screw Nice – Amy Remeikis 

Schools program-This year the festival tripled its schools program and delivered a primary and two secondary schools days for Canberra students at the National Library of Australia. Kids and young adult readers were also at the heart of the weekend program with free story-times and visiting superstars including Amie Kaufman, R.A Spratt, Deadly Science’s Corey Tutt OAM and Andy Griffiths and Bill Hope designed to get kids reading and thinking creatively. 

Canberra Writers Festival CEO Travis Green thanked the hundreds of volunteers, artists and partners who brought the festival to life. 

“We are incredibly grateful to our major supporters, the ACT Government, Creative Australia and Icon Water, and to the many venues, cultural, community, media and bookselling partners who make this celebration possible.” 

This year the festival was delighted to welcome new partners including the National Archives of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, University of Canberra, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, The Canberra Centre, Beyond Bank Australia and Yellow Edge. For a full list of valued festival partners please see our website here.

MEDIA RELEASE 

October, 2026 

Upcoming events 

The festival continues to celebrate authors across the year with its out of season events. Mark your calendar for the upcoming events below: 

– Ariarne Titmus: Relentless | Friday 13 November at Verity Lane Market – Building Bad: The Explosive Inside Story of the CFMEU | Thursday 19 November at The Street Theatre 

– GINSIGHTS: Antoun Issa at Olims Bistro | Friday 20 November at Mercure Hotel – Emily St John Mandel: Exit Party | Wednesday 25 November at the National Library of Australia 

– Anne Summers: Witness Thursday 3 December 2026 at National Library of Australia 

ENDS 

Media contact: 

Kristen Zotti at Zotts & Co PR | 0413 057 504 | kristen@kristenzottipr.com

… help little readers — and a big writers’ festival — grow!

Did you know that a three-year-old who can name their favourite book is more likely to be a stronger and more confident reader at the age of seven?

It’s a simple thing, but it tells us something very important about reading: literacy does not begin when a child starts school. It begins much earlier — in the lap of a parent, grandparent or other treasured person, in playgroups, in library storytimes — and in the repeated readings of a much-loved story.

Human speech can be surprisingly chaotic. Learning to speak requires an extraordinary amount of physical coordination involving the lips, tongue and throat. It also requires a huge investment of time — being spoken to, hearing language and practising it — to build the neural pathways that eventually make speaking automatic. When a child joins you in reading a beloved picture book, all that listening and mimicking a phrase dozens of — let’s face it, hundreds of — times, whether it’s about a hungry caterpillar, a green sheep or a fleet of fire trucks, is a workout for those speech muscles.

We have been learning to speak since we first became human. Reading, however, is only around 5,500 years old. When you read picture books, you are helping develop both speech and literacy. Books that use rhythm, repetition and rhyme are particularly powerful for young children because they help little ears work out where one word ends and another begins.

For a young child, repetition is not boring. It’s the practice that gives the child’s brain a break from having to work out what happens next. This lets them concentrate on saying the words themselves — and lets their brain embrace a new splishy-sploshy word, revel in it and learn it, rather than feel overwhelmed by having to remember so many new things at once. Think about the little person who gets stuck telling you a story. They often return to the part the know best before attempting the bit they are still figuring out how to explain. That familiar phrase gives them the confidence to make the leap into something new. The same thing happens when children learn to read. Those thousands of hours — spent listening to stories, joining in with repeated phrases and sounding out words alongside you — give children an important message: I can do this!

That’s the extraordinary gift you give a child when you read that dog-eared book about a day in the life of a wombat for the thousandth time!

And that is why this year’s Canberra Writers Festival is getting a little more childish — and delightedly, and proudly, so.

The Kids and YA program begins with the Woden Valley Youth Choir singing the Festival into life on the steps of the National Library, followed by ACT Playgroups exploring how to introduce books and bookish play to even the wiggliest of babies and toddlers.

From there, young readers can dive into free storytimes with some of Canberra’s fabulous picture-book creators, meet much-loved Australian authors and storytellers including R.A. Spratt, Amie Kaufman, Jack Heath, Sue Whiting, Morris Gleitzman and Andy Griffiths, explore comics and manga, and discover the books that inspired some of Australia’s own writers and illustrators.

Books can make the world feel enormous — filled with people, places and possibilities we have never encountered — while also making it feel wonderfully small, when a parent and child sit together and turn the same familiar pages.

This year, the very big — it’s turning 10, don’t you know! — Canberra Writers Festival is talking about politics, romance, AI and all the other serious business of being a grown-up reader. But it is also singing and playing and getting a little mud on its toes. And don’t forget, the big readers were once little readers, grown up by the books they read.

And that’s something worth celebrating.

So this year, come along and get a little mud on your toes with us. Bring the little readers in your life. Bring your curiosity. And, of course, bring your favourite book — and come prepared to meet some new ones, too!

Rhiân Williams is a Canberra picture book author and passionate advocate for books, reading and children’s literature. Her book ‘Emergency! Emergency! Vehicles to the Rescue’ was selected by Guardian Australia readers as one of the nation’s Top 50 Children’s Picture Books. Her most recent book, ‘One Little Dung Beetle’, was a 2025 CBCA Honour Book. Rhiân co-hosts Book Corner every Friday on ABC Canberra Afternoons with Alice Matthews and, together, they host a monthly Book Club with the National Film and Sound Archive. In 2026, she is inaugural Guest Creative Director of the Kids & YA Program at the Canberra Writers Festival.