2025 Blue Mountains Writers’ Festival - A Path to Wonder
Sound the drums! We’re incredibly excited to announce the line-up for the 2025 Blue Mountains Writers’ Festival, one of the best literary experiences in the country, and a key feature of the Blue Mountains arts calendar.
Our 2025 theme – a path to wonder – invites audiences to engage with books and reading with an open mind and a sense of possibility. To wonder is to approach the world with curiosity, to question without agenda, to allow for beauty, space and human connection, or to explore new ways of thinking and being in the world.
Running 31 October – 2 November, the 2025 program immerses readers and writers alike in an intimate festival of ideas and creativity. Over three busy days, Australia’s sharpest minds and most expansive thinkers will offer challenging, playful and exhilarating opportunities for connection, with more than 80 authors, 50 sessions, 11 workshops and 8 special events. We look forward to welcoming some truly incredible talent to Katoomba, including Hannah Kent, Stan Grant, Kate Grenville, Craig Silvey, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Bryan Brown, Drusilla Modjeska, Charlotte McConaghy, Craig Reucassel, Sofie Laguna, Osher Günsberg, Tasma Walton, Jumaana Abdu and more.
For the first time in 2025, the Festival offers an exclusive Opening Gala event at The Carrington, with four Festival headliners - Daniel Browning, Hannah Kent, James Bradley and Maxine Beneba Clarke - sharing their response to the Festival theme, with each reading followed by a performance by celebrated opera singer and cabaret icon Ali McGregor. With backgrounds spanning fiction, poetry, journalism, climate writing, theatre, memoir and essay, we are thrilled by the creative possibilities of this event!
The Festival footprint is also expanding, with exciting new events in the Megalong Valley on 31 October and 1 November, including The Bookshelf Live with ABC Radio National’s Kate Evans who will be hosting discussions with Christos Tsiolkas, Garry Disher, Debra Oswald and Steve MinOn.
And, of course, the Festival’s popular events at Scenic World will return – offering audiences the chance to share a ride on the Skyway or Scenic Railway with some of their favourite writers, including Jennifer Wong, Beejay Silcox, Toby Schmitz, JM Field, S. Shakthidharan, Anne-Marie Te Whiu, Candice Fox, Walter Marsh and Patrick Marlborough.
For aspiring authors, workshops at the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre provide valuable opportunities to develop skills, while the children’s program provides a lively series of family-friendly events at Katoomba Library.
In 2025, the Festival is also partnering with Blue Mountains City Council to deliver workshops in four high schools across the region.
Early-bird weekend passes are now on sale.