Addi Road Writers’ Festival 2025

Addi Road Writers' Festival 2025

Saturday 17 May 

11am to 6pm

theme: "free expression"

early bird tickets $35 (limited release)

full price $40

students and unemployed $20

event takes place inside our Gumbramorra Hall (GH) and the Greek Theatre (GT) 

tickets will provide open access to ALL events on the day pending hall and theatre capacity for each conversation or 'hot spot' performance 

food and coffee with an open green area for relaxing; family and pet friendly outside on the green between our venues

All profits go to Addi Road's food relief programs and community work

Our developing program for Addi Road Writers' Festival 2025 – with panel details, participants and bio notes – is available below. Scroll down for blow-by-blow updates as they occur. 

Overall event runs 11am to 6pm as stated. Session times on the day TBC with a complete program very soon. 

Stay with us in the meanwhile – and let your friends know about ARWF2025 by sharing the news. 

We're 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. Thanks for your patience and any support you can give ARWF2025. 

Thanks to Berkelouw Books Leichhardt for returning as our bookseller.

Thanks to 2SER-FM for being a supporter of ARWF2025.

“We mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” – Mahatma Gandhi

ADDI ROAD WRITERS' FESTIVAL 2025

panels and people

SESSION 1: 

Ocean Blues | Surfing on Words 

Can literature and art save the world? James Bradley, Adam Gibson and Sally Breen sit down to discuss a deep connection to the ocean in their lives and work.

We live on a blue planet. It offers us sustenance, wonder, joy. James Bradley and Adam Gibson join moderator and fellow panellist Sally Breen to contemplate the oceans of this planet and what they mean to us, mapping out relationships that are personal, historical, literary and ecological. In their differing engagements, Bradley, Gibson and Breen remind us what we are in danger of losing – and how much we still have. 

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James Bradley  is a writer and critic. His books include the novels Wrack, The Deep Field, The Resurrectionist, Cladeand Ghost Species, a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus, and a work of non-fiction, Deep Water: The World in the Ocean. His new novel, Landfall, is published by Hamish Hamilton.

Adam Gibson is a Sydney writer, musician, journalist, and artist whose work covers music, songs, spoken word, painting, and photography. He has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years and has released three books of poetry. Adam performs regularly with his acclaimed band The Aerial Maps, whose latest album (produced by Midnight Oil’s Jim Moginie) is called Our Sunburnt Dream. A lover of landscapes from the outback through the suburbs to the coast where he lives, Gibson writes in ways that are cinematic and deeply personal. The Sunday Telegraph has compared him to songwriters like Paul Kelly and Mick Thomas, while The Age has noted Gibson’s “vernacular widescreen Australia with no gloss, a sense of melancholy, a road well-travelled.” Peter Garrett put it another way: “Adam Gibson writes from the heart, from the street, about the place that moves him most. Ripper real words that are well worth checking out.” A life-long surfer, Gibson proudly declares he is “a 40-year member of the North Bondi Surf Club”.

Dr Sally Breen is Associate Professor in Creative Writing at Griffith University, Australia. She is the author of the grunge memoir The Casuals and the neo-noir novel Atomic City. Her short form work has been published widely with features in Griffith Review, Overland, Meanjin, Best Australian Stories, The Australian, The Age, Sydney Review of Books, Hemingway Shorts, The Guardian and Asia Literary Review. She is a regular contributor to The Conversation. Dr Breen is also Executive Director of Asia Pacific Writers and Translators (APWT) https://www.apwriters.org/. Her latest project is the Surf Writing Research Hub (SWRH), situated on the Gold Coast and part of Griffith University’s Centre for Social and Cultural Research. A dedicated home for studying the intersections between writing and the ocean, coastal landscapes, and culture, the SWRH will blend academic inquiry with creative practice, documenting how oceanic environments shape identity, artistic expression, and cultural rituals worldwide. You can find more about Sally’s work at: www.sallybreen.com.au 

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HOTSPOT 1:

The Birds

Hey! We're The Birds, a sister duo plus our dear friend Toby (suppose that makes us a trio)! If folk rock n roll/country is your jam, then look no further! Country inspired bangers; they are our signature. Campfire heart warmers; we got them too! What about a song dedicated to the baddest river of them all; yes, the Cooks River does make many a feature in our originals. So roll up roll up for folk alt country fun times with The Birds! Or, beat the crowds and check us out on bandcamp:
 https://thebirds.bandcamp.com/music 

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SESSION 2: 

Sleep, Perchance to Dream | Literature, History and the Unconscious

Dreams that arise in a community, expressing the collective traumas of what is later called ‘history’. Dreams that mark personal loss. Dreams that require another kind of language to communicate what the world can reveal to us about who and what we are. How do poets, novelists and essayists read the signs and articulate them, to themselves and for us? Mireille Juchau, Šime Knežević and Peter Boyle with Felicity Plunkett.
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Mireille Juchau’s third novel, The World Without Us, was published by Bloomsbury in Australia, UK and the US and won the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. It was shortlisted for five awards including the Stella Prize and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Her second novel, Burning In (Giramondo), was shortlisted for several awards and published in Europe. Mireille was formerly fiction editor of HEAT Magazine, has a PhD in literature and is an Honorary Affiliate, at the University of Sydney. In 2020 she won the Walkley-Pascall Prize for arts criticism, with judges noting her standout essay from The New Yorker: ‘How Dreams Change Under Authoritarianism’. Mireille continues to write on this subject and is nearing completion of her fourth novel.

Šime Knežević is a poet and playwright from Sydney with Croatian heritage. His poems have been published widely in Australian and international literary journals. His poetry chapbook The Hostage (2019) was a co-winner of the Subbed In Chapbook Prize. As a playwright, he co-wrote the stage musical The Hen House (2023) with his sisters, and is a graduate of the NIDA Playwrights Studio. His latest work, the ensemble comedy Various Characters, will feature at Flightpath Theatre in May. Šime Knežević’s first book-length poetry collection is In Your Dreams (Giramondo, 2025). As its title suggests, the collection gestures towards the elusive and often fragmented reality of dreams and recollections. The poems speak of distance, dislocation and longing, evoked by the poet’s cultural ties to Croatia, the awkwardness of personal relations and the discomforts of language.

Peter Boyle is an Australian poet and translator. He started writing poetry in his teens, in part, he has said in interviews, as a way to grapple with the effects of childhood polio. But it was not until he was 42 that his first collection of poetry Coming Home from the World (1994) appeared, receiving the National Book Council Award and the New South Wales Premier’s Award. He is the winner of many literary awards, including the 2020 Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize for Enfolded in the Wings of a Great Darkness. The Sydney Review of Books observed that both it and Boyle’s next book Notes Towards the Dreambook of Endings were “profoundly influenced by the death of his partner. These are poems where death, memories, otherworlds and revenants turn up regularly.” The SRB went on to declare “[Boyle’s] poetic career is quite unlike that of any other Australian poet.” As a translator of French and Spanish poetry, he has also had four books published, receiving a 2013 NSW Premiers Award for his translation work and invitations to festivals internationally. Peter Boyle’s latest book of poetry is called Companions, Ancestors, Inscriptions (Vagabond Press, 2024)

Felicity Plunkett is an award-winning poet and critic living on Wangal land. She is the author of A Kinder Sea (UQP), Vanishing Point (UQP) and the chapbook Seastrands (Vagabond), published in Vagabond Press’ Rare Objects series. She edited Thirty Australian Poets (UQP). Felicity has a PhD from the University of Sydney and is a widely-published critic. She was Poetry Editor with UQP for nine years. 

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SESSION 3:

Not A Trace | Artists' Overlapping Ways

Wendy Sharpe, Peter Milton Walsh and ali whitelock join moderator Jaimie Leonarder to discuss the creative process across painting, music and poetry. How do they approach creating? What do they have in common? How do different artforms influence one another – and differ in their problem-solving and ways of bringing an idea to life?

Paintings and poetry can have musical rhythm. Music can be literary in its lyrical strengths, painterly in its sonic approaches. Art forms often directly influence one another: a novel begets a song that then inspires a picture, all of them highly original, yet all directly related. What do artists share in their thinking and practice when they face sadness, happiness, shared histories and day-to-day life? How do the problems and triumphs they encounter in painting, music, accentuate common challenges in the creative process, as well as radically different solutions gifted them by their chosen art forms? 

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Wendy Sharpe is acclaimed as one of Australia’s most significant and awarded artists. She has won the Archibald Prize, the Portia Geach Memorial Prize (twice) and the Sulman Prize (judged by Albert Tucker). She has received many major commissions which include Australian Official Artist to East Timor, the first woman to do so since World War II. Wendy is known for her strong figurative paintings, her use of narrative and a sensuous use of paint. She is the quintessential romantic painter, uncompromising, dedicated and unconcerned by fad or fashion. Her work addresses timeless issues such as love, passion, human relationships and what it is like to live in the world, subjects rarely expressed today in contemporary art. Wendy Sharpe’s work is based on drawing and imagination, made from intuition and experience. Her obvious understanding of drawing, composition and paint itself mean that she is often described as the painter’s painter.

ali whitelock is a Scottish poet living in an old church, far far away, with her French, low-carb, chain-smoking husband. She’s published three collections of poetry (Wakefield Press) & her work has appeared in various magazines & journals & she’d like all those editors to know she continues to love yooz all. She’s also published a memoir about growing up in Scotland in the bizarre & brutal kingdom we call home, which was launched to critical acclaim at Sydney Writers Festival & also in the UK. She likes cats, but also dogs –– & while she’s always gravitated towards red wine, lately it’s been white. More here (about the writing, not the wine): www.aliwhitelock.com 

Peter Milton Walsh The songbook of The Apartments Peter Milton Walsh was described by the The Paris Review as a “world of smoke and gin and hazy regrets and horns and strings, like Leonard Cohen covering Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning—how adult life felt, if you were lucky.” Walsh founded The Apartments in Brisbane in 1978 and while the band broke up the next year and Walsh headed for New York, he went on to record The Apartments' debut album the evening visits… for English label Rough Trade in 1985. So began The Apartments' long and successful European career, now spanning more than 30 years and 10 albums. Walsh has recently recorded an Apartments album, That’s What the Music is For, for release in 2025 and concluded a run of shows that has taken him from Marseilles to Mexico City, Sydney to San Francisco, London to Lisbon and more. https://theapartments.bandcamp.com

Jamie Leonarder, AKA Jay Katz, is a musician, archivist, social worker, film critic, radio announcer and DJ. He is the subject of the SBS documentary Love and Anarchy – The Wild, Wild World of Jamie Leonarder (2002), documenting his background with the industrial noise band Mu Messons, a group comprised mainly of musicians and performers who were manic depressives and schizophrenics. The collective were inspired by Leonarder’s early career in nursing, working as a diversional therapist with the mentally ill, and his love of underground music culture and performance. Leonarder hosted The Movie Show (2004-2006) on SBS, followed by the Saturday morning FBi Radio show The Naked City (2006-2010) where he was joined by his wife Aspasia, AKA ‘Miss Death’, and their friend ‘Coffin Ed’, to become the weekend’s requisite hangover cure and street-level culture fix. He is the creator of The Sounds of Seduction, a psychedelic go-go nightclub, and a former Vice-President of UFO Research NSW. Leonarder currently involves himself with cult cinema nights like Trasherama and hosting conversations about art, film and music.

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SESSION 4:

Political World | Divided Existence

Gretchen Shirm, Patrick Holland, Sara M Saleh and Rhyan Clapham (aka DOBBY) speak with moderator Mark Mordue about adapting their creative ideals and personal politics into books, writing and songs.

Are politics and art such different ways of relating to the world they fail to connect with one another? Or is that tension precisely where the most valued engagements exist? Is the nature of politics eternal and inherent in everything we do, more critical than ever at this juncture in history? Or are artists being crushed by ideological commerce, harnessed as tools and reduced to products in the service of master narratives? How do the independently-minded negotiate being censored and excluded when their work refuses to take a pleasing form? 
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Gretchen Shirm is the author of Having Cried Wolf, Where the Light Falls and The Crying Room. She was a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist and both her novels Where the Light Falls and The Crying Room were shortlisted for the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the NSW Premier’s Awards. In 2023–2024 she received the BR Whiting Fellowship from Creative Australia. Gretchen’s literary criticism is published widely, including in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Weekend Australian. Gretchen worked as a public law lawyer for more than a decade and now teaches creative writing. Her latest novel Out of the Woods tells the story of a young woman working behind the scenes at The Hague during the trial of former military man charged with war crimes.

Patrick Holland is a novelist and short story writer. He is the author of seven books, most notably The Mary Smokes Boys (2010), which was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award and is currently being made into a feature film. His work has been recognised by awards including the Miles Franklin, the Dublin Literary Award, the International Scott Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and has been published, performed and broadcast in Australia, the USA, Hong Kong, the UK and Ireland, Italy and Japan. Patrick is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Hong Kong Baptist University and divides his time between Hong Kong and Brisbane. His latest novel Oblivion depicts an young businessman opportunistically drifting through China, Japan and Vietnam, drawn into political intrigues that shake up his alienated hedonism. It has drawn comparisons to Graham Greene’s The Quiet American and Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero.

Sara M Saleh a writer/poet, human rights lawyer and the daughter of Palestinian, Lebanese and Egyptian migrants. Her poems, essays and short stories have been published widely and she is co-editor of the ground-breaking 2019 anthology Arab, Australian, Other. Her first novel, Songs for the Dead and the Living, and first poetry collection, The Flirtation of Girls/Ghazal el-Banat, were both released in 2023. Sara is the first and only poet to win the 2021 Peter Porter Poetry Prize and the 2020 Judith Wright Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of the Affirm fellowship for Sweatshop writers, a Neilma Sidney travel grant, Varuna writers residency and Amant residency in New York City.

Rhyan Clapham (DOBBY) is a singer, drummer, producer and composer. He proudly identifies as a Filipino and Aboriginal musician, a member of the Murrawarri Republic in Brewarrina, NSW. The 2017 recipient of the bi-annual Peter Sculthorpe Fellowship, he began making waves as a highly creative hip hop artist and intense live performer . His debut album in 2024, Warrangu: River Story, won the ARIA for Best World Music Album and was shortlisted for the Australian Music Prize. The album’s second single, ‘Ancestor’ was the #1 most played song on FBi Radio last year, with Warrangu: River Story becoming Album of the Week on FBi Radio, Double J, and 2SER. DOBBY capped off 2024 with a nomination for Double J's 2024 Australian Artist of the Year and the inaugural Hage Award for First Nations writers from the Sweatshop literacy movement based in Western Sydney.

Mark Mordue is a writer, journalist, editor and poet. He is a Pascall Prize Winner for Criticism and the recipient of a Human Rights Media Award. His books include the biography Boy on Fire: The Young Nick Cave, the poetry collections Via Us: Poems From Inside the Corona and Darlinghurst Funeral Rites, the children’s book The Hollow Tree, and the travel memoir Dastgah: Diary of a Headtrip. He is currently at work on a novel set in a cold place and a second volume of his Nick Cave biographical project as well as continuing to freelance as a journalist and work as Addi Road's Media and Communications Manager. (MM photo by Juno Gemes)

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HOTSPOT 2:

Peter O’Doherty and Reg Mombassa from Dog Trumpet

Dog Trumpet are one of Australia’s most unique bands. Reg Mombassa and his brother Peter O'Doherty began their musical careers playing and writing in the ARIA Hall of Fame band Mental As Anything. The Mentals had 20 songs in the top 40 (a record for an Australian band) and a global hit with ‘Live It Up’ that only last Christmas hit #1 on many UK charts. In 2000, Reg and Pete split from the Mentals to pursue their own sound. Describing what that is can be tricky - an eclectic blend of rock, psychedelic folk and semi-abstract blues; whimsical, political, curious, intimate, scientific, erotic and witty. They are part of a long tradition of left-field song writers and storytellers relative to the canon of work by such acts as the Kinks, Nick Lowe, Squeeze and John Prine. Dog Trumpet have released 8 albums so far. Produced by Peter and written by both of them. The title of the first one Two Heads One Brain sums them up, the brothers having an intuitive melodic connection that infuses their music with a classic timelessness. Peter and Reg are also visual artists.  Reg is one of Australia’s most recognised artists well known for his work for the Mambo label, along with graphics, posters, album covers and many decades of fine art. Peter’s fine art painting focuses on the urban and suburban built environment and is equally well regarded. Our ARWF 'Hot Spots' feature artists performing for fifteen minutes. Reg and Peter have graciously agreed to swing in the afternoon to give a little preview of their songs and spirit. (Times on day TBC)

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SESSION 5:

Coming of Age |  A Language of Reconnection

Youth suffering from anxiety and online toxicity. Parents fighting to hold things together and keep the lines of communication open. Staying connected feel like an impossible battle. Felicity Castegna speaks with Tegan Bennett Daylight, David Stavanger and Jim Moginie about writing and the meaning of family, stories of love, personal history and finding both ourselves and our shared future across the generations.

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Tegan Bennett Daylight is a writer, teacher and critic who has published three novels: Bombora, What Falls Away and Safety, as well as several books for children and teenagers. Her collection of short stories, Six Bedrooms, was published in July 2015, and shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal, the Steele Rudd Award and the 2016 Stella Prize. Her book of essays, The Details, was published by Scribner in July 2020 and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Award for Non-Fiction. She works as a lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Western Sydney University, and lives on Darug/Gundungurra land in the Blue Mountains. Tegan’s latest book is the YA novel Royals, which tells the story of six teenagers trapped in a parallel universe – only this parallel universe is a shopping mall. Royals was published by Simon & Schuster in May 2023 and shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Award. How to Survive 1985, the sequel to Royals, is coming your way in May 2025!

David Stavanger is a poet, producer, parent, and lapsed psychologist living on Wodi Wodi Dharawal land. He also spends some of his time as an Artistic Director at Red Room Poetry. Most recently, David co-edited Admissions: Voices Within Mental Health (2022) and authored Case Notes, which won the 2021 Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry. His new collection is The Drop Off (Upswell Publishing, 2025).

Jim Moginie is best known as a founding member, guitarist, keyboardist and lsongwriter in Midnight Oil. Since their final ‘Resist’ world tour in 2022, Jim has released his solo guitar album Murmurations and, last December, a set of new songs based around piano called Everything’s Fine. He has also been pursuing his love of Irish music and producing recordings for groups such as The Aerial Maps. Last year he released his stunning memoir The Silver River, described as "a work of unforced poetry" by Michael Dwyer in the Sydney Morning Herald  and as "a patient work of great beauty" by Andrew McMillen in The Australian. As well as detailing his experiences with Midnight Oil, Moginie reflects on having been told as a teenager he was adopted and a late adult journey he makes to discover his birth family and history in Ireland. In his acknowledgements for The Silver River, Moginia states that he partly he wrote the book as “as an instructional manual for my children to read, in order to understand their father better”. 

Felicity Castagna has published four novels for adults and young adults including her most recent book, Girls In Boys’ Cars which received The Victorian and Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards and was a CBCA Honour book. Her previous novel, No More Boats was a finalist in the 2018 Miles Franklin Literary Award. Her novel The Incredible Here and Now received The Prime Minister’s Award for Young Adult Literature. She has worked with artists in many different fields to produce cross-artform collaborations, theatre and installation for major festivals including The Sydney Opera House, The Sydney Festival, The National Theatre of Parramatta and The Adelaide Festival. Her creative non-fiction and critical responses to literature and art are published both here and internationally on platforms such as The New York Times, The Sydney Review of Books, Electric Literature, LitHub, The Griffith Review and ABC radio and television. She is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Western Sydney University and the Convenor of the Creative Writing Program. 

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SESSION 6:

Kaleidoscope | Putting Life Together

Artists map cities, lives, themselves and others in their work. This can add up to journey of understanding, if not always acceptance. The lucky ones translate their practice and existential concerns into something that coheres and becomes a story. Atomisation may, likewise, reveal a narrative that needs to be faced. Gary Deirmendjian, Sheila Ngoc Pham, Dean Manning and Dominic Gordon speak with Jackie Dent about making sense of their world and any notion of identity or community that may come through.

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Gary Deirmendjian is a Sydney based artist. A compelling and original voice, his unusual work is often described as beguiling, thought-provoking and socially concerned. Further, it prefers to exist in direct friction with daily life, in and amongst the public. Deirmendjian’s practice encompasses sculpture, photography, video, installation and site-specific intervention. His previous books include A Prevailing Sense of Disquiet (Hardie Grant Books, 2020) and Sydney Sandstone (Craftsman House, 2002). Having come to appreciate social media as a valid form of public space, Gary has managed to co-opt Facebook and Instagram as mediums for artistic ends. Common Ground (Bandicoot Publishing, 2025) is a new book of his selected posts, also featuring written responses. (Main image: ‘lone man’ by Gary Deirmendjian, Berrys Bay, Sydney. 1.5 life size, mixed media. Artist statement: “let me breathe, please. i must be me, myself and i. alone. at least for a while…”)

Sheila Ngoc Pham is a writer, editor, producer, curator and researcher. She writes for a wide range of literary and mainstream publications and has held editorial roles at the ABC, producing radio documentaries and stories. Sheila previously co-directed the Addi Road Writers' Festival alongside Mark Mordue (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. Sheila recently completed her PhD at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, and is currently working at the University of Sydney's Reproduction and Perinatal Centre based at Westmead Hospital. (SNP photo by Joy Lai)

Dean Manning is a musician, visual artist and author. After completing a Bachelor of Visual Arts degree at Newcastle University he joined Mojo Advertising as a copywriter. He left to form his first pop group Leonardo's Bride then later Holidays On Ice, achieving critical acclaim and commercial success. Mushroom Music Publishing administer his catalogue of over a hundred songs including the APRA Song of the Year Even When I'm Sleeping. Manning regularly exhibits his paintings and Super 8 films and has been a finalist in the Archibald, Sulman and Moran Portrait prizes. In 2017, he returned from his new home in Greece to visit family in Sydney. While on a morning walk in the rain, he noticed a green suitcase abandoned in a council clean-up. Full of newspaper clippings, photos and letters, it was a paper trail into the life of Mr David Blank, bon vivant, convicted criminal, heavy punter, hotel owner, theatre impresario, and rock’n’roll promoter. Investigating the contents became an obsession that kept Manning company through Covid lockdowns and being on tour. Mr Blank emerged as a superbly idiosyncratic window onto mid-twentieth century Sydney; its glamour and hedonism, and the hard edges underpinning them.

Dominic Gordon grew up in Melbourne, coming of age in and around working class and criminal culture at the turn of the century. In his writing, he continues to explore crime, masculinity, class, sexuality, violence, cinema, and the city. He recently moved to Sydney with his small family. In 2016, he wrote and narrated a radio play for ABC Radio National called Cooked in the Big Smoke, about a young homeless ice user whose life is falling apart; presenter Miyuki Jokiranta called it "the real deal experience". In 2018, he received a highly competitive Berry Family Fellowship from the State Library Victoria, where he began work on narrative non-fiction. He’s had memoir published in Meanjin and fiction in The Suburban Review. His critically acclaimed, debut book Excitable Boy: Essays on Risk was published by Upswell, in April 2024. He’s currently working on a follow up to Excitable Boy.

Jackie Dent is a Sydney-based journalist and author, completing a PhD on "The Pleasures of War" at the University of Sydney. She has reported for many media outlets, including The Sydney Morning Herald, The New York Times, The Guardian, Reuters, Strewth!, and Monocle, and produced for ABC Radio National and ABC TV News. Jackie has worked for the United Nations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Ossetia, and South Sudan, and curated public talks for the Ethics Centre and TEDx. Her book The Great Dead Body Teachers, exploring whole body donation, was longlisted for the 2023 Walkley Book Award and the Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award.

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HOTSPOT 3:

Cocoa the Conscious

Cocoa the Conscious is a Sydney-based Poet, Rapper and Hip-Hop Artist, born in Australia with Ghanaian and Lebanese roots. Through his music and poetry, Cocoa channels his creative expression to explore personal experiences, social justice issues and the expansion of consciousness. His artistic mission is to inspire and empower his audience. Since debuting in 2018, Cocoa has continued to release impactful music, including his first album, The Age of Aquarius, in 2021. He also works with Addi Road as an Anti-Racism Facilitator delivering workshops in schools and is the new Addi Sounds Youth Coordinator. In his latter role, Cocoa the Conscious is creating programs that engage young people through artistic expression and personal growth in a studio environment that has been developed on site at Addi Road in partnership with the Australian National University's School of Music. In the words of one of his songs, "It's time to make a change. It's time to break the chains."

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HOTSPOT 4:

Gavin Blake

Gavin Blake is a Visual Scribe who draws as people talk, so you can see what they are saying in summary. For 25 years, he has been at the forefront of transforming conversations into captivating visual narratives. Renowned in the realm of visual scribing, his career has left an indelible mark on over 80 TEDx conferences worldwide, alongside esteemed boardrooms, executive retreats, and product launches. Beyond the corporate sphere, Gavin's commitment to furthering inclusivity and accessibility is evident in his collaborations within disability and neurodiversity communities, among non-native English speakers, and with First Nations peoples. His visuals are a universal language, breaking down barriers and fostering meaningful connections. It's about crafting experiences that linger in viewers' minds, enabling them to recall and disseminate the essence of any discourse effortlessly At the heart of Gavin’s practice lies a profound belief in the power of visuals to make complex ideas accessible to all. At last year's Addi Road Writers' Festival we watched as he worked at what was, quite literally, light speed, drawing and documenting panel conversations as they were happening, projecting his work as it evolved on to the side wall of the venue: a magic lantern show turbo-charged with rolling conversational content, on-the-spot reporting through the fine, fun and performative art of his immediate representations.

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Artistic Director's Statement |||

Addi Road Writers’ Festival will celebrate its fifth birthday on Saturday 17 May.  

Our 2025 incarnation is running with the theme ‘FREE EXPRESSION’.

It's meant to signpost our belief in freedom of speech – as well as support the release of artists and writers from censoring and controlling forces on the rise, both around and within us all.

‘Free Expression’ is also a description of art in the most naive and loosest of forms. 

A child can relate to the words... finger-paint on white paper, a beautiful splash of colours and shapes. 

An adult might recognise something more ambiguously urgent or worrying in the phrase. 

We live in repressive times, there is no doubt about it. Politics has become a box, a prison, a prism, through which all art must be strained like pulp to return the juice required.

The ever-quotable George Orwell saw things a little differently when he said, "Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." His contemporary Albert Camus similarly observed, "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."

Neither invocation is easy to live by. 

In many respects the world is divided not only by nation and tribe, but by ideological absolutism and identity marketing. This also affects how we appear in public and how we negotiate the world privately. Great art takes a chance on the volatile lines between known and unknown, sure and unsure, what rewards us and what can hurt us. 

When we launched Addi Road Writers’ Festival 2021, Covid and it’s the lockdowns were having a huge and restrictive impact. We conceived of the event, back then, as a literary festival with an open style that could embrace not only writers, but musicians, artists, thinkers and storytellers across other mediums, be it animation, sculpture, photojournalism, whatever.

The festival has evolved in this eclectic spirit, something of a literary warehouse party at its best. That first year, conversational panels on books and ideas inside our Gumbramorra Hall were surrounded by stacked pallets full of of groceries and water bottles ready to be packed into emergency hampers and sent out across the city and the state. 

It looked a little rough and ready, yet somehow right. Addi Road's ‘set design’ revealing the community organisation’s activities across a spectrum: food relief and food rescue; engagement with environmental concerns, human rights and fighting inequality; supporting the arts and energising people's lives wherever possible.

Note the little slogan at the bottom of our first online ‘poster’ previewing Addi Road Writers’ Festival 2025. It says “Addi Road: Community. Culture, Food, Life”. 

We've maintained those relationships. We've also kept our raw edges and a desire to improvise as part of the event's ongoing nature, joining the dots between all kinds of writers and storytellers, connecting the established and revered with mid-career and overlooked artists, encouraging new, young and street-level figures in any way we can. Now and again, we just say f'-it too, and include someone who blasts in and surprises us... something unexpected and random, a few chances taken.

Five years on from when we began, 'the plague' has changed form: no longer of the body; now of society and the mind.

From cost-of-living and housing pressures to social media polarisation and ideological modes of thinking that masquerade as 'truth' and rationality, people tick boxes and regurgitate their 'positions' religiously from inside algorithms of anger and contempt, privilege and cynicism. 

The battle to stay human and not be reduced to a mere product of the outrage machine – to instead seek out complex dynamics and enlightening conversations – is part of a rebellion that needs sustaining. It can transform the so-called political rather than be subservient to its oppressions and regulations. In common, but not homogenous voice, we can speak up.

We’re running Addi Road Writers' Festival 2025 this year without any funding, just like the year that we started. Entirely independent again, making our running, once more, from the outside lane. 

After paying all those who appear at the ARWF2025 (with a major thanks, too, to all our staff and volunteers), profits will go to our food justice programs. With that in mind, please consider not only buying tickets – but also donating. It’s for a good cause.

Beyond this good cause, though, be assured we believe in a festival that stands for something unique to Sydney's Inner West, providing an array of writers, artists and thinkers that inspire one another and the community they are a part of. To quote our old friend Albert Camus again, "There is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added up to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it." 

Mark Mordue

Artistic Director 

ARWF2025

Note: A special thanks and farewell to Sheila Ngoc Pham, Co-Artistic Director of Addi Road Writers' Festival 2022, 2023 and 2024, a key force in putting the festival on the map and expanding it in every way. By way of an encore, we have invited her back to be one of the speakers on the 'Kaleidoscope - Putting Life Together' panel.

ARWF2025 Supporters: