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

Please scroll down for breaking news as artists, speakers and panels are confirmed.

Full program coming soon.

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 religious modes of thinking that masquerade as 'truth' and rationality, people tick boxes and regurgitate their 'positions' 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.

Our full program for Addi Road Writers' Festival 2025 – with panel details, participants and bio notes – will made available in instalments below over the next week.

Scroll down for your blow-by-blow updates as they occur.

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

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

Thanks in advance for your patience and support.

Thanks to Berkelouw Books Leichhardt for returning as our bookseller.

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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 personal politics into novels, poetry and song.

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.

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More announcements on the way.

Stay tuned.

We will continue to update here.

Full program soon.