Digital Writers’ Festival

The 2019 Digital Writers' Festival ran from October 29 - November 2.

The Digital Writers’ Festival is an online-first program dedicated to celebrating the work of Australian writers and fostering new relationships through international collaborations. Check out the 2019 program here.

The Festival consists of a series of events, discussions and online activities that leverage technologies that have reached broad accessibility, enabling participation by attendees who traditionally experience barriers to access, including regionally-based audiences and writers with a disability.

DWF includes panel sessions that offer both real-time and pre-recorded video interactions, discussions that traverse platforms and build on the capacity of mobile devices, and intimate workshops that offer opportunities for participants located around Australia to connect and learn with and from each other.

In its fifth year in 2018, the Digital Writers Festival was staged over 5 days and nights in October, and promoted the talent and ideas of over 130 artists, 36 of whom were based outside of Australia.

Over the last five years DWF has visited Dunedin, Iowa City, Krakow, Edinburgh and Reykjavik for an innovative program of live-streamed city tours, collectively annotated Stella Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career, listened to writers’ letters to their 13, 43 and 73 year-old selves, stayed up late to collaboratively create a Book of the Night during White Night Melbourne, and cooked along with emerging food writers. Collaborative creative maps, poem phones, tinyletters and more have connected writers from Jakarta to Jos, Hanoi to Heathcote Hills.

The festival also features online workshop events, enabling regionally and internationally-based audience members to learn new skills face-to-face from talented DWF artists.

The Digital Writers’ Festival quickly established itself as one of the world’s most engaging destinations for writers looking to connect and collaborate online, with the DWF offering events and experiences unlike any offered elsewhere – digitally or IRL!

Relive all the 2019 action by visiting the 2019 archive here or check out the 2018, 2017, 20162015 and 2014 festivals.