Australia’s foremost writers will reach a new, international audience through a partnership between Adelaide Writers’ Week and Hay Festival Global, two of the world’s most celebrated cultural festivals.
The new partnership sees Adelaide Writers’ Week curate four sessions at Hay Festival Hay-on-Wye, 23 May–2 June, supported by both state and federal government funding.
Events can be discovered and booked online now at hayfestival.org/hay-on-wye.
Adelaide Writers’ Week sessions at Hay Festival Hay-on-Wye 2025 will include:
· Australia and China: Maverick or Model? featuring Australian Financial Review’s International Editor James Curran, former Australian Prime Minister and current Ambassador of Australia to the United States Kevin Rudd and former deputy Beijing bureau chief at the Financial Times and author Yuan Yang;
· The Power of Words with novelist Pip Williams in conversation with Adelaide Writers’ Week Director Louise Adler;
· journalist David Marr and award-winning author, filmmaker and host of ABC Radio National’s Speaking Out Larissa Behrendt discussing the brutal truth of Australia’s past in Massacre on the Australian Frontier;
· and a showcase of two of Australia’s leading First Nations poets Jazz Money and Ellen van Neerven in Always Was, Always Will Be.
Hay Festival Global CEO Julie Finch said:
“Worlds collide at Hay Festival Hay-on-Wye with events that offer a detour from the day to day. We are delighted to be partnering Adelaide Writers’ Week to bring some of Australia’s foremost writers and thinkers to Wales, opening new opportunities for artists and audiences to engage around some of the biggest, shared questions of our times.”
Director of Adelaide Writers’ Week Louise Adler AM said:
“It is a privilege for Adelaide Writers’ Week – the first and only Australian festival to which Hay Festival Global has extended this invitation – to be able to showcase some of Australia’s finest writers in an event once described by former US President Bill Clinton as ‘Woodstock for the mind’. We are delighted to be bringing the Antipodes to the UK, to present the rich diversity of our literary culture. We thank our government partners for their support in assisting us to amplify our voices on an international stage, while our own tents are packed away for another year.”
Federal Minister for the Arts Tony Burke MP said:
“Adelaide Writers’ Week has always been bigger than just one city – bringing together voices and stories from around Australia, our region and the world. It’s fitting that those voices and stories are now shared on the world stage. Sharing Australian stories helps us to learn about ourselves, understand each other and let the world get to know us.”
South Australian Minister for Arts Andrea Michaels MP said:
“Adelaide Writers’ Week is an extraordinary event on South Australia’s artistic calendar and through this exclusive partnership with Hay Festival Global, we have an opportunity to showcase the brilliance of Australian literary minds including South Australia’s own Pip Williams to an international audience. The Malinauskas Government is a proud ongoing supporting partner of both Adelaide Festival and Adelaide Writers’ Week and congratulates them on this outstanding invitation.”
The events form part of a packed programme of activities at Hay Festival Hay-on-Wye 2024, with a dynamic line-up of 600-plus events, 23 May–2 June.
Launching the best new fiction and non-fiction, while offering insights and debate around significant global issues, the programme sees writers, policy makers, pioneers and innovators take part from around the world, offering big thinking and bold ideas.
Events offer something for all, beginning with the free Schools Programme, 23–24 May, and including a vibrant strand for families throughout.
New projects woven through the Festival include the first ever Hay Festival Sports Day, The Platform for new creatives, the daily News Review offering analysis of the latest events, and Hay Festival Green, prompting innovative solutions to the climate crisis.
Late nights at the Festival are given over to great music, comedy and entertainment, while a host of free pop-up activities and performances around the site keeps audiences entertained between sessions.
Events will take place across eight stages in the redesigned free-to-enter Festival site at Dairy Meadows – which also offers a range of spaces for audiences to explore and enjoy, including the Bookshop, Wild Garden, Make & Take Tent, a host of exhibitors and market stalls, cafés and restaurants, and the new Family Garden where young readers can kick-start their creative journeys – as well as in and around Hay-on-Wye, including performances all week at St Mary’s Church.
Hay Festival Hay-on-Wye 2024 is supported by lead sponsors Baillie Gifford, Welsh Government, Arts Council England and Arts Council Wales, lead media partner the BBC and digital media partner TikTok.