Photo credit: Hashem McAdam

Applications are now open for emerging writers, artists and creatives of all kinds to be part of Australia’s premiere festival for writers! Each year we program artists from around Australia, and a huge portion of our final program comes from the open artist call-out.

If you don’t know, Emerging Writers’ Festival is primarily a festival for writers – our audience and our artists are all storytellers of various kinds. Our mission is to champion, develop and promote Australia’s new writing talent. A commitment to diversity, inclusivity and accessibility underpin EWF’s artistic program. Over the past 20 years, we’ve cultivated a national community of storytellers who are inclusive, critical, rigorous and engaged. Now you can join this community!!

Each year, EWF opens a call-out for writers and storytellers of all kinds to submit an expression of interest in participating in the Festival. Applicants are invited to share not only their individual work, but their ideas for the events, topics and conversations that they want to be included within the festival.

Diversity, inclusivity and accessibility are the core values that underpin EWF’s artistic program, offering a unique opportunity for writers of all ages and backgrounds, representing all genres and styles of storytelling, to participate in and engage with.

Each year we program artists from around Australia, and are committed to selecting 25% of these from the open artist call-out. As always we have budget to fly some artists to Melbourne for the festival, so we welcome interstate and regional applications.

We are really keen on ideas that play and experiment with the digital space and storytelling. You can see some examples of the things we are interested in by checking out previous Digital Writers’ Festival programs as well as our 2023 festival program!