It’s Festival week
Sydney 19 May,2025
It’s officially Festival week! The stages are set, books are stacked and over 300 writers are ready for a week of wide-ranging conversations, debates and stories to bring us together.
From exclusive merch and rush tickets to all-important logistics, below you’ll find essential information for your trip to the Festival.
Plan your Festival
Plan your Festival
We’ve compiled all the information you need to plan your Festival on our website. Head over there for information about venues and accessibility, transportation to and from the Festival, box office hours and, most importantly, food options at Carriageworks.
Festival merch
Need a handy place to store all your book purchases? Put them in a Sydney Writers’ Festival tote!
Tote bags are available for purchase at Sydney Writers’ Festival box offices, located at Carriageworks, Sydney Town Hall and the State Library of NSW.
$20 rush tickets
We have $20 rush tickets available for a selection of events at Carriageworks from Thursday to Sunday. Swing by the Festival Box Office to see the day’s offerings and grab your tickets.
Rush tickets are only available on the day of the event and must be purchased in person.
Festival highlights
Jeanette Winterson: 40 Years of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Thursday 22 May, 6pm | Sydney Town Hall
Spend an evening with literary icon Jeanette Winterson as she reflects on her ground-breaking debut and an illustrious career spanning 10 novels as well as children’s books, nonfiction and screenplays.
Harriet Walter: What Shakespeare’s Women Might Have Said
Wednesday 21 May, 8pm | Carriageworks
After a lifetime of bringing Shakespeare’s female characters to life on stage, multi-award-winning British actor Harriet Walter lends them her pen in She Speaks!.
The Art and Science of AI
Wednesday 21 May, 6pm | Carriageworks
What happens when creativity and artificial intelligence collide? Hear the perspectives of celebrated writer Jeanette Winterson and AI academic Toby Walsh on one of the most important stories of our time.
Events at the State Library of NSW
Anne Summers: 50 Years of Damned Whores and God’s Police
Wednesday 21 May, 2.30pm | State Library of NSW
First published 50 years ago, revisit Anne Summers’s feminist classic as the bestselling and multi-award-winning writer and journalist considers the future.
Mariana Enriquez en Conversación
Wednesday 21 May, 7.30pm | State Library of NSW
Hear the queen of Latin American gothic horror Mariana Enriquez on blending the supernatural with the sociopolitical in a special Spanish language conversation with Luke Stegemann. Captioned English translation available.
Michael Visontay: Noble Fragments
Wednesday 21 May, 4pm | State Library of NSW
Uncover scandalising secrets with Sydney journalist Michael Visontay, whose family research revealed a personal connection to the man who vandalised the Gutenberg Bible for a fortune. With host Caroline Baum.
Audiobook collection
Discover new audiobooks
Find your next listen and explore a curation of captivating audiobooks available on Spotify from authors appearing at the Festival including Melanie Cheng, Marcel Dirsus, Mariana Enriquez, Dylin Hardcastle, Ferdia Lennon and Chloe Elisabeth Wilson.
On the blog
In This Together Q&A: Ferdia Lennon
Ferdia Lennon is an Irish writer whose Sunday Times bestselling debut Glorious Exploits is an original and brilliant story of war and art in ancient Sicily.
See Ferdia at the Festival in Ferdia Lennon: Glorious Exploits and Big Beginnings.
In This Together Q&A: Candice Chung
Writer, editor and former restaurant reviewer Candice Chung’s tender new memoir is about saying the unsayable with food.
See Candice at the Festival in Family Secrets and FEAST: Family-style.
Sydney Writers’ Festival acknowledges the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of this nation. They are the first storytellers of our land and we honour their tradition of passing down stories. We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which our events take place. We pay our respects to Elders past and present.
