Williamstown Literary Festival

The Williamstown Literary Festival

Dear Friends of Williamstown Literary Festival,

With Last year's festival slipping into long term memory, we are busily preparing for 2012. We hope to bring you the cream of talent holding connections to Melbourne's West, covering a range of topics and formats in the wonderfully restored and historically significant Williamstown town hall ...... and beyond.

Williamstown Literary Festival in conjunction with Hobsons Bay Libraries are offering $1000.00 to the winner of the Ada Cambridge competition for biographical prose, and $300.00 for the poetry winner. Please click on the link below for more information and winners will be announced at the event on Friday 4th May.

We'd like to thank all our wonderful partners and sponsors, our loyal supporters and fabulous volunteers, and last but not least, our amazingly talented guests at this year's Festival and we'd love to see you all again next year, May 4-6, 2012.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy and safe New Year, from all of us at WillyLitFest

Our Program

You can check out all of the exciting events included in this year's festival here or download a PDF of the full program here. If you want to peruse our guest list you will find it here.

Make a donation

Willy Lit Fest is listed on the Register of Cultural Organisations. Any cash donation made over $2 is tax deductible. If you want to support our festival click here to make a donation.

Our Writing Competitions

Entries are now being accepted for the Ada Cambridge prose and Seagull's poetry prizes until 5pm Wednesday 2nd May 2012. The competitions are open to emerging and established writers from the West. Please click on the link for further information.

Crime pays at Tavern

The Pirates Tavern at Seaworks at Williamstown's Docklands proved the perfect setting for writers talking crime of all sorts last week. Crime queen Kerry Greenwood joined Nick Gadd, Angus Curry and Carolyn Morwood for a lively session as part of the Big West's literature festival.

The event was held in association with Williamstown Literary Festival and was ably chaired by children's author and poet Claire Saxby, a regular at our festival.

Preparations are well under way for next year's event. Subscribe to our mailing list for regular updates. Don't forget entries for the Ada Cambridge writing prizes are now open with prizemoney for the biographical short story section doubled to $1000.

2011 WLF Anthology available for sale

This year the stories for the Ada Cambridge Prize and the poems for the Seagull Poetry Prize both appear in one exciting anthology. There are six short listed stories and ten poems including the winners of each competition.

Told with strong arresting voices, the biographical short stories immerse us in the experiences of those living in a cruel and indifferent world, soliciting deep empathy for the characters involved.

In the poems, the theme most often encountered is an engagement with the changing natural world, and the negotiation of the human place within it. Ideas and emotions are effectively conveyed by fresh language, and powerful imagery.