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Program Truth, Voice and Who Is Believed BUY TICKETS DATE: Friday 20 March, 2026 TIME: 2.30-3.30pm COST: $25,00 Sky Theatre PATHWAY: Stories and Storytellers HOST : Candida Baker < VIEW ALL SESSIONS Debra Adelaide Sue Woolfe Whose stories are heard, and whose are doubted? In this conversation, Sue Woolfe and Debra Adelaide reflect on truth-telling, credibility, and the fragile mechanics of belief in literature, in institutions, and in private lives. Drawing on fiction and lived experience, they consider how voice is shaped by power, gender, memory, and circumstance, and how easily truth can be questioned, deferred, or dismissed. At its heart, this session asks what it means to speak honestly when people are not always prepared to listen.

Program Country and the Stories We Tell BUY TICKETS DATE: Friday 20 March, 2026 TIME: 2.30-3.30pm COST: $25.00 Manly Life Saving Club PATHWAY: Country and Who We Are HOST : Summer Land < VIEW ALL SESSIONS John Morrissey William J. Byrne How do stories express connection to place and identity? In this thoughtful conversation, Byrne and Morrissey explore belonging and responsibility in Australian fiction. The session focuses on story as a way of holding history, Country and moral obligation across generations.

Program Love, Medicine and the Human Condition BUY TICKETS DATE: Sunday 22 March, 2026 TIME: 11.30-12.30pm COST: $25.00 Manly Youth Centre PATHWAY: Stories and Storytellers HOST : Nick Place < VIEW ALL SESSIONS Anne Buist AO Graeme Simsion Drawing on Anne Buist’s experience as a psychiatrist and Graeme Simsion’s gift for humane storytelling, their latest novel, The General Hospital, (to be released in April), explores care, crisis and connection inside a pressured institution. In this conversation, Simsion and Buist discuss writing about institutional life with empathy, the emotional labour of care, and how fiction can illuminate the systems we depend on at moments of vulnerability. Content note: This session includes discussion of issues affecting mental health.

Program Ask Us Anything: From Manuscript to Bookstore—What Really Gets You Published BUY TICKETS DATE: Saturday 21 March, 2026 TIME: 10.00-11.00am COST: $25.00 The Manly Club PATHWAY: So, You Want to be a Writer? HOST : Tim Ayliffe < VIEW ALL SESSIONS Ben Aitchison Bonita Mersiades John Coomer What happens between finishing a manuscript and seeing a book in the world? This session brings together key players across the publishing process to demystify how books are selected, shaped, produced and released. The discussion will unpack common misconceptions about agents, editors, design and publishing, and offer a realistic picture of how decisions are made. This is a rare opportunity to ask the experts anything you want to know about what it takes to be published. Note: Pitching manuscripts from the floor is not part of this session.

Program Open Book: What the Writing Reveals BUY TICKETS DATE: Saturday 21 March, 2026 TIME: 1.00-2.00pm COST: $25.00 Henry G's PATHWAY: Stories and Storytellers HOST : Suellen Dainty < VIEW ALL SESSIONS Dave Warner Matthew Spencer Jack Heath James Dunbar Open Book sessions centre on the work itself. Writers read from their books and speak briefly about the choices and discoveries that shaped the writing. Twisted River by James Dunbar is a crime novel set in regional Australia, centred on how an obsessed enemy can destroy the best people's lives, and the consequences of secrets that refuse to stay buried. Kill Your Boss by Jack Heath is a sharp, fast-paced thriller that turns work place resentment into something far darker driven by the dangerous appeal of an unthinkable idea. Broke Road by Matthew Spencer follows a series of crimes linked by a single stretch of road, exposing corruption, desperation and lives pushed to breaking point. Sound Mind, Dead Body by Dave Warner blends a compelling investigation with social insight, probing motive, consequence and moral uncertainty. In this Open Book session hosted by Suellen Dainty, Dunbar, Heath, Spencer, and Warner read from their work and reflect on what emerges in the act of writing — how setting, character and plot begin to carry meanings the author may not have fully anticipated, and how crime fiction can reveal as much about the world it observes as the stories it tells.

d571f5be-bd07-423d-97e2-236a1858f115 Summer Land ABOUT < VIEW ALL HOSTS Summer Land Summer Land is an author, ghostwriter, copywriter, podcaster, keynote speaker and moderator. Summer has ghostwritten over ten books including The Last Victim (2024) with Tracy Hall which will be featured at the Manly Writers’ Festival. Originally from the United States, Summer lives mostly in Mudgee and occasionally on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. < PREVIOUS HOST NEXT HOST > ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY The Manly Writers' Festival acknowledges and thanks the original storytellers on the lands on which our events take place, the Gameraygal people of the Eora Nation. We acknowledge and respect their continuing connection and culture, and we pay our respects to ancestors and Elders, past and present, as well as emerging leaders.

Program Roundtable: Who Pays the Price? Gender and Institutional Power BUY TICKETS DATE: Friday 20 March, 2026 TIME: 12.30-2.00pm COST: $25.00 Manly Life Saving Club PATHWAY: Power, Truth and Accountability HOST : Angela Priestley < VIEW ALL SESSIONS Ainslie Harvey Tracey Holmes Diana Thorp Ee Ling Quah When institutions fail or protect themselves, the consequences are rarely shared equally. In this extended roundtable, Ainslie Harvey, Tracey Holmes, Ee Ling Quah, and Diana Thorp examine how power operates inside major organisations, and why the costs of speaking out so often fall along lines of gender, race and migration. Drawing on journalism, leadership, academic research and lived experience, the panel explores how institutional cultures are built and defended; how silence, loyalty and retaliation are enforced; and how progressive systems can reproduce inequality even as they claim reform. From media and universities to governance and public life, this is a searching conversation about accountability, complicity and what genuine structural change demands.

b9b7b5e2-df14-461c-bd52-b3dc2883301a Caroline Baum ABOUT < VIEW ALL HOSTS Caroline Baum Caroline Baum is a communicator, storyteller, advocate, moderator, journalist, curator, podcaster and author. She works in all digital and traditional media. Her writing covers culture, food, people, places, issues. Aside from journalism, she has written program notes for the opera and ballet, blogs for theatre and film productions, tourism advertorial, exhibition catalogues, speech notes, and eulogies. She grew up and was educated in the UK and began her working life there as a TV researcher for Michael Parkinson and Melvyn Bragg. < PREVIOUS HOST NEXT HOST > ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY The Manly Writers' Festival acknowledges and thanks the original storytellers on the lands on which our events take place, the Gameraygal people of the Eora Nation. We acknowledge and respect their continuing connection and culture, and we pay our respects to ancestors and Elders, past and present, as well as emerging leaders.

Program History’s Long Shadow: Writing the Past BUY TICKETS DATE: Sunday 22 March, 2026 TIME: 2.30-3.30pm COST: $25.00 Manly Youth Centre PATHWAY: Stories and Storytellers HOST : Martin Thomas < VIEW ALL SESSIONS Candida Baker Susan Francis From overlooked lives to quiet acts of endurance, Baker and Francis explore how fiction engages with history, memory and recovery. This session examines the moral responsibility of writing about the past, the role of imagination in historical storytelling, and why unresolved histories continue to shape the present.

Program Open Book: Becoming Yourself Under Pressure BUY TICKETS DATE: Saturday 21 March, 2026 TIME: 11.30-12.30pm COST: $0.00 Henry G's PATHWAY: Stories and Storytellers HOST : Lee Kofman < VIEW ALL SESSIONS Amy Coomer Matilda Meikle Becoming yourself is rarely a smooth or linear process. In this Open Book session, Robbie Coburn, Amy Coomer and Matilda Meikle discuss how they approached writing young protagonists at moments of emotional intensity, grappling with grief, uncertainty, scrutiny and the pull of belonging. Through readings from their novels, the authors reflect on the choices that shaped their stories: how voice is found under pressure, how characters respond when expectations close in, and how writing for young readers demands honesty and restraint. Together, they consider what emerges in the act of writing itself; when identity is still forming and the ground beneath the characters, and sometimes the author, is not yet settled. This is a FREE Festival event to support young writers.

Program Ruptured Lives, Resilient Voices BUY TICKETS DATE: Sunday 22 March, 2026 TIME: 11.30-12.30pm COST: $25.00 Manly Youth Centre PATHWAY: Personal Reckonings HOST : Suellen Dainty < VIEW ALL SESSIONS Elana Benjamin Lee Kofman Joanne Fedler Kylie Moore-Gilbert Ruptured brings together the voices of Jewish women in Australia reflecting on life after 7 October 2023—an event that continues to send seismic shockwaves worldwide. Elana Benjamin, Joanne Fedler, Lee Kofman, and Kylie Moore-Gilbert share essays that wrestle with grief, fear, belonging, faith, and the fractures that opened in both public and private life, and, more recently, were highlighted in Australia by the Hanukkah attack in Bondi. They explore what it means to be shaken by history, how to live with rupture, and the fragile, necessary work of repair. Content note: This session includes discussion of antisemitism and anti-Zionism that some people may find challenging.

Program A Speed Date with Love BUY TICKETS DATE: Friday 20 March, 2026 TIME: 3.45-5.00pm COST: $25.00 Manly Life Saving Club PATHWAY: Stories and Storytellers HOST : Alice Fraser < VIEW ALL SESSIONS Amy Hutton Holly Cardamone Courtney Peppernell Joanna Nell Eleanor Kirk Karen Farrell Looking for your next great love story? In this lively, fast-paced Friday afternoon session, love and romance fiction writers each take the mic for a few short minutes to introduce their books — from first love and fierce attraction to grief, companionship, longing, and late-life connection. Hosted by Alice Fraser, this is a fun, informal way to meet a roomful of writers, discover stories that explore love in all its forms, and maybe even find your next read.