The 2025 Emerging Writers’ Festival is one week away! As the festival gets closer, we sat down with EWF’s Associate Producer Kanika Chopra to learn more about what goes into programming a national literary festival, for writers and by writers.
Read on to find out more about what goes on behind-the-scenes at the Emerging Writers’ Festival!
EWF: As we know, there’s so much that goes into planning a festival event: artists, briefs, tech, invoices, vision. When you’re sitting down to brainstorm event ideas for the Emerging Writers’ Festival, where do you find yourself starting with that curatorial process?
KC: My process is more fluid than anything. I’m always engaging in something literary even outside of work. Whether I’m reading or writing, talking about reading or writing, being on bookish and literary spaces online, I feel like my mind is always churning. My curatorial ideas come from observing interesting things in literary spaces and things I find interesting in literary spaces. As a person who’s quite curious about literature, culture and the world in general, I also sometimes find gaps in these spheres and like to fill them, whether it’s with a unique event idea or even simply making literary stuff more accessible if I can, whatever that means in the given context!
EWF: One of the aspects of EWF’s curatorial process which is different from other festivals is our open artist call-out which this year saw 500 applications from emerging writers across the continent who are wanting to be part of the festival. How does this factor into the programming process?
KC: Well, we get a lot of wonderful ideas from artists. I think it’s a great way to build a festival for the people who will attend it or have been attending it. The open artist call out is also a way to see what is on the minds of emerging artists across the country, whether it’s what they want to see, what they want to put on, or the kind of writers that are out there that are going to engage with the festival. In my programming i like to give people what they want to a certain extent, as the festival is for its attendees and not the programmers. It also serves as a database of interested artists that we can program into different parts of the festival even if we don’t necessarily pick the event the artist has pitched. We get to gauge their strengths with their apps and then find a spot where we think they’ll shine!
I think it’s a great way to build a festival for the people who will attend it or have been attending it.
ON THE ANNUAL EWF ARTIST CALL-OUT
EWF: I feel like Emerging Writers’ Festival is such a big undertaking for an events curator like yourself, because it’s so wide-reaching but also very different from other lit festivals in its interest in creating public platforms for new and developing writers. Having worked for other festivals, do you find that there’s something different about curating specifically for emerging writers in an artistic or thematic sense?
KC: I think artistically, I love that we actually prioritise the emerging writers here, and artists’ whose names we don’t usually see across the literary scene in Naarm, giving opportunities for new names and talent to have a chance at being programmed.
EWF: With this being your last year at EWF, what are some EWF events this year that you’re most excited for writers to experience?
Kanika Chopra is an avid reader, occasional writer, and all around curious person. She started the literary zine known as More than Melanin which publishes writings by POC and Bla(c)k women and LGBTQIA+ people from these communities. The zine is currently on its third issue.
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