In 2025, Emerging Writers’ Festival turns a new page. With reimagined event formats and a program bursting with cross-disciplinary projects, community connection and bold creative energy, the festival continues its mission to platform fresh voices and provide inspirational ground for writers of all ages and stages of their career.   

At this special launch event, the Emerging Writers’ Festival team will provide a tour of their 2025 program highlights, core offerings and deep cuts – including transformative workshops, immersive conversations, powerful readings and opportunities to simply write, be and share with fellow storytellers. Then, artists Ella Rowe, Andrew Sutherland, Bayley Turner and Festival Guest Curator Coral Reeve will share new work responding to this year’s evocative artwork.   

Make a toast and riffle through your personal copy of the program as the countdown begins for the festival’s return on 11 September.

RSVP here

PROGRAM LAUNCH ARTISTS

Ella Rowe

Ella Rowe is a multidisciplinary artist, poet, cultural leader, teacher, community curly hairdresser, Radio host and solo Mum. A proud Papua New Guinean / Australian woman, her heritage directs her values and approach to creating contemporary works that aim to decolonise practices and centre topics such as womanhood, coming of age, culture, identity, gender, feminism, hair ritual and welfare, spiritually and sexuality. Her mediums also include painting, photo / video documentation, writing and collage. With a passion for Education and Social Justice her work uses layers of symbolism and motif to tell true stories as well as project manifestations.

Andrew Sutherland

Andrew Sutherland is a Queer Poz (PLHIV) writer and performance-maker currently based on the unceded lands of the Kulin nation. He has worked as performer, director, dramaturg, playwright, devised theatre-maker and mentor across the creation of dozens of new works in the independent sector in Western Australia and Singapore. He is a current PhD candidate at the Victorian College of the Arts. Andrew is the author of two poetry collections, Paradise (point of transmission) and Act Cute, published in 2022 and 2025 respectively with Fremantle Press.

Bayley Turner

Bayley Turner is a Melbourne-based writer and performer. She has been praised for her as a playwright for ‘Thirty-Six’ co-written with Jo Clifford, and ‘Burlesque by Force’. She recently self-published a collection of poetry, ‘Ulysses’ and is due to self-publish her second collection ‘16,000km or so’ in mid 2025. Bayley has had her writing featured in Archer Magazine, drip(feed) and MamaMia, and was published in the edited book ‘Heaven Bent: Australian lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex experiences of faith, religion and spirituality’. Bayley was one of the winners of the Empower Her Voice 2021 Creative Writing Contest.

Coral Reeve, Guest Curator

Coral Reeve is a proud Gunditjimara woman who has been writing for over 10 years and has been published in a few books. Often, she will be minding her own business and words will start flowing into her head (often while driving), which means that her son is an excellent speller now. Coral is also the Guest Curator of the 2025 Emerging Writers’ Festival.

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