Emerging Writers' Festival

What is the role of fiction in regenerative futures? How can writing speculatively help us imagine and inhabit the future? 

In a limited capacity workshop, hear from novelists Romy Ash (Mantle) and Rose Michael (Else), whose work stretches the familiar and the real into the speculative, strange and urgent.  

Then, drawing from the raw material of your own embodied experience, Nicola Redhouse and Penni Russon will guide participants through associative writing techniques using a series of provocations to write ‘otherwise’, grounded in the speculative powers of the human unconscious.  

At 12pm, celebrate new voices of speculative fiction with the launch of the 2026 Speculate anthology, featuring long-listees and readings from the prize-winners of this emerging writers’ prize presented in partnership with RMIT.  

A light lunch will be provided.  

Please note that the Workshop will take place in the Level 4 Workshop Space, with the Lunch & Launch in the Level 2 Performance Space