National Young Writers’ Festival Announces 2014 Program

National Young Writers' Festival (NYWF) is the four-day writerly celebration that takes over the imaginations of young writers around the country. Directors Alexandra Neill, Jessica Alice and Lex Hirst have just announced their colourful program featuring familiar names like Benjamin Law, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Clementine Ford, Lawrence Leung, Genevieve Fricker, Steph Harmon, James Colley, Patrick Lenton and more (including some other names you might not recognise now but definitely will in the next five years).

As well as more serious talks on slacktivism, mandatory detention and identity, NYWF won't be holding back on the life's practical truths, informing young writers about how to get paid as a writer, how to become an astronaut, how to make a sumptuously good sandwich and how to keep a diary and still be cool.

Like any good writers' festival, Breakfast Book Club will start each day with impassioned discussion on life changing books, ones that make you plain angry and ones that are so good you turn into a nocturnal creature. Over 60 panels, discussions, workshops, performances and launches will carry you through deep into the evening when you'll get to sit back and relax to late night romance, crime and dystopian readings. Did we mention the whole festival is free? Yep, all of it.

Blowing out 17 candles this year, NYWF is growing bigger and wiser by the year. But a festival is never too old for an intergalactic-themed ball and a spelling bee-cross-Hunger Games-style battle of the brains, right?

NYWF runs from 2-5 October. Check out the full program here.

Image: Alan Weedon.