Welcome

E sui faiga ae tumau fa’avae | The form changes but the substance remains the same. 

Born from the kaupapa ‘by young writers, for young writers’, this festival encourages storytellers to put their roots down into a ground that has been nurtured by those who came before them, so they can grow into their own identity with confidence and excitement.

The festival creates a welcoming, inclusive, and accessible space for skill-building, creativity, performance, and community connection.

Proudly produced by Dunedin Fringe Arts Trust, NZYWF uplifts the voices of young writers aged 18-35 and celebrates a diverse range of wordsmithing.

We invite you to join us – from young creatives to art and literature loving adults, all are welcome to celebrate Aotearoa’s next generation of literary talent.

Nau mai, haere mai ki tēnei hui whakahirahira.

We acknowledge Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe and Waitaha as the kaitiaki of this beautiful place, and we celebrate their creative spirit. Our special thanks to Kāti Huirapa Rūnaka ki Puketeraki.

Events 

Friday 2 October

Pou Kōrero, Pou Talanoa: Posts That Speak – Performance

6pm-8pm 

Join us for some refreshments and the NZYWF opening event, featuring this year’s cohort of talented emerging voices. Through poetry, song, performance and prose, storytellers are the pou, the speaking posts, of our histories and our futures. Celebrate powerful new writing in this mix-and-mingle reading event featuring the talented group of emerging voices joining us for the 2026 NZYWF. Take a seat in the Fale and listen to the posts that speak. Hosted by Eric Soakai!

Saturday 3 October

Make a Zine: From First Draft to The Art Lens – Workshop

10am-12pm

Meet the team behind The Art Lens NZ, a new literary magazine creating space for emerging young writers and artists, in a session of experimentation, who will share some of the writing and ideas that are shaping the publication. Next, you’ll take part in a zine and writing workshop, playing with prompts, pieces, ideas, and forms to create something of your own. Come ready to write, experiment, and make something that feels entirely yours. No previous writing or publishing experience needed.

Slam Poetry – Workshop 

10am-12pm 

Take a fast-paced and playful poetry workshop that will get you reflecting deeply and thinking on your feet. Try new writing exercises, unpick famous slam poems, and take new ideas away for your future creativity. Ideal for new writers and poets competing in the Otago Poetry Slam. Presented in association with Motif Poetry/Ruri Tūtohu.

Poetry as Community Care:  A Multilingual collaborative poetry – Workshop 

1.30pm-3pm

Poetry can be a practice of community care, creating space for listening, relating, and collective imagination. Through playful writing, oral storytelling, and collaborative poetry exercises, Yueke Li will help participants to create poems that travel between voices, languages, and hands. Inspired by whakapapa, we will explore relationships through memory, place, more-than-human kin, and shared stories, embracing multilingual expression as a chorus of different voices, rhythms, histories, and ways of knowing.

talking to the dark – Workshop

4pm-5.30pm

The writing process draws up plenty of fears and insecurities, both personal and at large. At the same time, writing helps us move through fear, to imagine solutions and future possibilities. In this low-lit workshop, Tara Leckie guides us through themes of writing to fear, uncertainty and tapping into the unconscious.

Otago Poetry Slam Champs 2026 – Performance

7.30pm-9.30pm

Some of the most creative poets in the region come together for a night of dynamic performances and friendly competition. Whether you’re a seasoned poet or a poet just starting out, you will be blanketed in support from the crowd as you share your voice.

Sunday 4 October

Ritual – Workshop

9.30am-11am

Ritual allows us to prepare the way for our creativity to channel outwards. It is a form of paying our respects to ourselves and our connections. When we replenish our love and respect for ourselves, we connect more deeply to our creativity. Explore with Eliana Gray both the use of ritual in our creative practice and the concept of ritual. Suitable for all genres and experience levels.

Courage it up – Panel/Discussion

12.30pm-1.30pm

Kia Māia: be brave, bold, capable, confident, all qualities arguably embodied and nurtured most deeply in community. Josiah Morgan, Tōrea Scott-Fyfe, Naomii Seah, Te Awhirēinga Heperi and Whaitiri Tua-Warbrick kōrero with Burns Fellow Rachel O’Neill about the ways courage can grow from lived experience, the aliveness and mess of collaboration, the suspension of disbelief and invitation it offers readers, and initiative as an antidote to resignation in unimaginable times. Presented in association with University of Otago/Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka.

NZYWF team

Young writer tuakana: Rauhina Kohuwai-Banks (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Ngāi Pākeha) and Eric Soakai (Poutasi/Falealili, Pangai/Ha’apai)

Festival tuakana: Antony Deaker (Kāi Tahu)

Hau kāika: Nick Tipa (Kāi Tahu)

Operations team: Vanessa Beck, Katrina Thomson, Hannah Molloy, Craig Birch-Morunga, Annah Taggart

Phone: +64 3 477 3350

Email: look@youngwritersfest.nz 

Website: youngwritersfest.nz 

FB/Insta: @NZYoungWritersFest 

Info 

All festival events are free to attend but you can buy a ‘pay what you want’ ticket if you choose. Events and workshops have limited space so we recommend booking.

All events are at Te Whare o Rukutia (20 Princes St) and Dunedin Community Gallery (26 Princes St) which are both wheelchair accessible.

Events will be photographed for ongoing festival marketing.

If you’re feeling unwell, please stay home.

More information is available at youngwritersfest.nz.

Our grateful thanks to:

Dunedin City Council, Otago Community Trust, CreativeNZ, UNESCO City of Literature, University of Otago, Scenic Hotel Dunedin City, Common Ground, Evansdale Cheese, Otago Access Radio FM, Robert Lord Writers Cottage Charitable Trust, Motif Poetry, The Art Lens, Mitre 10, Booksellers, Better Creative, The Print Room