QLF's 2025 festival featured award-winning writers, thinkers and experts, and included for the first time an international author.

The list of outstanding Australian authors who attended our festival included Marcia Langton, Peter Greste, Bob Brown , Virginia Trioli, Alice Zaslavsky, Brian Nankervis and Melissa Leong, as well as 2025 Miles Franklin-winner Siang Lu and two previous Stella Prize-winners, poet Evelyn Araluen and novelist Heather Rose.

QLF hosted our first-ever international guest in Egyptian-Canadian journalist Omar El Akkad, in conversation with Australian journalist Antoinette Lattouf about global flashpoints including Black Lives Matter and the genocide in Gaza.

Footy fans enjoyed Geelong Cats champion Zach Tuohy and ABC broadcaster Catherine Murphy in conversation about their book The Way of the Irish.

Mystery afficianados attended sessions with Sydney author Jane Caro and local crime writers Mark Smith, Christine Keighery and Tanya Scott, and true crime lovers relished a conversation about podcasting with veteran crime reporter Andrew Rule and ABC investigative journalist Rachael Brown, in which they unpacked our fascination with the true crime genre, and mushroom murders.

At our 2025 festival we also -

• marked Jane Austen’s 250th birthday with a lively panel discussion, afternoon tea and sparkling wine, and a Regency dance lesson; 
• hosted a play-reading of a new work about Germaine Greer ;
• offered budding writers a half-day workshop with award-winning romance writer Marion Lennox;
• celebrated real life and stories with a special Better Off Said event created by Marieke Hardy and Emilie Zoey Baker and featuring Antoinette Lattouf, Hannie Rayson, Brian Nankervis, Andrew Rule and Shokoofeh Azar, with music by Sarah Carroll; and
• featured discussions on Indigenous art, memoir, gardening, politics, America, journalism, the wellness movement, food and more!

QLF 2025 was a brilliant, captivating and highly engaging celebration of community and culture. We look forward to creating another vibrant and enriching festival for 2026!

Was literacy this much fun when you were in school?

Queenscliffe Literary Festival’s eleventh annual Schools Program has just wrapped up and it was a smashing success.

Across two weeks in May, authors visited every kindergarten and school in the Borough of Queenscliffe. 

CBCA Award-winner Andrea Rowe captivated preschoolers with her beautiful beachy picture books; Beth and Byll Stephen from the Teeny Tiny Stevies had Foundation—Year 2 students up and dancing between readings from their six picture books; Felice Arena, author of the bestselling Specky Magee books, literally had Year 3-4s rolling in the aisles and taking speccies; and CBCA-shortlisted novelist Huda Hayek encountered some year 5-6s so polite they didn’t want to acknowledge her red nose let alone her hijab!

The kids had a ball: here is some of their feedback.

‘I like that it was funny and I learnt about things.’

‘It was super fun.’

‘It was too good.’

‘I would tell my parents that today I had the best school day ever and tell them about it.’

‘I wood tell my parents that I had a grat time.’

Thanks to these excellent authors for visiting Queenscliff and Point Lonsdale; thanks to the schools and kindergartens for their enthusiasm and support (and their AV skills!); thanks to the kids for sharing their love of books with us all; and thanks to the QLF volunteers—Viv, Colette, Marg, Ginny and especially Linden, who put it all together.

Queenscliffe Literary Festival’s Schools Program is supported by the Borough of Queenscliffe and receives donations as people buy tickets for the adult festival program. We are very grateful for the community support for this excellent program, which reaches every preschool and school student in the Borough each year.