A small town festival with big ideas.

Our vast, interconnected world has shrunk in the last few years. Human fragility and resilience has been brought into new focus by the tangible threat of the pandemic. The greater, existential threat of climate emergency hovers in the background. We speak about generosity of spirit, but still detain refugees off shore, hoping to ‘make an example’ of them. Our First Nations still cry out for justice, for truth-telling.

Still we write. We meet with neighbours, and offer our hospitality to strangers when called upon. We crew the RFS trucks, serve on CWA cake stalls, and knit in solidarity with farmers wanting to Shut the Gate. We make small changes in our own backyard when we can. We buy local — and pick up the neighbour’s mail when they’re away. We find immense pleasure in the connection between ourselves and words: those written, those spoken aloud, shared ideas, so many shared conversations.

Our world may feel like it’s shrinking, but the future is the horizon, presenting chances to move forward.

The Kyogle Writers Festival seeks to bring the best of contemporary Australian writing to our region to explore the question: ‘Close to Home?’ In this remarkable neck of the woods which incorporates the lands of the Bundjalung people, who nurtured and managed the land through millennia. Whose sovereignty was never ceded.

Ours is an area of stunning natural beauty. Our recent history features the cedargetters and generations of farmers along with the migration of the children of Aquarius. Our hidden valleys stretch up to the sensational rainforests of the Border Ranges National Park. Our bush runs west through to Bonalbo, and up to Woodenbong. The Land. The streams. The many bridges. The wildlife. Our homes.

We are ‘west of Byron’ — and ask: why look to the coast for culture when so much is right here at Home?