With the apparent demise of the Perth Writers’ Festival—for this year, anyway—it’s heartening to see new festivals emerge in Perth to fill the gap. Earlier in the year, there was Perth Storyfest 2025, established by The Writers Collective, which was fully booked and a great success. The second half of the year also sees the Festival of Fiction 2025, in Joondalup, running for its second year. And coming up very soon, a brand-new kind of writers’ festival in Fremantle/Walyalup, Totally Lit.
Totally Lit, which runs from 26 September to 10 October 2025, is said to be ‘inspired by place, culture, community and story’. I spoke to curator/producer Sharon Flindell about what the festival offers.
AC: It’s exciting news for Western Australia’s reading and writing community that there’s a new writers’ festival on the way, and I’m interested to know more about your plans to ‘shake up public expectations about what a writers’ festival can be’. Could you give me some examples?
SF: The idea for Totally Lit sprang from a personal light bulb moment I experienced a few years ago. I was attending the Literature Centre’s ‘Celebrate Reading’ Conference at Fremantle Town Hall and at some point I looked around the venue and noticed how many people in the audience and on stage were resident Fremantle writers and illustrators, the majority of whom were also published by Fremantle Press. Meanwhile, the team from Paper Bird were in the foyer busily selling books and it struck me that the whole event was this great collaboration between Fremantle’s writing sector organisations and writing talents. At that moment I realised Fremantle was truly a ‘city of literature’ and that this was something worth shouting about and celebrating. The festival sprang from there.
From the outset, I began thinking about curating a program of live literature events that didn’t rely solely on inviting audiences into auditoriums or focusing on new release titles and best-selling authors but that took Fremantle’s places and people and communities as the jumping off point.
What’s been so interesting and rewarding about developing Totally Lit has been the response from the community. The idea of Fremantle as a ‘city of literature’ has really resonated across the board—from local government to local businesses and of course writers and other creatives . There’s been a lot of enthusiasm to get involved, which has meant that we’ve also had lots of scope to invent new and fun ways to enjoy live literature and to think about creating events in unexpected places.
For seasoned writers’ festival audiences, Totally Lit has plenty of the types of events you would typically expect from a writers’ festival—book launches, open mic nights, workshops, great conversations with award-winning and best-selling authors, et al.—but we’ve also got quite a lot more.
Totally Lit is as much about oral storytelling as it is about the written word, so you can expect a range of different storytelling experiences and activities. You can also expect to discover Fremantle through its many stories, whether captured in places, buildings or books.
It’s all very much about having live lit fun in lots of different ways!
Unfortunately, we didn’t succeed in raising as much investment as we’d hoped, so there are several great events that we’d planned but aren’t going to be able to deliver this year. It’s ok, though, we’re keeping those in a back pocket for another time. 😊
AC: When will the program be available, and who can we expect to see?
SF: Any day now! 😊
We’re aiming to embrace a really broad range of communities, interests and age groups, and we’re really excited about the fantastic line-up of writers, storytellers and other creatives that have joined us in Totally Lit. We think we definitely have something for everyone.
AC: How can readers, writers and others in the literary industries become involved?
SF: Another way that we’re doing things a little differently at Totally Lit is that the program was always conceived to be a hybrid of curated and open access events. We wanted to create an inspiring framework and then open that out to allow more opportunities for others in the literary industries and wider community to create and bring their own events. We’ve had a strong response to that invitation and some fantastic events have been incorporated into the program as a result.
Once the program is launched, we hope there’ll be an equally strong response from the sector and that we’ll see lots of writers, publishers, readers, and others in the community who may not necessarily think of themselves as readers coming along to experience the festival. Perhaps we’ll change their ideas about what writers‘ festivals are and who they’re for.
AC: I see on your website that Fremantle/Walyalup is aiming to become Australia’s third UNESCO City of Literature (following Melbourne and Hobart). Is the festival involved with this?
SF: Establishing Fremantle/Walyalup as a UNESCO City of Literature and creating the Totally Lit festival were ideas born at the same time and as a result of the realisation that Fremantle truly is a city of literature. Both things we think should be recognised and celebrated.
Certainly in my various conversations over the past eighteen months, I believe there is a strong political and community will to do both.
Totally Lit is happening 26 September to 10 October 2025
The program is about to be announced. You can subscribe here for updates.
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