Canberra will be encouraged to share in its love of books as the city's writers festival marks its 10th anniversary and brings some of the big names in writing to the capital.
Andrew O'Hagan, the celebrated Irish novelist thrice nominated for the Booker Prize, will join the festival on its opening night along with Anna Goldsworthy, Siang Lu and Sophie Gee.
The authors will talk about the books that shaped them as well discuss their hopes and fears for the future of the book.
Andra Putnis, the festival's artistic director, said she was optimistic book's future despite their oft-reported demise.
"When I go around town talking to people, they tell me how much joy and relief books bring them, and in fact, they want to be reminded that it's OK to kind of hang out in bed and read a book," Putnis said.
"They want that kind of permission in the world that we face, I suppose, with all its busyness and all of the screens and scrolls around us. So I feel people are craving it."
And after a bruising period for writers festivals - rocked by protests, cancellations and politics beyond the page - have audiences learnt it is still important to be challenged and exposed to ideas in a constructive way?
"I think we can have hard conversations in Canberra and audiences are respectful and frankly quite inspiring in their love of important and meaningful conversations," Putnis said.
"So I think we can feature books that have contested kind of issues and ideas in them and, you know, we do so again this year, but really what we're trying to do is focus on, I suppose, what Canberrans might want to hear and what the most exciting books are of 2026."
The festival program, released on Thursday night, includes events with Judith Lucy, Chris Hammer, Sita Sargeant and Pip Williams. Andy Griffiths and Morris Gleitzman will feature in the program's section for young readers.
Putnis said she was excited the program featured many writers of memoirs and biographies, who put their hearts on the page.
"One of the ones that I'm interested in is The Intimacy of the World, which is with Jane Messer and Majeda Awawdeh, and they've written beautiful memoirs that ... illuminate the intimacy of history and kind of personal stories within the larger stories of our world," she said.
"So they have written books that are basically Israeli and Palestinian memoirs, and they know each other well and actually have kind of mentored each other for a long time, and that's going to be, I think, an exciting conversation that, I suppose, reveals why understanding the individual and family stories matter so much and can bring us closer together."
Putnis said nearly a third of the program was for children and young people, which had been curated by the children's book author Rhiân Williams, and would have an intergenerational feeling concentrated in the parliamentary triangle.
"And there's a lot of role modelling, of course, for young children in that idea [of reading books], but I just love the idea of some of the adult authors having to vacate the main theatre of the National Library so that we can fill it full of children," Putnis said.
