The Williamstown Literary Festival turns 23 this year, and for the first time it has a theme. Reflections runs across the three-day programme from 12 to 14 June, chosen partly because Williamstown sits on the water, but also because the organisers wanted to create room for harder conversations about where literature and the wider world currently stand.
Running the programme this year are Alice Reid and Rita Horanyi, who are both new to the festival. Reid is a librarian, writer and RMIT student who has managed the library at Williamstown High School’s Bayview Campus since 2018. Outside her day job she founded the online literary magazine Two Wolves Digest in 2023 and last year directed the revival of RMIT’s Odyssey Literary Festival, a student-run event that had been dormant since the pandemic. She received a Vocational Service Award from Altona City Rotary Club in 2024 for her work in the school community. Horanyi brings her own focus on current issues and place-based programming.
“This is the first year Rita and I have worked for Willy Lit Fest, so I can’t say for certain how it will differ from previous years,” Reid says. “But we were keen to program with a theme in mind, which the festival didn’t have last year.”
The Reflections theme was broad enough to pull in a wide range of events while still giving the programme a consistent thread. “It also provides space for discussions about the state of the world, and how art and literature acts as a mirror,” Reid says.
One conversation she expects to draw real interest is the ongoing debate around free speech and censorship in the arts. The past year has been an uncomfortable one for Australian literary festivals, with the boycotts at Bendigo Writers Festival and Adelaide Writers Week generating national coverage and splitting opinion within the literary community.
“I think freedom of speech and censorship in the arts will be a big one,” Reid says. “Especially considering what has happened at other writers’ festivals in the past year, particularly the boycotts at Bendigo Writers Festival and Adelaide Writers Week.”
The community dimension matters to her, and it shows in how she talks about the festival’s role. Williamstown draws visitors from across Melbourne who might not otherwise come to the suburb, and the festival gives local writers a stage alongside better-known names.
“Festivals like Willy Lit Fest draw in people from all over the city, so it’s a great opportunity to showcase Williamstown,” she says. “The festival also gives local writers a platform alongside nationally-recognised names.”
There is also something more basic at stake in gathering people around books in person. “Writers’ festivals in general are important because reading and writing are often solitary pursuits,” Reid says. “When we hold festivals celebrating literature, it’s suddenly a lively, social thing.”
Williamstown Literary Festival draws readers and writers from across Melbourne into the bayside suburb each year, while also giving local authors the chance to appear alongside established Australian names. Festival co-director Alice Reid says the event helps showcase both Williamstown itself and the strength of its local writing community
As a school librarian, Reid has a particular vantage point on how young people relate to reading, and her take is less alarming than the usual headlines about attention spans and screens.
“I think people get very alarmist about ‘kids not reading’, and it’s true that there are more digital distractions in 2026,” she says. “But people have been saying ‘kids don’t read anymore’ since I was a kid in the mid-90s. There’s always something that pulls people away from sitting with a book.”
What she does notice is a specific drop-off during secondary school. “In my experience as a school librarian, I see so many Year 7s who emerge from primary school as enthusiastic readers, only to abandon reading completely by Year 9.
I’m not too worried about it. A lot of them will return to reading when they’re adults and they have the headspace for it.”
The priority during those years, she says, is keeping books present and visible. “It’s vital during those years to keep books and reading visible, and to frame it as a good and enjoyable thing. And digital distractions and dwindling attention spans are something we’re all battling right now, not just young people.”
She is also frank about the gap between where young readers are engaging with books and where they are not. “There are also many, many older teens and people in their twenties who can now discover books via online avenues (e.g BookTok), which is great, but this isn’t quite reflected in the demographic attending writers’ festivals,” she says. “It’s usually an older crowd. I imagine this is because older people have the money to spend at a writers’ festival, and also because writers’ festivals are often programmed with an older crowd in mind. It will be interesting to see if this changes over the next decade or so.”
Reid’s own programming brief was specifically aimed at changing that. “For me, it was programming for younger people: kids, teens and adults in the 18 to 35 bracket,” she says.
Her passion for bringing younger people into the literary sector is what drives much of her work outside the festival too. Two Wolves Digest and the Odyssey Literary Festival revival at RMIT’s Capitol Theatre both come from the same instinct: that the sector needs new readers and new voices if it is going to stay alive.
One of the year’s more distinctive events is Eulogy to the Internet, a reading performance featuring four writers reflecting on what the internet was, what it has become, and whether it can be salvaged. “There will likely be mentions of AI slop,” Reid says.
On AI more broadly, she is measured. “If you’re someone who loves the process of writing and creating, there’s no joy in producing an AI-written book. Why would you do it? There are smarter ways to make money. And as for the end result, AI can only take it so far. If we all produced AI-generated books, we’d just be regurgitating the same stories over and over again.”
The deeper point, she says, is that writing was never purely about the product. “People will always write and create for the love of it, and to have their own voice and story be heard. AI can’t replace either of those things.”
What Reid wants people to leave with after the weekend is simple enough. “I hope they are entertained and learn something new about their community, both local and global. I also hope they are inspired to read, buy and support the work of writers on the line-up.”
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