Odyssey Literary Festival 2025

Odyssey Literary Festival is a student-led initiative from RMIT's Professional Writing and Editing program. It is a one-day writer's festival supporting the voices of diverse writers and editors, while providing invaluable skills to RMIT students who run the event.

The 2025 festival features a keynote from award-winning poet Evelyn Araluen. Evelyn is a Goorie and Koori poet, editor and researcher. She is co-editor of Overland magazine, and her debut poetry collection Dropbear won the 2022 Stella Prize.

Odyssey Lit Fest 2025 will feature the following discussion panels:

  • Nothing About us Without Us: an open discussion amongst editors, writers and disability advocates where we will explore and unpack the barriers to accessibility in Australian writing and publishing. Featuring writers Carly Findlay and Eli Sutherland, moderated by Kate Larsen.
  • Getting to the Heart of the Matter: a discussion with memoirists Sian Prior and Janine Mikosza to break down the process of recording their lives and asking why they do so. Moderated by Dani Baulch.
  • Publishing Through Censorship: explores the idea of truth-telling and censorship within an increasingly fragmented ecosystem, and how this affects literature, journalism and our idea of what it means to be human. With writers Osman Faruqi and publisher Aviva Tuffield. Moderated by Melissa Cranenburgh.
  • The Poetics of Place and Displacement: celebrates the power of the spoken word and the deep human connections created through performance poetry. Featuring writers Tony Birch and Thabani Tshuma. Moderated by Tim Loveday.

Odyssey Literary Festival will also launch Visible Ink's 2nd digital issue: Now and Then, alongside the 2025 Towards Publication anthology Where Light Falls.

The theme for this year's festival is PULSE, and addresses what makes us human – and why it's more important than ever.

Odyssey Literary Festival: celebrate vulnerability, truth and connection through literature, and explore what makes us human.

Odyssey Literary Festival is presented by RMIT University.

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Acknowledgement of Country

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.

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