OzAsia Festival’s 2025 Weekend of Words program released

OzAsia Festival’s Weekend of Words has released its full program, running 7–9 November 2025 in Adelaide.

The 2025 festival will include 24 free events featuring 56 Asian and Asian Australian authors.

An opening gala on the Friday night will take place under the theme ‘… then the world got loud’, hosted by Sami Shah and featuring, among others, Cheng Lei, Hasib Hourani, and Sashi Perera. A session on guilty pleasures is set to close the festival, featuring Yumna Kassab, Steve MinOn, Mirandi Riwoe, and Qin Qin.

Among the local headliners are Manisha Anjali, Tony Ayres, Shankari Chandran, Cheng Lei, Keshe Chow, Siang Lu, Thuy On, and Grace Yee.

International guests include Prasanthi Ram, Ratih Kumala, Malachi Edwin Vethamani, Kirsten Han, Joo Dong-geun, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar and Beni Sumer Yantha.

Highlights include panels on happily ever afters, writing for streaming, writing identity, and truth and TikTok. Free workshops include ‘The Poetic Line’ with Malachi Edwin Vethamani, ‘Memoir Writing’ with Sarah Malik, ‘Make a Manga One-Shot’ with Queenie Chan and ‘Drawn to Life’ with Joo Dong-geun and Chan.

Weekend of Words curator Sami Shah said, ‘At Weekend of Words, we believe stories aren’t just what we write – they’re how we live, remember, resist and begin again. From memoirs and poems to fantasy, journalism, and comics, our writers are reshaping what story means – and who gets to tell it.’

More information is available on the festival’s website.

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