What haunts your favourite writers? Do they wake in the night plagued by regrets? Do they see the past spilling into our present? Gather round to hear original ghost stories and moving reflections from a brilliant line-up of some of the best writers in the world.

Ghost stories are everywhere. In fairytales, folklore, Gothic novels and modern fiction alike. There are the ghosts that plague our minds – old flames, past wrongs and regrets that come to us in the dead of night – and those that haunt history itself, restless spirits that refuse to rest in peace. 

So, gather round our metaphorical campfire as a brilliant line-up of leading storytellers take the torch to share their moving, revealing and sometimes surprising takes on this year’s festival theme: ghosts. 

Comprising original work from some of the most talented writers in the world, crafted exclusively for this one spectacular night in Melbourne, don’t miss the literary event of the season. It will haunt you.  
 
Featuring spooktacular storytellers, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer and The Man of Two Faces, Viet Thanh Nguyen; VPLA-winner of the 2024 Indigenous Prize for Writing Daniel Browning (Close to the Subject); award-winning writer and journalist Louise Milligan (Pheasant’s Nest); acclaimed writer, editor and broadcaster Sinéad Gleeson (Hagstone, The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers); and one of our most beloved contemporary voices, Leslie Jamison (The Empathy Exams, Splinters). 

Book signings will not follow this event.