Clunes Booktown announces first guests, new dates

Regional Victoria’s Clunes Booktown Festival has revealed an extended program, as well as new dates.

The festival, which usually runs in May, will be held next year on the weekend of 25–26 March to take advantage of the warmer autumn weather.

According to festival organisers, the program has also been extended ‘to look at the many and various ways we tell stories—through books, film, music, theatre, songwriting, photography and other visual arts’. New to the Booktown program will be an evening of live music in the old Central Garage (one of the main locations in Mad Max).

Meanwhile, Clunes Booktown will ‘continue to celebrate every aspect of the book—not just writing and reading but making, illustrating, publishing, retailing, and sharing’. Among the first guests to be revealed are Tony Birch, Aileen Morton Robinson, Sophie Cunningham, Miles Allinson, Emily Bitto, Emma Viskic, Jock Serong, Chris Flynn and Nova Weetman, with more to be announced.

This year’s festival attracted over 11,000 visitors after two years of lockdown-related cancellations.

For more information about Clunes Booktown, see the festival’s website.

Category: Local news