Hunter Writers’ Centre serves the writers, stories and storytellers of the Hunter region.

Home of Lighthouse Arts, Newcastle Poetry Prize, Newcastle Short Story Award and the Grieve Project.

What's On

AUTHOR TALK: Books at the Bowlo with Bronwyn Rivers

Tuesday 14 April
6 pm – 8 pm
Club Lambton
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‘Books at the Bowlo’ is a place for bookish friends and book clubs to meet and mingle, catch up on their monthly reading over a meal, and meet local writers.

Reading with a Writer’s Eye Book Club

Monday 20 April
6:30 pm — 8:30 pm
Joy Cummings Centre
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A craft-focused book club for writers who want to understand how and why award-winning contemporary novels work. Open to members of Hunter Writers’ Centre.

Stormy ocean under a heavy grey sky with the words “Grieve 2026” and “Hunter Writers Centre.”

The Grieve Project – 2026

Submissions close 8 pm AEST, Sunday 26 April 2026
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Grief isolates. Storytelling brings people back into connection.
We invite writers, storytellers and community nationwide to participate in the 2026 Grieve Project.

Member’s Autumn 2026 Writing Competition

A quarterly writing competition with cash prizes for members of Hunter Writers’ Centre.

Closes 5 pm Friday 8 May

A heartwarming and evocative novel of love, friendship and family, where hope overcomes all – even terrible hospital coffee. Coral is an expert at getting things done. The final item on her professional to-do list is to cap off her stellar career delivering a paper at a conference in New York. Except a week before her flight, her elderly mum has a serious fall. Andie has no memory of the man who pushed her out of the way of a speeding car. But when her mysterious saviour awakens from his coma, Andie realises that her offers of help in return may pave the way toward sorting out her own life too. The last thing Mara wants is to be assigned to work at the bedside of the much-despised senior partner of her law firm while she recovers from an accident. Mara has sacrificed a lot to care for people she actually loves and she resents having to do it again for this embittered old woman. Coral, Andie and Mara become the daily visitors to the three patients at the end of East Wing at Hepburn House Rehabilitation Hospital. The balcony that connects the three rooms provides an oasis, a healing place, but more than that, too: a place where their lives will interconnect and never be quite the same again…

AUTHOR TALK: Books at the Bowlo with Janette Paul

Tuesday 12 May
6 pm – 8 pm
Club Lambton
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‘Books at the Bowlo’ is a place for bookish friends and book clubs to meet and mingle, catch up on their monthly reading over a meal, and meet local writers.