Orange Readers and Writers Festival 2026: Main Festival

Embrace the cosy Orange winter charm and ignite your imagination at Orange Readers and Writers Festival on Saturday 1 August at the Hotel Canobolas.

Gather by the fireside with book lovers and brilliant authors for a day of captivating stories and inspiring conversations to chase away the winter chill, supported by Collins Booksellers.

Saturday Main Festival Event

Saturday 1 August | 10am - 4pm | includes morning tea and lunch |

Hotel Canobolas 248 Summer Street, Orange | Cost $80 (until Monday 20 July at 5pm )|

$95pp (after Monday 20 July 5pm )|

Meet our incredible guest authors:

Chris Hammer

Martin is back for his first investigation since Trust.

Discover Legacy, where Martin Scarsden finds the tables have been turned – instead of the hunter, he finds himself the hunted. He flees into the outback, only to find nowhere is safe.

The killers are closing in and it’s all he can do to survive.

But who wants to kill him and why?

And how is his fate linked to the disgraced ex-wife of a football star, a fugitive wanted for a decades old murder, and two nineteenth-century explorers from a legendary expedition?

Cynthia Banham – Mother Shadow: A Meditation on Maternal Inheritance

Mother Shadow opens with the unearthing of a family secret. Cynthia Banham’s great-grandmother was not an orphan, as she’d been told, but a foundling, abandoned at birth by a mother who ‘did not consent to be named’. Cynthia’s discovery triggers a passionate and indignant reaction: What kind of mother would relinquish her child?

Troubled by her rush to judge her ancestor, Cynthia becomes fixated on uncovering the mother’s identity, a quest that takes her and her family to Bologna. As she pieces together the series of tragic events that led to the baby’s abandonment, Cynthia wonders if her compulsion to understand the woman’s act is linked to her own overwhelming sense of inadequacy as a mother.

Sam Guthrie – The Peak

Sure to be THE debut thriller of the year, The Peak is a nailbiting and unputdownable read; a powerfully taut, gripping and fast-moving international thriller that weaves a story of friendship, love and betrayal together with the ruthless geopolitics of China’s rise, set in the last 24 hours of the world as we know it!

Meredith Jaffe – The Importance of Being Delia

Pleasing other people is hell. Pleasing herself is a revolution.

The gorgeous, cosy new family drama from the bestselling author of The Dressmakers of Yarrandarrah Prison.

For more than thirty years, Delia Watson was the silent engine behind her husband Charlie's glittering music career - the perfect wife, the reliable rock. Now retired, she is ready for leisure. The universe, however, has other plans.

Trapped cat-sitting a loathsome feline in the deceptive calm of Pretty Point, Delia's patience snaps when a cryptic letter arrives from a stranger. Charlie claims ignorance, but Delia knows he is lying.

Finally, she is done playing nice.

Sue Williams

Sue is a masterful writer of historical fiction, praised for both her meticulous research and her empathic treatment of characters, particularly women, brought back from the shadowy reaches of the past into the spotlight. Her Australian series, Elizabeth & Elizabeth, about the Elizabeths Macquarie and Macarthur, That Bligh Girl about Mary Bligh the daughter of notorious governor and mutiny survivor William Bligh, and The Governor, His Wife and His Mistress about the tangled love life of Philip Gidley King, and now The Duke’s Secret have all proved best sellers.

The Festival is supported by Collins Booksellers, Orange. Books by the guest authors will be available for sale and signing at the Festival.

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Writing Workshop: Kickstarting Your Creative Drive with Kim Kelly

Friday 31 July | 10am - 1pm | includes morning tea and lunch |

Hotel Canobolas 248 Summer Street, Orange | Cost $45pp|