Newcastle is situated about two hours North of Sydney. If you have a car you take the Pacific Highway, but I'm into taking the train. Newcastle also has two airports. Williamtown is closest to the city and has direct flights nationally. Trains generally leave every hour from Sydney Central and it's a stunning trip. Remember to get off at Civic and cross over the footbridge, then turn right and cross the main rd (Hunter St) and the first street on your left is Auckland St. If you walk up it you'll come across most of our venues. The Octapod will be on your right. Most events will be held around the corner of Auckland St and Kings St Newcastle. In this vicinity you will find the festival HQ (housed at The Octapod), University House, The Town Hall, Civic Park, and the Festival Club at the Performing Arts Newcastle Building. There's solid travel info available at the This Is Not Art site - www.octapod.org.au/thisisnotart.

The third annual Festival will be held from the 5th - 9th October in Newcastle, NSW.

Newcastle is Australia's second oldest and sixth largest city. It's bigger than Canberra, Darwin, and Hobart. It's an odd place - thankfully free of the business of government but suffering the neglect of being a regional city. It also happens to be (against all popular belief) a beautiful old city. It's the only big city in Australia where the CBD is 500 metres from the beach and the harbour (the city is on a peninsula jutting out in to the Pacific Ocean). Through the wonders of constant economic decline and recession, Newcastle somehow managed to miss the waves of development that wiped out the old centres of most of our major cities in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. So it still has a lot of the cityscape of last century. It's also a city in the process of reinventing itself - it's gone from being an industrial town to being a Uni town (the University is the largest employer there now) to becoming... We'd like the writers festival to be a small part of that process.