Radio broadcasters and podcasters will play an important part, as they usually do, in the 2026 Sydney Writers Festival.

The program, launched this week, has a strand of ABC Radio National programs featured. Various talks will be recorded by RN and rebroadcast in books and writing shows on the network.

ABC Radio Sydney morning host Hamish Mcdonald and RN’s Geraldine Doogue will record a live podcast at the festival.

Andrew Ford from RN’s The Music Show will host a session of music and discussion with three of Australia’s leading contemporary songwriters, DOBBY, Ziggy Ramo and Leah Senior, as they discuss the relationship between words and music and perform some of their favourite songs.

This year’s countdown of Radio National’s Top 100 Books will also be launched at the Festival in a featured writers session hosted by Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh.

The BBC’s international correspondent Lyse Doucet, fresh from her recent reporting in Iran, will reflect on the story of modern Afghanistan as told by its people in her new book The Finest Hotel in Kabul and be part of the Global Roaming podcast session.

As it has done in past years, 2SER FM is working with the festival to produce a podcast series. The first podcast this year is the opening announcement and an overview of the program.

Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales will give insights into building trust on the internet in a talk about his new book The Seven Rules of Trust in conversation with ABC 702’s Richard Fidler. Former NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, now a resident of Sydney’s northern beaches, will speak to editor and podcaster Holly Wainwright. Irish writers Roddy Doyle and Niall Williams will also be featured.

Speaking to Craig Reucassel on ABC 702 Sydney breakfast this week, the festival’s Artistic Director Ann Mossop revealed that lawyer and novelist Randa Abdel Fattah will also be on the program. Addressing the controversy generated about Fattah’s appearance at the Adelaide Writers Festival, Reucassel asked Mossop:

“The Jewish Board of Deputies is going to be writing to all festival sponsors and corporate supporters to make them aware of the participation of Dr. Randa Abdel Fatah in two sessions… following the 2025 Bondi shootings. What’s your response to those letters from the Jewish Board of Deputies?”

Mossop replied:

“We invited Rhonda Abdel Fatar to the festival to talk about her novel, it was published in August last year. We invited her in October, and we stand by that invitation.

“It’s an important book, particularly for Sydney audiences. It’s the story of a journalist and academic working through all the difficult issues about how to tell the stories they need to tell in their work.

“It’s very disappointing that our sponsors are being targeted in this way. The people who sponsor the festival and sponsor our work, projects like Russ the Story Bus, which takes books and writers into primary schools. These are people who support us in a whole bunch of different ways… they are doing something really great by supporting art and culture.

“So it’s very disappointing that they’re being harassed about their support for the festival.”

Reucassel: ”Is there anything dealing with anti Semitism, with the life of Jewish Sydney siders?”

Mossop: “Of course. We had an extraordinary conversation in the festival last year about anti-semitism with Michael Gwenda and we’re following up with that again. There’s another conversation under the heading, Holding Up the Mirror… what we’re trying to do in that conversation is bring together Australian and international perspectives. We’ve got Michael Visontay and Lee Kofman, and the British journalist, Jon Sopel, talking about that, and in the chair, we have Avril Alba, who’s a professor at the University of Sydney.

“This is a festival that’s happening in Sydney, right now, in 2026. So we’ve also got a session called After Bondi, where it’s a group of Jewish artists and writers reflecting on what they’ve written about, what happened, and reflecting on what it means….

“You know, the interesting thing about a writer’s festival, particularly in terms of these kind of accusations about social cohesion… a writers festival… brings a whole lot of people together, who want to come, to come together in person and listen to a writer talking about their work. It might be a writer they love or a writer they are sceptical of, or disagree with. But they’re coming together to listen to each other across disagreement… we think that’s an incredibly positive thing. Hence the theme, ‘show me the truth’.”

Reucassel’s top choice is the session with investigative journalist and novelist  Patrick Radden Keith.

Find all the radio presenters and podcasters in the Festival program.