Thursday 22 October 2026

This AusArt Day, I’m raising support for Voices from the Writers in the Park Archive — to raise funding for contributors to a podcast series drawn from an extraordinary archive of Australian literary voices, to appear as part of the Fully Lit podcast produced in collaboration with UTS Impact Studios and Sydney Review of Books.

Background

Between 1985 and 1994, Writers in the Park brought hundreds of Australian and international writers to the Harold Park Hotel in Glebe for weekly public readings. The surviving collection, now held by the State Library of NSW, includes 438 audio recordings and approximately 500 hours of sound.

I was one of the long-term organisers of Writers in the Park, and this project returns me to that archive more than thirty years later.

Through close listening, archival research, interviews and writing, I’m working with UTS Impact Studios, the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW and Create NSW to explore what these recordings can tell us about Australian literary culture before the digital age: about writers reading their own work, the communities that formed around them, and questions of voice, memory, trust and cultural custodianship—and in turn how that can help us fully engage with literary culture in the digital age.

What your support will make possible

The project will help activate an important literary archive, and also become a book-length work of creative nonfiction (you can read an excerpt here).

Your contribution will specifically help fund fees of contemporary contributors to the development of podcast material.

Every donation, whatever you can afford, will help.

Why AusArt Day?

AusArt Day is a national day of giving to Australian artists and arts organisations. On 22 October, people across Australia are being invited to directly support the creative work they value.

If this project — or the preservation and retelling of our literary history more broadly — matters to you, your support, however modest, can help.

Thank you.

Linden Hyatt
Co-Executive Producer, Writer and Researcher
Voices from the Writers in the Park Archive project