an extended literary festival taking the form of occasional conversations with writers

We hold our events on the lands of the Jinabara and Gubbi Gubbi Peoples. We acknowledge their elders past and present.

They are the keepers of the ancient stories of this place.

Welcome to our 2026 program.

We now have two events booked for the first half of the year

More to come.

More details on our upcoming events page

You can help

Tyyni and I have decided, over the years, not to seek external funding for Outspoken. In this way we can maintain our freedom to operate as we wish. We don’t, just for a contemporary example, have any boards to answer to.

It is, however, expensive to stage our events.

We have recently set up a facility to receive tax-deductible donations.

If you like what we do - and want to see it continue for years to come - we invite you to contribute whatever you can.

Every donation, however large or small, will both help, and be much appreciated. You can click here, or visit the Support Us page on the menu above. Thank-you.

The Sunshine Coast Arts Foundation provides a portal for us to receive your donation. All funds are paid directly to us.

In 2025 we held seven events. Each and every one was fascinating in its own way, but there were, certainly for me, a couple of high points. In particular I found the conversation with Hugh White extraordinary.

In a time when our relations with the US are, how can I put this, open to question, he was forthright in his opinions about what we should be doing in terms of defence. To put it mildly he is not a fan of AUKUS, describing it as ‘deeply flawed’ and commenting that not only ‘do we not need the submarines, we won’t get them’. Every day it seems more likely that the rest of the world is coming to agree with him, including our March speaker this year, former Premier of NSW, Bob Carr (as well as another previous Outspoken guest, ex Foreign Minister, Gareth Evans). If you want more of Hugh White you can view a very long but fascinating interview with him - discussing the books which most affected his world view - on this YouTube site.

Other events were with Debra Oswald & Steve MinOn, Jane Rawson & Barry Traill, Hugh White & Joanna Jenkins, Chris Hammer, Heather Rose, Bob Brown & Peter Stevens from Lake Baroon Catchment Care. In 2024 we spoke with Rick Morton, Gina Chick, Bri Lee, Hugh Mackay and Dr Norman Swan, with introducing authors Siang Lu, Andrew Stafford, Carly-Jay Metcalfe, Simon Cleary and Marko Newman.

We’re immensely grateful to all our authors for making the journey up to Maleny, and to the publishers who help us get them here.

The podcasts of all our events are now available.

There is a total of 90 podcasts available free under the banner of Outspoken Maleny.

Please click on the Podcasts or find us on Apple Podcasts and Amazon Podcasts, click here to be directed to them.

Once on their podcast page click the three dots on the top right and choose ‘follow’

That way you will get regular updates of all of our episodes!

We use the on-line booking platform TryBooking for all our ticket sales. It makes it easier for you to purchase tickets, you can buy them at any time of day or night. If for some reason you have difficulties purchasing tickets over the internet please contact Steven directly, but only as a last resort!