Fantasy fiction legend Garth Nix joins the festival
We’re thrilled to announce our next headline author for the 2026 Dandenong Ranges Literary Festival: fantasy fiction legend Garth Nix OAM.
If you’ve ever travelled the Old Kingdom subduing the restless dead with Sabriel, Lirael or Abhorsen, or solved a supernatural mystery alongside The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, or grew up reading The Ragwitch and then slept with the light on, you already know exactly why we’re doing a little happy dance.
Garth Nix has been a successful full-time writer since 2001, but before that he had many other lives: literary agent, marketing consultant, book editor, publicist, sales rep, bookseller and, just to keep things interesting, a part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve.
Having already won multiple Aurealis Awards, the ABIA Award, the Ditmar Award, the Mythopoeic Award, CBCA Honour Book (and been shortlisted for the Lodestar Award, the Locus Awards and the Shirley Jackson Award, among others), in 2025 he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for services to literature.
With more than seven million books sold worldwide, work translated into 42 languages and bestseller status on The New York Times, Publishers Weekly and The Bookseller lists, Garth is one of the true giants of fantasy fiction.
His most recent releases include Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz: Stories of the Witch Knight and the Puppet Sorcerer (all nine god-slaying tales, together at last) and the children’s novel We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord – proof that after more than sixty published short stories and an enormous back catalogue, Garth’s endlessly creative imagination shows absolutely no signs of slowing down.
Garth will be part of the Speculative Fiction panel on Saturday, October 10, and will be doing a special In Conversation event with Declan Fry on Sunday, October 11.
Garth’s brand new science fiction book, Massif, is being released in early September, just a few weeks before the Festival, so be sure to mark your diaries and pick up his newest creation while it’s still hot off the press.
Whether you’re a lifelong Old Kingdom devotee or you simply love a good high fantasy or sword-and-sorcery yarn, this is a session you will not want to miss.
Full details of Garth’s events will be available when the Festival program is released on August 27. Tickets for all events will go on sale on August 28.
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Garth Nix photo credit: Wendy McDougall