Book lovers, clear your calendars: the Singapore Writers Festival returns for its 29th edition from 13 to 22 November 2026, spreading more than 200 programmes across the Civic District — The Arts House, Victoria Theatre, the Asian Civilisations Museum and National Gallery Singapore among them. Over 300 writers and speakers are on the bill, and this edition doubles as a farewell: it's the last under festival director and poet Yong Shu Hoong.
The theme, Hidden in Plain Sight, is about looking harder at things that seem obvious — family secrets, buried history, the biases baked into the apps we scroll daily. Fittingly, the biggest names lean into exactly that. Amitav Ghosh delivers the festival keynote on 14 November ($35, Victoria Theatre), asking why some of the world's wealthiest people are quietly building bunkers on remote islands instead of fixing the planet, drawing on his essay collection Wild Fictions and new novel Ghost-Eye.
Homegrown star Jemimah Wei appears twice. Her debut The Original Daughter topped the Straits Times bestseller list and was longlisted for the 2026 Dublin Literary Award. Catch her panel What the Family Doesn't Say with Ghosh and Balli Kaur Jaswal on 15 November, or book The Salon with Jemimah Wei on 19 November ($48) — a discussion of daughterhood served over a Sri Lankan meal. Booker-shortlisted Tan Twan Eng also sits down for a candid Off the Record session on 22 November, plus a $60 salon at Capella on Sentosa.
New this year is a Crime and Mystery Spotlight. Korean thriller writer Seo Mi-ae joins local authors to unpack three decades of research into real offenders, while Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Mexican Gothic) keynotes on 21 November ($25). Agatha Christie's staying power gets its own panel, and there are hands-on events too: a $15 table-top murder mystery game, a toxicologist explaining how poisons really work, and a bookish trivia night.
The programme stretches well beyond novels. Webcomic creator Rachel Smythe (Lore Olympus), journalist Stephen Witt on Nvidia's Jensen Huang, and sociologist Ruha Benjamin on algorithmic bias all give keynotes. Prefer to move? Walking tours range from $10 to $80 — including a rare look inside House of Tan Yeok Nee, the last surviving of Singapore's four great Teochew mansions, and a ferry trip to St John's Island. There's even a literary whisky tasting pairing Alvin Pang's poetry with three drams.
For travellers, this is a smart excuse for a November city break: much of the programme sits within walking distance of each other in the Civic District, plenty of sessions run on an affordable festival pass, and there are family-friendly and free events mixed in. Book keynotes and salons early — the intimate meal-and-conversation formats are the first to sell out.
