Words Unwound: An Online Writing Festival
The 2026 Beyond the Spectrum Festival, Words Unwound, will take place over a whole week, from Monday 23 to Saturday 28 March.
Building on the success of last year’s one day festival, Intense Fascination, the 2026 festival is about slowing down, reflecting, and creating in our authentic voices. It will be a celebration of writing as rest, a source of creativity and connection, and telling the stories we want to tell without pressure to be productive. We’ll explore genres and routes to publishing that bring us joy. One of the reasons the festival is over a week, rather than one day is to allow the sessions to breathe and for attendees to have more time to reflect.
The 2026 festival includes a host of brilliant speakers, including our featured Keynote, Chris Packham. We approached Chris because so many of our community have told us about the positive impact of his books, and BBC documentaries, on their own – and their family’s – understanding of Autism, and because he has used his platform for advocacy, to speak about mental health, and the need to take time for yourself. We are delighted he’ll be joining us. Standalone tickets for Chris’s talk can be booked here.
Book your tickets to the full week of sessions here:
(Please note: BTS participants and lead/shadow writers have been sent a separate link to book). All sessions will be recorded and made available for ticketholders for two months after the event.
Feedback From Last Year's Festival
“My feelings of isolation as a writer and autistic person were dissolved by the whole inclusive positive spirit of the festival. Thank you!”
“Lovely to share experiences with other neurodivergent writers and find encouragement that we’re not alone.”
“Hearing experiences from professional writers and publishers who are also autistic makes the pipe-dream of success as an autistic writer significantly easier to believe.”
You can read Sophie’s review of last year’s festival in The Space Beyond issue 2.
How to Attend
The festival takes place on Zoom, and you will be sent links in advance. Each session will have a separate link. Some sessions are interactive workshops, others are talks: this will be in the description of each session. There is never any obligation to actively participate in the workshops, to have your camera on, or to speak.
Tickets for the whole week of the festival are the best value, at £30. This will give attendees access to every session live, and you will receive recordings of every session which can be watched for two months after the festival. Concessions and Bursaries are available if the ticket price is an obstacle.
If there are less than six sessions of interest to you, individual session tickets can be purchased for £5 per session (Concessions and Bursaries also available). Attendees will also receive a recording of the session you have booked for, but not the sessions you did not book for.
Festival Highlights
With 17 sessions, it’s hard to pick highlights, but here are some suggestions from each day of programming.
Monday 23rd: Radical Rest with Kate Oliver
Tuesday 24th: Write Well with Emma Pass
Wednesday 25th: Keynote talk with Chris Packham
Thursday 26th: Writing Our Whole Selves with Gemma Lees, K Angel and Antonia King
Friday 27th: Hit Send: A Publishing Workshop with Victoria Villasenor
Saturday 28th: Neurodivergent Stories with CJ DeBarra
Book your tickets!
Supported by funding from Arts Council England, the National Lottery Community Fund, Shine Lincolnshire, and Bradford 2025 City of Culture, the annual Beyond the Spectrum festival is a highlight of this phase of the national BTS project. It’s intentionally celebratory and outward looking, challenging the stereotypes around autism and creativity, as well as creating online spaces for our national BTS community to come together. It is a festival emphatically created by and for our Autistic writing community, but it is open to all to attend.
We are actively inviting anyone curious about participating in BTS, neurotypical allies who want to learn more, people working in the field of autism and creativity across the arts and academic sectors, and writers of all neurotypes and backgrounds who value high quality creative talks and workshops. Join us, for one session or all 17!
