A world-renowned expert in American literature and culture, Sarah Churchwell (The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells) delivers the 2023 John Button Oration. Examining one of the most popular stories of all time, Gone with the Wind, Churchwell shows how histories of mythmaking have informed America’s racial and gender […]
Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka won the 2022 Booker Prize for his dazzling magic-realist satire The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. Set during his homeland’s long civil war, the story follows its title character, a self-described photographer, gambler and ‘closet queen’, who wakes up as a ghost with a week to discover who killed him. […]
Which stories made you ‘different’? What makes writing queer? And what books brought about a break up with the gender binary? Join a stellar group of queer writers as they share heartfelt (and hilarious) insights into the stories that shaped how they think and write about sexuality and gender, from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings to Adrienne Rich’s The Dream […]
“If we don’t learn to relate to each other, we’ll continue to destroy the earth.” – Bruce Pascoe For millennia, reciprocal relationships with plants have provided both sustenance to First Nations communities and many of the materials needed to produce a complex array of technologies. In this wide-ranging discussion, learn more about this fascinating […]
The 2023 Boisbouvier Conversation What is literature for? The Writers on Writers series has become an indispensable fixture in the literary calendar, with leading authors penning their reflections on Australian writers who have inspired and influenced them. One of the most loved and talked about sessions of the 2023 festival, enjoy this discussion about what […]
Enjoy listening to two of 2023’s most talked about novelists – and possibly the only two people to have ever become friends over Zoom – Emma Straub (This Time Tomorrow) and Gabrielle Zevin (Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow). With Brodie Lancaster, they discuss their approaches to crafting fiction, writing a different kind of love story […]
I wanted to make a point to readers that we are just like everyone else. Which is to say, we are just as complicated as anyone else…And if you realise we are just like you, whoever you are, then how can you justify treating us differently? – Tracey Lien Authors Tracey Lien (All That’s […]
Casting fresh light on Australia’s colonial past, the latest novels by award-winning journalist Paul Daley (Jesustown) and acclaimed author Fiona McFarlane (The Sun Walks Down) tell stories that upend the usual depictions in history books. Listen in as they speak to bestselling author and First Nations Curator Tony Birch about their approach to writing narratives […]
A few months before he died at 82…Oliver [Sacks] looked up from his notepad one evening in our apartment and said to me: ‘The most we can do is to write – intelligently, creatively, critically, evocatively – about what it is like living in the world at this time.’ So, I did. – Bill Hayes […]
There is nothing more important than communicating to the Australian public the truth about our world. – Marcia Langton Sophisticated systems of law, cultivated over millennia, have enabled First Nations peoples to survive and thrive for more than 2,000 generations – laws that “haven’t just survived colonisation but they’ve survived the last sea level rise […]
It was, after all a time of great noticing. – Sarah Krasnostein The last few years have changed us all in profound ways. How have we been surprised, unsettled and enlivened as we return to once-familiar relationships, routines and realities? How are storytellers making sense of how life has changed? Listen to Sarah Krasnostein (author of […]
By his own account, the career of celebrated actor Sam Neill has been a series of unpredictable turns of fortune. From discovering acting at boarding school in Christchurch, to treading the boards in amateur Shakespeare productions, to finding his lucky break and going on to star in films such as The Piano, Jurassic Park and Peaky […]