Family Secrets

Blood isn’t the only thing that bonds these families who also share intergenerational secrets held through time and across countries. 2025 Booker Prize–shortlisted author of Flashlight Susan Choi, internationally acclaimed multi-disciplinary artist and author of Fierceland Omar Musa and award-winn…

Rewriting Histories

The work of truth-telling in Australia means a robust reckoning with our history and the colonial myths used to interpret it. In Uprising: War in the colony of New South Wales, 1838–1844, historian Stephen Gapps reveals the extent of resistance warfare on the frontier. The Australian Wars, based o…

Found in Translation

Translation allows a writer to reach readers around the world but what is the experience of having your words altered like? Video game translator Matt Alt, speculative fiction writer Bora Chung (The Midnight Timetable), who writes in Korean and translates from contemporary Russian and Polish, and …

Theatre Kids

You can take the kid off the stage, but you can’t take the stage off the kid. These writers are theatre kids through-and-through but they’re trying their hands at another, quieter, form with their debut books. In this panel discussion, actor and playwright George Kemp (Soft Serve), playwright of…

The Future of Democracy: Fighting Authoritarianism with A.C. Grayling

Professor of Philosophy and author A.C. Grayling outlines the fragility of democracy and the freedoms we take for granted and risk losing in For The People: Fighting Authoritarianism, Saving Democracy. In recent years, the democratic foundations and civil liberties of Western nations that once see…

Roddy Doyle in Conversation

Dubbed the “undisputed laureate of ordinary lives” by The Sunday Times, Irish Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle has kept us laughing and crying in equal measure. From his prize-winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha to The Commitments, which was adapted into a BAFTA-winning screenplay, Roddy’s customary humo…

Lily King: Heart the Lover

After her New York Times bestseller, Writers & Lovers, Lily King returns to themes of love, desire, forgiveness and loss in Heart the Lover.     Our narrator is a successful writer who is familiar with the classic tropes of love stories. She lives her life with her husband and children until a sur…

Trent Dalton: Gravity Let Me Go

After being crowned the number one book of the 21st century by ABC Radio National, Australian literary sensation Trent Dalton’s newest book mixes gruesome true crime with a personal exploration of love and marriage. Noah Cork had the scoop of his journalistic career hand-delivered to his mailbox. …

Grand Ambition: Paul Keating and James Curran in Conversation

There used to be a time when political leaders didn’t limit themselves to an election cycle. In his latest book, Grand Ambition, international affairs expert and historian James Curran draws on never-before-seen archival documents and extensive interviews to present former prime minister Paul Keat…

Tayari Jones: Kin

Two motherless girls begin their lives in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, but they take paths that are worlds apart. Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage, winner of the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction, has written another unforgettable story. Her new novel, Kin, centres a complex relationship betwe…