Christos Tsiolkas and Bryan Washington: Ghosted

Award-winning storytellers Christos Tsiolkas (The In-Between) and Bryan Washington (Family Meal) have each penned acclaimed new novels that tenderly depict the triumphs and obstacles of love. They join Maeve Marsden for an insightful conversation about putting romance to the page and love’s power t…

Lauren Groff and Charlotte Wood: Silence is Golden

In a special meeting of literary minds, bestselling American author Lauren Groff (The Vaster Wilds) and acclaimed Australian writer Charlotte Wood (Stone Yard Devotional) join Ailsa Piper to discuss their stories of solitude.    How does a writer bring colour to the silence, contemplation, pleasu…

Alexis Wright: Sovereignty of the Imagination

Globally acclaimed, Miles Franklin–winning novelist Alexis Wright (Carpentaria, The Swan Book) discusses her influential body of work and newest masterwork, Praiseworthy, with 2024 Festival Curator Mykaela Saunders. Wright has long been recognised for the scale of her writing, which combines myth…

My Name Is Grace Tame

[Content warning: Sensitive themes] Listen to former Australian of the Year Grace Tame as she talks about The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner, her sharply intelligent, deeply felt and at times blisteringly funny memoir that shares her story – in her own words and on her own terms. In conversation wi…

The John Button Oration: The Great American Lie

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 mythma…

Shehan Karunatilaka: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

"You can’t really interview a ghost." – Shehan Karunatilaka 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 phot…

Queering the Canon

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, fr…

Plants: Past, Present and Future

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 relationship and how it forms the basis of e…

Writers on Writers: Readers of Australian Literature

The 2023 Boisbouvier Conversation The Writers on Writers series is an indispensable fixture in the literary calendar, with leading authors penning their reflections on Australian writers who have inspired and influenced them. In one of the most loved sessions of the festival, enjoy this discussio…

Like There's No Tomorrow

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 ficti…