Dirty Laundry

While everyone has dirty laundry in their lives, not everyone will choose to air theirs publicly. Whether on social media, in written memoir, public speaking or on television, how can sharing the ‘self’ when the story touches on family and community, still be navigated ethically? What are the cons…

PEN Lecture: Writing From Prison in Myanmar

Sean Turnell spent almost two years in Myanmar’s terrifying Insein Prison, accused of being a spy. Ma Thida was also incarcerated there, where, denied medical treatment, she came very close to dying. How did they survive? What hope do these important players in Myanmar’s government and politics ho…

Melissa Lucashenko: Edenglassie

Melissa Lucashenko describes her latest novel, Edenglassie, as her “big book” – a multigenerational epic that torches Queensland’s colonial myths and reimagines Australia’s future. Set in Brisbane and rivalling the romances of Too Much Lip and Mullumbimby, two parallel love stories play out two ce…

Julia Baird: Bright Shining

Following broadcaster and author Julia Baird’s multi-award-winning international bestseller, Phosphorescence, comes a beautiful and timely exploration of that most mysterious but necessary human quality: grace. Bright Shining: How grace changes everything asks what grace looks like today, how we …

The Presence of the Past

As conflict plays out across an unnamed region, the protagonist in Parramatta Laureate of Literature Yumna Kassab’s Politica imagines how she will later narrate her experiences: “We hadn’t spoken for years but then the war broke out...”  Sharing difficult stories is also at the heart of Miles Fran…

Lauren Groff: The Vaster Wilds

After smash-hit Fates and Furies, the modern-day marriage story that was Barack Obama’s book of the year in 2015, Lauren Groff’s novels have looked to the past to understand the present.  Her latest historical novel, The Vaster Wilds, is set on the edge of the New World at an unnamed British settl…

Richard Flanagan: Question 7

Join Richard Flanagan as he discusses this hypnotic, genre-defying new book which entwines memoir, biography, autofiction and history through a daisy chain of stories both intimate and collective. Opening with his father as a prisoner of war, the book leads readers through a literary love affair i…

Survival, Sustenance and Stories

Social change is driven by conversation, in sharing ideas, and translating those ideas for audiences who don’t agree or understand what is at stake. For many First Nations writers and journalists, this has been a huge priority over the last year, in particular, and one that comes with a cost. In a…

A.C. Grayling: The Meaning of Life in a Technological Age

The quest for a life worth living has been the business of philosophers for millennia. How can we pursue answers to life’s big questions in a world that feels increasingly dangerous and unstable thanks to big tech and AI? Unpack the ‘how’ in this unmissable episode from the pre-eminent philosopher…

Kate Manne: Fighting Fatphobia

Anti-fatness is a system of oppression, argues Kate Manne, afflicting vulnerable bodies in intersectional ways. Building on her incisive studies of misogyny and male privilege, the Melbourne-born feminist philosopher’s latest book, Unshrinking: How to Fight Fatphobia, unpicks the dangerous virtues…