Roxane Gay: Opinions

Unapologetic, sometimes controversial, and always unflinchingly honest, Roxane Gay has built a remarkable career using her powerful voice to articulate the nuances of our most pervasive issues. Body image, civil rights, feminism, popular culture, social etiquette – you name it, Gay has written abou…

Noni Hazelhurst in Conversation: Dropping the Mask

National treasure Noni Hazlehurst details her life on stage and screen and takes us behind-the-scenes of a brilliant career.  Noni Hazlehurst’s versatility as a performer knows no bounds. A household name and a beloved actor, she's graced Australian screens and theatre stages for over forty years.…

Liminal Festival: Critical Limit

Critics Eda Gunaydin, Michael Sun and Cher Tan examine the present state and potential futures of literary criticism.  Literary criticism seems to be in an endless state of decline. In so-called Australia, a particular flavour of cultural cringe is yoked to cultural hegemony: a critic might find t…

Liminal Festival: Language Under Occupation

Content warning: This recording includes occasional course language. Evelyn Araluen, Hasib Hourani and Mykaela Saunders discuss the careful craft of shaping a language unsettled. Trace the contours of language, seek out its limits and push. Histories are cut up, struck through, misplaced, misreme…

Liminal Festival: The Novel

What is the future of the great Australian novel? Novelists Jessica Au, Brian Castro and André Dao contemplate the novel, the nation and its literature with Lynda Ng.  Marking 30 years since Brian Castro considered the ‘new novel’, three of Australia’s most talented contemporary novelists discuss …

Rebecca F. Kuang: Yellowface

International bestselling author Rebecca F. Kuang discusses her groundbreaking novel Yellowface and the future of storytelling at this exclusive Melbourne event.   Investigating diversity, racism and cultural appropriation with the thrilling pace of a Twitter meltdown, Rebecca F. Kuang’s 2023 nove…

Bonnie Garmus: Lessons in Chemistry

A runaway favourite of book clubs the world over, Bonnie Garmus’s debut novel Lessons in Chemistry transports readers to early 1960s California. Elizabeth Zott – single mother and brilliant chemist – unexpectedly finds herself hosting a television cooking show, and changes hearts and minds in the p…

Don Watson: On the US Election

On the 5 November this year, the American people will go to the polls to make a choice, the impact of which will be felt around the globe.  Will Republican nominee and now convicted criminal, former President Donald Trump, topple Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris?? How did America reac…

The Great Aussie Road Trip: Heather Ewart in conversation with Barrie Cassidy [Kyneton]

Award-winning journalist Heather Ewart hits the Back Roads to Kyneton to journey through her great Australian road trips.   Over a career spanning four decades, Heather Ewart has been senior political reporter and a foreign correspondent posted to London, Washington and Brussels. Raised on a farm …

Consuming Culture

Our annual panel of pop culture experts Brodie Lancaster, Alison Willmore, Hannah Diviney and Jared Richards gather for a dissection of the zeitgeist. Baby Reindeer, The Bear and hot rodent men: lt has been a ferocious (and sometimes feral) year for pop culture, and it seems that we’re not slowing…