Adolfo Aranjuez, Peter Waples-Crowe and Jax Jacki Brown at the Wheeler Centre

Within the letters LGBTIQA+ are myriad meeting points between intersecting identities – race, ethnicity, disability, class and many more – which can be sites of pain and pride. Campaigns for rights and services can have broad, significant and often unheralded impacts on various sections of the community.

With same-sex marriage now legal in Australia, what are the most pressing issues currently facing Australia’s diverse queer population, and how well are they being represented?

Presented in partnership with Archer magazine.

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 Adolfo Aranjuez, Peter Waples-Crowe and Jax Jacki Brown at the Wheeler Centre

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Within the letters LGBTIQA+ are myriad meeting points between intersecting identities – race, ethnicity, disability, class and many more – which can be sites of pain and pride. Campaigns for rights and services can have broad, significant and often unheralded impacts on various sections of the community.
With same-sex marriage now legal in Australia, what are the most pressing issues currently facing Australia’s diverse queer population, and how well are they being represented?
Presented in partnership with Archer magazine.

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The Wheeler Centre

Private Parts: More than Queer

India’s great chronicler of memory, family, identity and belonging sits down with host Mridula Nath Chakraborty to discuss her luminous, genre-defying books and extraordinary literary career. 

Originally presented on Wednesday 12 August 2026 by The Wheeler Centre.

‘Anything worth doing transcends borders,’ writes Geetanjali Shree in her 2022 International Booker Prize-winning novel, Tomb of Sand. This sentiment also encapsulates her career to date. An author writing in Hindi, with her gaze firmly fixed on the lives and concerns of Indian characters, Shree tells the kind of polyphonic, big-hearted stories that chime with universal truth.

From Our City That Year, an evocative tale of love, loss and the indelible marks left by time, to the poetic and formally inventive short stories in the collection Once Elephants Lived Here, to the lauded Tomb of Sand, Shree’s work offers readers insight into the rich plurality of the world.

Join her for a conversation about the ascendency of South Asian literature, the life-changing impact of winning the International Booker Prize and how storytelling connects us across backgrounds and borders.

India&rsquo;s great chronicler of memory, family, identity and belonging sits down with host Mridula Nath Chakraborty to discuss her luminous, genre-defying books and extraordinary literary career.&nbsp;
Originally presented on Wednesday 12 August 2026 by The Wheeler Centre.
&lsquo;Anything worth doing transcends borders,&rsquo; writes Geetanjali Shree in her 2022 International Booker Prize-winning novel, Tomb of Sand. This sentiment also encapsulates her career to date. An author writing in Hindi, with her gaze firmly fixed on the lives and concerns of Indian characters, Shree tells the kind of polyphonic, big-hearted stories that chime with universal truth.
From Our City That Year, an evocative tale of love, loss and the indelible marks left by time, to the poetic and formally inventive short stories in the collection Once Elephants Lived Here, to the lauded Tomb of Sand, Shree&rsquo;s work offers readers insight into the rich plurality of the world. Join her for a conversation about the ascendency of South Asian literature, the life-changing impact of winning the International Booker Prize and how storytelling connects us across backgrounds and borders.

Geetanjali Shree in Conversation

Tech critic Cory Doctorow on the broken promise of the utopian internet, the systems that sustain it and what it might take to reclaim a more open digital future. With host Professor Lisa M. Given, Director, Centre for Human-AI Information Environments at RMIT University. 

Originally presented on Tuesday 25 August 2026 by The Wheeler Centre in partnership with Now or Never and RMIT University.

You’re not imagining it: the experience of being online is getting worse. Services degrade, platforms shift and what once felt open and useful becomes harder to recognise. What was once good is now… shit. This is not a glitch. In fact, it’s by design. ‘Enshittification’, a term coined by tech critic Cory Doctorow, names what is already happening.

In this talk, Doctorow outlines how major platforms like Facebook, Amazon and X are structured to follow this trajectory. First, users are drawn in with convenience and connection. Then, advertisers are invited into the system. Finally, the experience itself is stripped back in the pursuit of profit.

Featured music is 'Traveling Again' by Sarah, the Illstrumentalist.

The official bookseller was Brunswick Bound.

Tech critic Cory Doctorow on the broken promise of the utopian internet, the systems that sustain it and what it might take to reclaim a more open digital future. With host Professor Lisa M. Given, Director, Centre for Human-AI Information Environments at RMIT University. Originally presented on Tuesday 25 August 2026 by The Wheeler Centre in partnership with Now or Never and RMIT University. You&rsquo;re not imagining it: the experience of being online is getting worse. Services degrade, platforms shift and what once felt open and useful becomes harder to recognise. What was once good is now&hellip; shit. This is not a glitch. In fact, it&rsquo;s by design. &lsquo;Enshittification&rsquo;, a term coined by tech critic Cory Doctorow, names what is already happening. In this talk, Doctorow outlines how major platforms like Facebook, Amazon and X are structured to follow this trajectory. First, users are drawn in with convenience and connection. Then, advertisers are invited into the system. Finally, the experience itself is stripped back in the pursuit of profit. Featured music is 'Traveling Again' by Sarah, the Illstrumentalist. The official bookseller was Brunswick Bound.

Cory Doctorow: Enshittification

What does it take to keep showing up to the blank page? Award-winning author Alice Pung offers reasons for optimism in this year’s E. W. Cole Lecture. 

Originally presented on Thursday 6 August 2026 by The Wheeler Centre, supported by the E. W. Cole Foundation.

Two decades ago, Alice Pung published Unpolished Gem, a funny, loving and irreverent portrait of a migrant family’s everyday struggles and bittersweet triumphs. 

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of her beloved debut, Pung presents this year’s E. W. Cole Lecture on a subject near to her heart: the fundamentals of writing and the circumstances under which writers practice their craft. Drawing on knowledge earned from writing 15 books across contemporary fiction, YA, children’s literature and non-fiction, she examines the work that goes into the act of creation and what it takes to carry on writing, day after day.   

Pung speaks on the quiet power of turning up through crises, changing political situations and changing tastes, and what makes it all worthwhile: how writing – and reading – can help us make sense of our lives, and the world at large, now more than ever.

The official bookseller was Amplify Bookstore.

Featured music is Br1ghter (Instrumental Version) by Tape Machines.

What does it take to keep showing up to the blank page? Award-winning author Alice Pung offers reasons for optimism in this year&rsquo;s E. W. Cole Lecture. Originally presented on Thursday 6 August 2026 by The Wheeler Centre, supported by the E. W. Cole Foundation.   Two decades ago, Alice Pung published Unpolished Gem, a funny, loving and irreverent portrait of a migrant family&rsquo;s everyday struggles and bittersweet triumphs. In celebration of the 20th anniversary of her beloved debut, Pung presents this year&rsquo;s E. W. Cole Lecture on a subject near to her heart: the fundamentals of writing and the circumstances under which writers practice their craft. Drawing on knowledge earned from writing 15 books across contemporary fiction, YA, children&rsquo;s literature and non-fiction, she examines the work that goes into the act of creation and what it takes to carry on writing, day after day.   Pung speaks on the quiet power of turning up through crises, changing political situations and changing tastes, and what makes it all worthwhile: how writing &ndash; and reading &ndash; can help us make sense of our lives, and the world at large, now more than ever. The official bookseller was Amplify Bookstore. Featured music is Br1ghter (Instrumental Version) by Tape Machines.

Private Parts: More than Queer

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