Sydney Writers' Festival

Humankind stands at a crossroads: will artificial intelligence make us superhumanly productive, liberating us from life’s most mundane tasks? Or have we opened Pandora’s box, unleashing sentient technology that will eventually destroy us? In a colossal contest of persuasion and wit, two teams of our best and brightest debate whether artificial intelligence is better than the real thing...

Robyn Davidson once described Unfinished Woman as an “infinite book”. “I feel absolutely that I have to write it and absolutely that I can’t write it.” Twenty-five years in the making, this unforgettable memoir charts her expeditions since crossing the Gibson Desert with camels –  the subject of her debut, Tracks , which her then-landlord, Doris Lessing, prescie...

Some consider Pride and Prejudice the first romantic comedy, with Jane Austen having set the ground rules for others to follow. Certainly, with its witty heroine and enemies-to-lovers plotting, Pride and Prejudice has created many of the tropes we continue to see in rom-coms today. YA authors Kate and Angourie Rice ( Stuck up and Stupid ), Sophie Gonzales ( The Perfect Guy Doesn't Exist ) and Gabr...

What kind of world could we create if we stopped believing inequality is the price of progress? Archaeology professor David Wengrow’s groundbreaking book, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity , co-authored with the late David Graeber, overturns the theories of Yuval Noah Harari ( Sapiens ), Jared Diamond ( Guns, Germs, and Steel ) and Steven Pinker ( Enlightenment Now ). Challen...

In Your Favourites’ Favourites, our most loved writers introduce one of their favourite authors. Acclaimed Women & Children author Tony Birch sits down with debut writer Graham Akhurst, a Fulbright Scholar who drafted his YA novel, Borderland , while studying in renowned writing program at Hunter College in New York City. This gripping coming-of-age story follows a city-born First Nation...

If you thought you knew the backstory of The Teacher's Pet , the gripping whodunnit podcast downloaded by over 80 million listeners, think again. Two-time Gold Walkley Award–winning investigative journalist Hedley Thomas’ book takes readers behind the scenes of the podcast investigation with a blow-by-blow account of one of the most intriguing and enduring murder mysteries of our time....

“The past is a foreign country”, L.P. Hartley famously wrote. It is also a place readers can visit via masterful historical fiction. Be transported by esteemed panellists Francesca de Tores ( Saltblood ), Mirandi Riwoe ( Sunbirds ) and Abraham Verghese ( The Covenant of Water ) as they discuss the magic of bringing history to life for contemporary audiences. Learn how these authors con...

Imagine another world with the fantasy writers who are redefining the wildly popular genre. Australian fantasy heavyweight Garth Nix (The Old Kingdom series) takes to the stage with ascending local star Shelley Parker-Chan (The Radiant Emperor duology) and global sensation Samantha Shannon (The Roots of Chaos series) to explain how they create expansive universes for their epic stories, heroes and...

She may be self-absorbed, adrift or unhinged, but the ‘sad girl’ is taking the publishing industry by storm. Debut novelists Nadine J. Cohen ( Everyone and Everything ), Madeleine Gray ( Green Dot ) and Jessie Stephens ( Something Bad is Going to Happen ) have all created unforgettable protagonists who are fallible, at times unlikeable and painfully relatable. Hear from these exciting...

From parched paddocks to sleepy coastal towns, the bodies keep piling up – and Australian readers can’t get enough. This panel brings together some of Australia’s hottest local crime writers, with Sulari Gentill ( The Mystery Writer ), Dinuka McKenzie ( Tipping Point ) and Benjamin Stevenson ( Everyone on this Train is a Suspect ). Dust off your Akubra for a thrilling chat about...

In the wake of a shift in the global power balance, how can Australia best protect itself? Two of Australia’s most interesting foreign policy thinkers take a fresh look at Australia’s place in the world and come to some surprising conclusions. Clinton Fernandes ( Sub-Imperial Power ) and Sam Roggeveen ( The Echidna Strategy: Australia’s Search for Power and Peace ) tackle the big questions about t...

What is the writer’s role in an era of profound ecological change? This panel event brings together leading local nature writers James Bradley and Bruce Pascoe to discuss how best to defend our environment. James’ latest book, Deep Water: The World in the Ocean , dives into the waves, and Bruce’s Black Duck: A Year at Yumburra investigates traditional agricultural practices that offer a blueprint...

"People have crazy lives," says Paul Murray. "The stuff that happens to – quote-unquote – ordinary folks is very operatic." Case in point: his Booker Prize shortlisted  The Bee Sting which follows an unravelling household in the Irish Midlands who embody Tolstoy's proverb about unhappy families. Paul's third novel has been acclaimed by critics as “generous, expansive and glorious as a cathedral” (...

Four waves in, the feminist fight for gender equality is far from over. This panel brings together the powerful and incendiary feminist voices of Hannah Ferguson, Sisonke Msimang and Jennifer Robinson. Hear from these leading writers and activists who between them offer daring feminist opinions on topics ranging from freedom of speech, right-wing politics, racism, xenophobia, belonging and identit...

Last year, Bryan Brown interviewed Sam Neill at the Festival. This year, it was Bryan’s turn in the hot seat as Sam interviewed him about his gripping new crime novel, The Drowning . Bryan is one of the most recognisable faces on our screens with more than 80 film and television projects to his name. This sensational new thriller with his characteristic laconic style – humorous, tough and suspense...

Going deep into the historical past, Lauren Groff ( The Vaster Wilds , Matrix ) and Francesca de Tores ( Saltblood ) create memorable heroines, real and imaginary, whose stories have not been told. Their portrayals of ordinary women doing extraordinary things – a girl escaping alone into the wilderness, a pirate on the high seas – are richly detailed and vividly alive. Coming out of hiding into ou...

Join two of the most admired writers in Australia today, Booker Prize–winning Richard Flanagan and Miles Franklin–winning Anna Funder as they discuss writing in the margins between fiction and non-fiction, history and memoir, personal and public. Historian Clare Wright leads this conversation, examining their genre-bending masterpieces. Through a hypnotic melding of dream, history, science and mem...

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 consequences and ramifications of bringing the personal into the public realm? Join writers Benjamin Law,...

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 hold for the return of democracy three years after the military seized power in a coup? In conversation...

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 centuries apart. In both the colonial era and the present day, no one knows how far legacies will reac...

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 recognise it, nurture it within ourselves and express it. For Julia, grace can be found by being kinde...

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 Franklin Award winner Shankari Chandran’s Safe Haven , which follows a refugee threatened with deportation...

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 settlement in the Americas. Fleeing violence, disease and starvation, a servant girl enters the wildernes...

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 into nuclear physics of the 1930s and 40s and finally towards a young Richard fighting for his life in...

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 conversation with legendary truth-tellers, find out what sustains them to keep on going in the face o...