Sydney Writers' Festival

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 kinder, bigger and better with each other. Sit down with Julia to discuss this luminous work, which The Guardian described as “a book the world needs now”. In conversation with journalist Jacqueline Maley. This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel.  Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms.  After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:Instagram: @sydwritersfestFacebook: @SydWritersFestX (Twitter): @SydWritersFestTikTok: @sydwritersfestSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 when she speaks out for other detainees. Sit down with Yumna and Shankari as they discuss their poignant and timely novels, which ask how, if possible, we can measure the cost of war and what lengths we will go to in the search for safety. With host Ashley Hay. This episode was recorded live at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.  If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel.   Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms.   After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media: Instagram: @sydwritersfest Facebook: @SydWritersFest X (Twitter): @SydWritersFest TikTok: @sydwritersfest See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 wilderness alone. This spirited survivalist story has been critically acclaimed as “exhilarating” (The Guardian), “visionary” (The Observer) and “timeless” (The Times). Join Lauren and host Melanie Kembrey as they explore this prophetic novel, which encapsulates the story of America in miniature. This episode was recorded live at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.  If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel.   Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms.   After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media: Instagram: @sydwritersfest Facebook: @SydWritersFest X (Twitter): @SydWritersFest TikTok: @sydwritersfest See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Tasmanian river rapids in a rumination on life’s choices and their intergenerational chain reactions. Richard speaks with Kerry O’Brien. This episode was recorded live at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.  If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel.   Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms.   After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media: Instagram: @sydwritersfest Facebook: @SydWritersFest X (Twitter): @SydWritersFest TikTok: @sydwritersfest See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 of profound challenges. With Larissa Behrendt, Tony Birch, Narelda Jacobs and Amy Thunig. This episode was recorded live at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.  If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel.   Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms.   After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media: Instagram: @sydwritersfest Facebook: @SydWritersFest X (Twitter): @SydWritersFest TikTok: @sydwritersfest See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 A.C. Grayling. This episode was recorded live at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.  If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel.   Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms.   After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media: Instagram: @sydwritersfest Facebook: @SydWritersFest X (Twitter): @SydWritersFest TikTok: @sydwritersfest See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 associated with dieting and deprivation, using a blend of first-hand stories and trenchant analysis.  Praised by US writer Roxane Gay as “required reading”, this timely intervention calls for a radical re-evaluation of who our bodies exist for –  ourselves and no one else. Learn from an acclaimed, accessible new voice in moral philosophy, in conversation with host Maeve Marsden. This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel.  Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms.  After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:Instagram: @sydwritersfestFacebook: @SydWritersFestX (Twitter): @SydWritersFestTikTok: @sydwritersfestSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At 18, Abdulrazak Gurnah arrived in England as a refugee from the Zanzibar Revolution. Receiving the Nobel Prize more than 50 years later, he reflected that the “prolonged period of poverty and alienation” he experienced made him a writer. From the contemporary immigrant experience in his debut, Memory of Departure, to colonial wartime conscription in Booker Prize shortlisted Paradise, Abdulrazak’s unflinching yet humane oeuvre interrogates the legacies of empire, centring that which is often too marginalised. Listen as he and writer Sisonke Msimang discuss his tenth novel, Afterlives – an intergenerational portrait of love and loss under German occupation in East Africa. This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel.  Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms.  After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:Instagram: @sydwritersfestFacebook: @SydWritersFestX (Twitter): @SydWritersFestTikTok: @sydwritersfestSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How many women artists do you know? Who makes art history? And what is the Baroque anyway? Enter art historian and curator Katy Hessel’s The Story of Art Without Men, a response to E.H. Gombrich’s classic chronicle, The Story of Art, first published in 1950, which was recently updated to include... one woman. Katy’s revisionist history builds on her popular podcast and Instagram account, The Great Women Artists, where her fresh approach has garnered fans worldwide and earned her a spot on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list. Overturn art history as you know it with Katy, in conversation with curator Beatrice Gralton. This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel.  Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms.  After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:Instagram: @sydwritersfestFacebook: @SydWritersFestX (Twitter): @SydWritersFestTikTok: @sydwritersfestSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Crime fiction king Michael Connelly discusses the highlights of his illustrious career and the characters who have populated the pages of his cult classic novels. The bestselling author of 39 books, selling over 80 million copies worldwide, talks with The Monthly’s Michael Williams about the art of crime writing, seeing his work reach the screen, including the Netflix smash-hit The Lincoln Lawyer and his newest book in the series, Resurrection Walk. This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel.  Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms.  After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:Instagram: @sydwritersfestFacebook: @SydWritersFestX (Twitter): @SydWritersFestTikTok: @sydwritersfestSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.