Literary La Trobe

Readers love Helen Garner’s three volumes of diaries, the apparent ease with which this brilliant writer skewers those who, barely disguised, are part of her life history. For Shannon Burns, writing a memoir about a difficult and chaotic childhood was an act of recovering flashes of memory: to go back is both necessary and dangerous. They talk to Sophie Cunningham about whether w

One of the four pillars of the Albanese Government’s national cultural policy is ‘First Nations First’. What does this mean for Australian writing and its influence on other cultural practices? This panel discusses how to put first nations at the heart of Australian culture. Michael Donovan (Pro Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous), La Trobe University) Claire G Coleman (writer, poet

In a year when Revive: National Cultural Policy is inviting us all to lift our game, it’s a brilliant opportunity to celebrate a decade of Stella: how it started, how it’s developed, and the future for Stella. Clare Wright (2014 Stella Prize Winner) Catherine Andrews (Stella Ambassador) Sarah Holland-Batt (2023 Stella Prize winner) Chair: Kirstin Ferguson Recorded on 7th May, 2

I’m not a journalist, I’m a poet.” Says the narrator of Cristos Tsiolkas’ novel ‘seven and a half’. Following on from the complex challenge of Damascus, which followed on from Barracuda and Merciless Gods, and the rip-roaring success of The Slap, novel number eight is the author’s ode to beauty. What is it that links all Tsiolkas’ books? Is this one his most persona

Is this the story Don Watson was always meant to write? It begins 50 years ago, at the fledgling La Trobe University where young people were fired up with passionate intensity and protesting the Vietnam War. It tracks the return from Vietnam of a man who would discover, in the isolation of Arnhem Land, how old and new, colonised and coloniser, rigid and adaptable could meet. Don Wa

I’m not a journalist, I’m a poet.” Says the narrator of Cristos Tsiolkas’ novel ‘seven and a half’. Following on from the complex challenge of Damascus, which followed on from Barracuda and Merciless Gods, and the rip-roaring success of The Slap, novel number eight is the author’s ode to beauty. What is it that links all Tsiolkas’ books? Is this one his most persona

Is the moral outrage of an individual enough? What makes groups or institutions work? What can threaten their efficacy, and how do they help us care without despair? This panel features three writers whose work has shown the positive power of a well led, well organised, determined group. Paul Cleary (Investigative journalist) Simon Holmes a Court (Philanthropist) Richard Denniss (E

How have the past six decades of feminist activism shaped Australian politics? Who are the rebels, ratbags and renegades behind the revolution? What was it about the 1970s that made so-called women’s issues election issues? Why did it take another forty years from Gough Whitlam’s It’s Time speech for Julia Gillard’s Misogyny Speech to land with such paradigm-shifting force?

In which we pay our respects to literary elders very much present. A chance to recollect, rehash, rebel, reprove and reflect with Barry Jones and Thomas Kenneally, hosted by Clare Wright. Recorded at the Bendigo Writers Festival on 7th May, 2023

What is the role of documentary film-making in the process of truth-telling? Do we trust what we read in books more than what we see on our screens? How can script writers, producers and directors contribute to the conversations that we need to have - and need to have now. Indeed, do such screen practitioners determine the course of public debate though the very power of their medi