Sydney Writers' Festival

Nov 20 2024 100 ep. 54 mins 2.6k

Sydney Writers' Festival Podcast artwork

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Feminist Firebrands

Nov 20 2024 53 mins

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, belon

The Drowning with Bryan Brown and Sam Neill

Nov 13 2024 54 mins

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,

Hidden Heroines

Nov 11 2024 60 mins

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

Richard Flanagan and Anna Funder on Writing

Nov 05 2024 62 mins

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, his

Dirty Laundry

Oct 28 2024 49 mins

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 wr

PEN Lecture: Writing From Prison in Myanmar

Oct 21 2024 50 mins

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 c

Melissa Lucashenko: Edenglassie

Oct 14 2024 58 mins

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 h

Julia Baird: Bright Shining

Oct 08 2024 50 mins

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 fou

The Presence of the Past

Oct 02 2024 50 mins

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 th

Lauren Groff: The Vaster Wilds

Sep 30 2024 58 mins

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 en