Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia 

Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia showcases a wide variety of voices, experiences and stories to reveal how its contributors are treated in the community, the education system, the workplace and friendship groups. Each account reveals, to some degree, the impacts of invasion and colonisation – on language, country and ways of life. The collection’s editor, Anita Heiss, speaks with contributors Natalie Cromb, Marlee Silva and Liza-Mare Syron about a book that enlightens, inspires and educates readers on the lives of Aboriginal people today.

Lunchtime Sessions: Jeff Goodell

By century’s end, hundreds of millions of people will be retreating from the world’s shores as our coasts become inundated and our landscapes transformed. Rolling Stone contributing editorJeff Goodell has written the definitive account of the coming water, why and how this will happen, and what it will mean. Elizabeth McCarthy talks to Jeff about travelling to 12 countries and interviewing Barack Obama while researching The Water Will Come, an important warning cry about the unfolding effects of climate change.

Australian Idols: Writers on Writers

In the Writers on Writers series, prominent authors reflect on an Australian writer who has inspired and fascinated them. The Lifted Brow publisher Sam Cooney chats to writer and Saturday Paper editor Erik Jensen and bestselling author Alice Pung about their worthy contributions to the series. Erik will discuss his examination of the acclaimed novelist, poet and pioneering feminist Kate Jennings, and Alice will talk about her original and moving look at the much-loved, hugely successful writer John Marsden.

Billy Griffiths: On Deep Time Dreaming

Drawing on the work of archaeologists, historian Billy Griffiths journeys deep into the Indigenous history of the Australian continent for this captivating talk. He reflects on the voyages of the First Australians some 65,000 years ago, and the ways in which their descendants made this land their own through language, song, story and fire. The Deep Time Dreaming author asks what it means to live in a place of great antiquity, with its complex questions of ownership and belonging. 

Insiders Live at Sydney Writers’ Festival

ABC TV’s Insiders host Barrie Cassidy leads journalists Malcolm Farr, Niki Savva and Laura Tingle through the political highs and lows of the year to date. Photographer Mike Bowers hosts a Talking Pictures segment with cartoonists Fiona Katauskas and David Rowe.

Immersive Histories

Historical narratives can create a powerful experience for the reader when grounded in evidence and embedded with a strong sense of place. Winners of the 2017 New South Wales Premier’s History Awards – Mark McKenna, Peter Hobbins and Adam Clulow – talk to Caroline Butler-Bowdon from Sydney Living Museums about how they immersed themselves in evidence and place to create rich and engaging narratives.

Christos Tsiolkas: On Patrick White

In his electrifying contribution to the Writers on Writers series, author Christos Tsiolkas recounts his year spent reading Patrick White and his rediscovery of the literary great. On Patrick White is a vivid celebration of the Nobel Prize–winning author’s work that asks: What does it mean to us now? In conversation with writer Michelle de Kretser, Christos speaks about the author he believes “did more than any other writer in the twentieth century to create an imaginative language that we can call ‘Australian’”.