Chair: Katrina Strickland

It seems that no one knows everything that happens in a marriage, not even the people in it. Join award-winning writer and journalist Kate Legge as she reveals what she learned about infidelity and why revenge seemed ultimately unsatisfying. In her book, Infidelity and Other Affairs, Legge explores the causes of cheating and its aftereffects on the cheater and the cheated-on. She spills the beans and shares her insights in this revealing conversation.

Event details: Thu 09 Mar, 12pm on the West Stage

Chair: Amy McQuire

Inala Cooper is a Yawuru woman with German and Irish heritage. In Marrul: Aboriginal Identity and the Fight for Rights, she shares a deeply personal and moving account of the impact of colonisation on her family. In this session, Cooper explores what self-determination means for First Nations people and why reconciliation is a vital step in our understanding of the forces that shaped Australia today.

Supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund. 

Event details: Thu 09 Mar, 10:45am on the West Stage

Chair: Caroline Overington

War, plague and catastrophic climate change are the collective terrors of modern life. Endlessly proliferating social media platforms are spaces onto which we can project and amplify our anxieties. In her latest book, Reasons Not to Worry: How to be Stoic in chaotic times, Brigid Delaney turns to the Stoics for answers and offers a kind of ancient Athenian self-help.

Event details: Thu 09 Mar, 9:30am on the West Stage

Chair: Sue Turnbull

Alexander McCall Smith is a man of many talents. An Emeritus Professor of Medical Law, he is perhaps best known for his entertaining crime books, including The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. These beloved works are just the tip of a prolific iceberg that encompasses everything from philosophy to children’s literature. In this session, he’ll turn his hand to a new task - attempting to convince crime reviewer and academic Sue Turnbull to open the untouched volume of W.H. Auden poetry she won as a school prize in 1969.

Event details: Thu 09 Mar, 5:00pm on the East Stage

Chair: Peter Brune

The Battle of Long Tan was the deadliest battle for Australian forces in Vietnam and every ANZAC who fought there could hold his head high. Peter FitzSimons and military historian Peter Brune discuss the events leading up to that terrible battle and the long war that followed.

Event details: Thu 09 Mar, 3:45pm on the East Stage

Chair: Marian Wilkinson

Two of the most innovative minds in the business tell us if the energy transition plan can work in time to save our planet. Join Simon Holmes à Court, founder of Climate 200, and economist Ross Garnaut in conversation with Marian Wilkinson, a Walkley Award-winning journalist and author of The Carbon Club.

Event details: Thu 09 Mar, 2:30pm on the East Stage

Chair: Beejay Silcox

Critic Beejay Silcox has suggested that Jane Harper’s “outback noir mega-hit The Dry kick-started a crime-writing boom… the drought blighted bush town became a genre trope: Australia’s sunburned answer to the arid cold of Scandi noir". Her subsequent novels have received international acclaim and have cemented Harper’s place in the crime genre. She joins Silcox to talk about the intersection of character, plot and landscape and what becoming an international bestseller has meant to her writing.

Event details: Thu 09 Mar, 1:15pm on the East Stage

Chair: Chris Taylor

Acclaimed Palestinian citizen of Israel, screenwriter and novelist Sayed Kashua decided on ’voluntary exile’ in 2014. He wrote two of Israel’s most popular sitcoms, the satirical Arab Labor and The Writer, as well as a sardonic weekly column in Haaretz devoted to telling the story of Palestinians living in Israel – ironic and poignant, it is at times a dark story and at other times an absurd one. After almost 10 years living in America, Kashua talks to Chris Taylor about satire, writing and the Middle East.

Event details: Thu 09 Mar, 12:00pm on the East Stage

Chair: Louise Milligan

Former Australian of the Year Grace Tame is a public voice and advocate for survivors of sexual abuse. She is also the author of a new memoir, The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner. Tame sits down with award-winning Four Corners journalist Louise Milligan for a conversation about finding one’s voice, speaking truth to power and why sometimes only a side-eye will suffice.

Event details: Thu 09 Mar, 10:45am on the East Stage

Chair: Jonathan Green

Two-time winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, Alex Miller is a giant of Australian literature. His latest novel, A Brief Affair, engages with one of literature’s most compelling subjects – unhappy women. He talks to journalist Jonathan Green about this deeply moving novel, the question of authenticity and the writer’s fidelity to imaginative truth.

Event details: Thu 09 Mar, 9:30am on the East Stage