Adelaide Writers' Week

Chair: Marian Wilkinson

The speed and severity of climate change is an alarming reality, but how bad it gets is up to us. Join us for this discussion with renowned bioethicist Peter Singer and award-winning science journalist and author Gaia Vince, whose extraordinary new book, Nomad Century, investigates the huge populations of climate refugees being created by the climate crisis.

Event details: Wed 08 Mar, 12:00pm on the West Stage

Chair: Sue Turnbull

V. I. Warshawski is a private investigator with a forensic interest in white collar crime who loves opera, dresses down, runs whenever she can, and has a passion for her two dogs. She is Sara Paretsky’s finest invention – a character of depth and complexity. Over the course of more than 20 novels, Paretsky’s depiction of V.I. has offered readers an alternative to the ’hardboiled dick’ and radically transformed the detective fiction genre. Paretsky remembers V.I. and reflects on why social justice matters.

Event details: Wed 08 Mar, 10:45am on the West Stage

Chair: Jonathan Green

Amit Chaudhuri is an acclaimed essayist, musician, poet and the author of eight novels. His latest, Sojourn, is the story of an Indian academic who arrives in Berlin in 2005 and finds himself absorbed by the city. With this absorption comes the dissolution of identity and memory, as he experiences a profound identification with this otherwise foreign place. Chaudhuri talks about the relationship between history, identity and memory.

Event details: Wed 08 Mar, 9:30am on the West Stage

Chair: Katrina Strickland

Motherhood has forever been the repository for our deepest collective fantasies and anxieties. In an era when debates over abortion, reproductive technologies and gender politics rage, the moralism and sentimentalism around motherhood has been given renewed intensity. Esther Freud and Gina Rushton have both explored the role of mothers in their writing and continue the conversation here with Katrina Strickland.

Event details: Wed 08 Mar, 5:00pm on the East Stage

Chair: Jonathan Green

The problem of endings is particularly acute for a master of digression. In The Last Days of Roger Federer, Geoff Dyer’s own encounter with the existential drama of late middle age is set against the late work of great artists – from Bob Dylan to John Coltrane, Annie Dillard to Giorgio de Chirico. In conversation with Jonathan Green, Dyer talks about final chapters, twilight achievements, a little about tennis and why he had to complete his latest book before Roger Federer’s retirement.

Event details: Wed 08 Mar, 3:45pm on the East Stage

Chair: Marian Wilkinson

The rise of the Teals with the election of over 10 independents to the Australian Federal Parliament changed Australian politics. These are candidates who shared a commitment to climate change, integrity in politics and gender equality. Does their election mean we are witnessing the end of the two-party system? Will independents improve the quality of decision-making? Marian Wilkinson talks with Simon Holmes à Court, Margot Saville and Brook Turner about the Teals and their future.

Event details: Wed 08 Mar, 2:30pm on the East Stage

Chair: Felicity Plunkett

Alison MacLeod’s historical novel Tenderness is a powerful recreation of the origins of D. H. Lawrence’s scandalous love story, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. From the author in exile, dying bereft in 1930s France, to the high drama of the obscenity trial, MacLeod’s novel captures the 20th century conflicts over censorship and sexuality. She talks about the power of literature to disturb, our urge to repress and the resonances of this historical chapter for our time.

Event details: Wed 08 Mar, 1:15pm on the East Stage

Chair: Grant McAvaney

Publishing books on topical issues can be a health hazard, requiring deft footwork to avoid defamation suits, suppression orders, risk-averse publishers, cautious lawyers and, most particularly, litigious subjects. Veteran journalists and authors Louise Milligan and Adele Ferguson join with writer and lawyer Eve Thomson to revisit some of their most challenging projects.

Event details: Wed 08 Mar, 12:00pm on the East Stage

Chair: Diana Reid

An acerbic wit and whip-smart observations are the hallmark of Sloane Crosley’s writing in her essays, columns and novels, drawing the praise of writers such as Nick Hornby and Elif Batuman. Her latest novel, Cult Classic, is a twisted mystery about metaphysics, modern love, memory and mind control. Crosley discusses her process and the connections between her fiction and non-fiction writing.

Supported by the Consulate of the United States.

Event details: Wed 08 Mar, 10:45am on the East Stage

Full title: "Yes, He Has Come to the End of His Sentence, But Does That Mean He Has Nothing More to Say?"

Chair: Sean O'Beirne

Irish novelist John Banville is the author of 26 books, including seven crime novels under the name Benjamin Black. In 2005, he won the Booker Prize for his novel The Sea. His latest novel, The Singularities, is a virtuosic, referential work in which he revisits some of his most celebrated characters and playfully grapples with the abiding literary problems of representation, invention and truth.

Event details: Wed 08 Mar, 9:30am on the East Stage