Chair: Miriam Cosic

In an open letter to the people of Ukraine in 2022, novelist, journalist and playwright Alhierd Bacharevič wrote: “I am prepared to take upon myself the shame and disgrace of Belarus for what is happening – in exactly the same way as German writers in the emigration did in the times of the Second World War." Since then, his masterwork, Dogs of Europe, has been banned as ’extremist material’ and confiscated copies have been destroyed. 

Event details: Sun 05 Mar, 3:45pm on the West Stage

Chair: Kim Mahood

Dean Ashenden’s book Telling Tennant’s Story: The Strange Career of the Great Australian Silence combines memoir, history and journalism and has been awarded the inaugural Australian Political Book of the Year. Ashenden is joined by Peter Sutton for a conversation about “the sorry story of White Australia’s repeated assaults – and clumsy interventions – on Indigenous Australia since the arrival of the First Fleet".

Event details: Sun 05 Mar, 2:30pm on the West Stage

Chair: Jonathan Green

Full session title: "We Gasp for Air Among People Who Believe They Are Absolutely Right"

Can democracy survive contempt? In their Quarterly Essay 87: Uncivil Wars, Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens argue that mutual contempt and intractable political enmity undermine the condition of democratic culture and truly free speech. They talk with Tom Ballard, Tim Dunlop, Sumeyya Ilanbey and Bernard Keane about the forces that have shaped contemporary political life and the possibility of recovering meaningful public debate.

Event details: Sun 05 Mar, 1:15pm on the West Stage

Chair: Glyn Davis

When asked about the impact and legacy of her work, Hannah Arendt responded: “If I may speak ironically, that’s a masculine question. Men always want to be influential... I want to understand.“ Samantha Rose Hill’s rich biographical study of Arendt is an attempt to understand one of the most renowned thinkers of the 20th century and her own relentless quest for understanding. In conversation with Professor Glyn Davis AC, renowned philosopher and bioethicist Peter Singer will join Hill to consider Arendt’s “radical openness“ and influential oeuvre.

Event details: Sun 05 Mar, 12:00pm on the West Stage

Chair: Lenore Taylor

Award-winning novelist Heather Rose’s memoir, Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here, has a title that certainly piques the reader’s interest, but the words between the covers reveal a deeply personal, confronting story quite different to what you might expect. The book contains meditations on grief, healing, love and creativity that follow the course of the author’s life. In conversation with Lenore Taylor, Editor of The Guardian Australia, Rose traces the threads that bind her childhood griefs to her adult writing life.

Event details: Sun 05 Mar, 10:45am on the West Stage

Chair: Neil Armfield

Over his 40-year career in filmmaking, Terence Davies has explored the lives of some of the great writers of the 20th century – Edith Wharton, Emily Dickinson, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Terence Rattigan and Siegfried Sassoon. It is the inner life at the domestic hearth that has been his preoccupation. No contemporary filmmaker has plumbed the nature of the literary life with greater respect for the text. He joins Neil Armfield AO, Australia’s pre-eminent director of theatre, film and opera, to explore how literature is transformed in other art forms.

Event details: Sun 05 Mar, 9:30am on the West Stage

Special guests: Shalom Auslander, Geoff Dyer, Louise Kennedy & Margot Saville

Join Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski from ABC Radio’s Conversations for a reading confessional. Whether it’s airport novels, fan fiction, fantasy or cookbooks, Fidler and Kanowski will encourage their panel of special guests - Shalom Auslander, Geoff Dyer, Louise Kennedy and Margot Saville - to confront the brutal reality that is their reading life.

Event details: Sun 05 Mar, 5:00pm on the East Stage

Chair: Sarah Ferguson

When Sarah Ferguson was 14, she took out her most decorative stationery and wrote to Philip Larkin asking him why his poetry was so bleak. As host of ABC’s 7.30, Ferguson remains an avid poetry reader. She joins us for a celebration of Simon Armitage, the British Poet Laureate, alongside Shaun Micallef, Sarah Holland-Batt, Julia Cimafiejeva and Max Gillies.

Event details: Sun 05 Mar, 3:45pm on the East Stage

Chair: Sarah Hanson-Young

Cultural critic Laura Kipnis wants to know what a plague-inflected dystopia does to our ability to love one another. In Love in the Time of Contagion: A Diagnosis, Kipnis’ reflection on her own relationship in lockdown is interwoven with broader questions about sexual politics, gender politics and biopolitics in a post-COVID world. Join us for this topical conversation.

Event details: Sun 05 Mar, 2:30pm on the East Stage

Chair: Sophie McNeill

In 1937, 148 writers, including Samuel Beckett, Rebecca West and T.S. Eliot, answered the call to respond to the Spanish Civil War. Writers have continued to take positions in moments of crisis, including the Gulf War of 1991 and the Iraq War of 2003. Sophie McNeill talks about the role of politically engaged writers with Randa Abdel-Fattah, Ramzy Baroud, Peter Singer and Mohammed El-Kurd.

Event details: Sun 05 Mar, 1:15pm on the East Stage