Adelaide Writers' Week

Chaired by David Sly

When his debut crime novel, The Nowhere Child, became a runaway blockbuster, Christian White’s life was transformed. More success followed with another bestseller, a feature film and a Netflix TV series. His latest book is Wild Place, set in the Australian bayside suburbia of 1989 when a teenager goes missing. J.P. Pomare is following in Christian’s footsteps, with his literary thrillers winning awards and legions of fans, and being optioned for screen adaptation. His most recent novel is The Last Guests, a page-turning tale of suspense exploring ideas of surveillance and voyeurism.

Chaired by Anton Enus

Australia’s foremost researcher on modern Russia, Sheila Fitzpatrick, joins us at the pivotal moment in Russian history to discuss the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, and Russia’s post-Soviet agenda under Vladimir Putin. Sheila’s recent book, The Shortest History of the Soviet Union, is a lively, authoritative distillation of seventy-five years of communist rule and the collapse of an empire, and an examination of Russia’s ongoing influence on global politics under its current president.

Chaired by Kerryn Goldsworthy

“Is it true the world’s going to die soon?” the young daughter of Walkley Award-winning writer Delia Falconer asks her. Delia struggles for an answer. This exquisite series of essays from one of our finest writers contemplates the way climate change is impacting not just our natural environment but our culture. They movingly capture a natural world infused with a deep sense of loss, and intimations of doom, along with Delia’s profound sadness at the damage we have wrought on our wounded world.

Chaired by Sophie Cunningham

To celebrate the new edition of her classic texts, Mermaid Singing and Peel Me a Lotus, Polly Samson (A Theatre for Dreamers) and Tanya Dalziell and Paul Genoni (Half the Perfect World: Writers, Dreamers and Drifters on Hydra, 1955-1964) discuss the life and literary legacy of Charmian Clift. Glorious accounts of the bohemian life Charmian, husband George Johnston and their family led in Greece, these two books encapsulate the vivid, passionate and outrageously talented woman who was years ahead of her time.

Hosted by Jessica Alice & Vincent Ciccarello.

Join the Arts Industry Council of South Australia (AICSA) and the Shadow Minister for Arts, Katrine Hildyard MP, for an inside look into SA Labor's approach to supporting a flourishing arts and culture ecology in South Australia ahead of the state election.

Hosted by the AICSA Chair and Director of Writers SA, Jessica Alice, and the AICSA Treasurer and Director of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Vincent Ciccarello, this is a companion event to the AICSA Election Series in-conversation with Premier Steven Marshall MP on Mon 7 Mar.

AICSA encourages parties and political candidates to put forward policies and commitments that support the long-term sustainability of arts practice and that improve the training, working, and living conditions of artists, as the arts and cultural sector look to recover from the devastating impact of the pandemic.

Experiencing art and culture in South Australia’s famous festival season, as well as throughout the year and in our everyday lives, is a central part of living in South Australia. For art and culture to thrive, the ecology of artists and makers, producers and presenters, independent practice through to our large public institutions and festivals, need to be resourced and celebrated.

Chaired by Caroline Baum.

Bernadette Brennan and Joyce Morgan wrote their excellent biographies in the hope their readers would become readers of their subjects. Bernadette’s Leaping Through Waterfalls: The Enigmatic Gillian Mears documents Mears’s rich, blazing life, revealing a writer of astonishing gifts and great fearlessness. Joyce’s The Countess from Kirribilli is the remarkable story of Elizabeth von Arnim, born Mary Beauchamp in Kirribilli, a prolific writer who became the toast of London, a literary sensation compared to Jane Austen. Both deserve celebration.

Chaired by Jo Case.

Alice Pung and Allee Richards’ protagonists each find themselves unexpectedly confronting motherhood. In Alice’s One Hundred Days, Karuna is just 16 when she falls pregnant and hostage to her Filipina Chinese mother’s controlling behaviour and general meanness, even as Grand Mar’s resilience saves them. Allee’s Eva sees her hopes for a new relationship with Pat dashed when he dies by suicide, never knowing she was carrying his child. The pregnancy becomes a catalyst for Eva to transform her life. Both books are characterised by depth and hope.

Supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

Chaired by Paul Barclay.

The title of Robin DiAngelo’s last international bestseller entered the lexicon: White Fragility, describing the defensive response from White people when called out for things they have said or done that have caused unintended racial hurt or offence. In Nice Racism, Robin draws on her background as a sociologist and an educator to explain how well-intentioned White progressives can cause racial harm, whether by romanticising People of Colour or expecting them to educate. An important if uncomfortable discussion on how to be a true ally.

Chaired by Geordie Williamson.

Michael Mohammed Ahmad is an important voice in contemporary Australian literature and one of the few that heralds from Western Sydney. His first novel, The Lebs, was shortlisted for the 2019 Miles Franklin Award and kicked off the autobiographical House of Adam trilogy. These books speak on growing up Lebanese Muslim in one of Australia’s most ethnically and culturally diverse regions and in an increasingly hostile post-9/11 landscape. The trilogy concludes with his most recent novel, The Other Half of You, a moving love letter written to the narrator’s young son.

Chaired by Ben Brooker.

Following his New York Times bestselling How to Change Your Mind on the therapeutic value of psychedelics, Michael Pollan’s new book is This is Your Mind on Plants, a radical challenge to how we think about plants. Exploring the powerful attraction we have to psychoactive plants, Michael asks why they are subject to such paranoid and arbitrary regulation, and in wildly differing ways. Examining opium, mescaline and caffeine, he posits “societies condone the mindchanging plants that help uphold society’s rule and ban the ones that are seen to undermine it.”