Adelaide Writers' Week

Chaired by Linda Jaivin.

Zakiya Dalila Harris’s The Other Black Girl was one of the buzziest books of 2021. When new employee Hazel-May joins Wagner Books, editorial assistant Nella is thrilled she’ll have a Black ally. But she soon finds herself eclipsed by the charismatic newcomer, and when she starts receiving anonymous notes entreating her to leave Wagner, things take a sinister turn. Part office satire, part thriller with a twist, this audacious debut is hilarious, unsettling and a compulsive read.

Chaired by Natalie Harkin.

Two of Australia’s most exciting young poets come together on one dynamic panel. Evelyn Araluen’s Dropbear is a razor-sharp gothic reclamation that peels back the layers of colonialism and what we call Australia. It is both a radical act of literary agency and a celebration of and tribute to Country. Jazz Money’s how to make a basket is a fierce lyrical protest against settler violence and an ode to Queer and First Nations love. Their poetry sings, crackles and inspires.

Twilight Talk | Authorial Voice

Hosted by Michael Williams.

Join us for our second Twilight Talk as we take on the big question of change and how to achieve it. Each of our panellists works tirelessly and effectively as an agent of change and a powerful advocate for their ideas and communities. Scott Ludlam is an activist, writer and former Deputy Leader of the Greens. Michael Mohammed Ahmad is a celebrated author and founder of the Sweatshop Literacy Movement that promotes writers and literature in and from Western Sydney. Joelle Taylor is a poet, social activist and fierce advocate for vulnerable and marginalised communities.

Chaired by Clare Wright

Described by The New York Times as “quietly dazzling”, Amia Srinivasan’s The Right to Sex is a landmark examination of the politics and ethics of sex. “A truly inclusionary politics,” Amia writes, “is an uncomfortable, unsafe politics.” Moving beyond questions of consent, and the notion of wanted or unwanted sex, this formidable collection re-centres the second-wave feminist idea of the personal as political in thrilling new ways, asking us to interrogate what it is that shapes our expectations and desires.

Chaired by Angela Savage

For over fifty years, Tom Keneally has been writing about everything that makes us tick – and the contentious, disputed land that is ‘Australia’. In his new collection of thought-pieces, he moves seamlessly between deep questions of our past and moments of private revelation. A Bloody Good Rant is exactly what it says it is – a bit of ratbaggery, some judicious hindsight, and a generous serve of wisdom. The author of The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Schindler’s Ark and Corporal Hitler’s Pistol gets a few things off his chest.

Poetry in Performance with Elyas Alavi, Ken Bolton, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Jelena, Dinic, Juan Garrido-Salgado, Dominic Guerrera, Jill Jones, Camille Roulière and Ruhi Yaganagi. 

Alice Walker has described poetry as "a ruthless muse". Join some of the finest and most devoted local poets for an enthralling afternoon performance of verse, featuring Ali Cobby Eckermann, Jelena Dinic, Jill Jones, Juan Garrido-Salgado, Elyas Alavi, the prolific Ken Bolton, Camille Roulière, Ruhi Yaganagi, and Ngarrindjeri and Kaurna poet Dominic Guerrera.

Hosted by Jessica Alice, poet and Director of Writers SA. Co-presented with Writers SA.

Chaired by Nicole Abadee

Following heartbreak, self-absorbed young Melbourne boy Will flees to New York in search of adventure and forgetting. When wild hedonism doesn’t help, and with his visa and money fast running out, Will finds himself in Littleproud, Ohio, working for Wayne Gage, Vietnam veteran, amateur shaman and collector of exotic animals. Emily Bitto’s follow up to her Stella Award-winning The Strays is a clever, complex tale, full of opulent writing and meditations on human nature and our relationship with the natural world.

Chaired by Michael Williams

In Christos Tsiolkas’s first foray into autofiction, 7½, his protagonist Christos declares he is tired of the lofty ambitions many novelists hold for their writing on politics, sexuality, race, history, gender, morality or the future. “All of them now bore me,” he declares. Instead, he will write about beauty. His powerful memories of the past, the strange present in which he tries to write – surrounded by the magnificently evoked natural world – and the novel on which he embarks are masterfully woven together into one compelling whole.

Chaired by Kerry O’Brien

As our Foreign Minister from 1988 – 1996 and President of the Brusselsbased International Crisis Group thereafter, Gareth Evans is uniquely qualified to discuss the importance of good international citizenship in our interconnected world. Outlining four key tenets to assess a country’s record – foreign aid generosity, reaction to conflicts and their consequences, response to human rights violations, and contribution to global crises – he finds Australia wanting on all of them. His essay is a call for change and decency in the way we engage with the world.

Chaired by Natasha Mitchell

Two brilliant books concerned with the morality intrinsic to energy policy. In Long Half-Life, Emeritus Professor of Science, Technology and Society Ian Lowe demolishes nuclear energy, arguing it is indivisible from the industry’s role in weaponry, and that the issue of waste has never been solved. Political philosopher Jeremy Moss’s Carbon Justice posits we have a responsibility to recognise and combat the moral harm done by the mining and exporting of our fossil fuels. Far from being a minor contributor to climate change, he contends, our massive exports of fossil fuels make us one of its key drivers.