Adelaide Writers' Week

Chaired by Lur Alghurabi.

The first time Amani’s father hit her mother, his wife of twenty-eight years, was the day he killed her. Amani brings a lawyer’s mind and a daughter’s heart to her devastating memoir, The Mother Wound, a book full of raging anger and the deepest of sorrow. In it, she seeks to come to terms with loss and grief, recounting her painful journey through the justice system and her quest for truth, accountability and, ultimately, healing and hope. It is a poetic, moving and powerfully inspiring debut.

Chaired by Jane Howard.

“Deaf people feel and see sound: the entire body becomes a receptor,” writes Fiona Murphy in The Shape of Sound. She kept her deafness secret for twenty-five years. Blending memoir with observations about the healthcare industry, this beautifully crafted and powerfully written debut draws readers into a new sensory world, examining the stigma associated with disability while challenging assumptions about what it means to be deaf, and what it takes to truly communicate.

A transcription of this session will be available shortly.

Chaired by Smriti Daniel

“Despite our best efforts,” writes Lucia Osborne-Crowley, “the body finds a way to express what the mind cannot.” The author of I Choose Elena returns with My Body Keeps Your Secrets in which she interviews other women and non-binary people from diverse backgrounds about the impacts of their respective traumas on their bodies, interweaving the results with rigorous research and her own story. She explores the weight of shame and the process of reclaiming a whole self in this deeply empathetic and intelligent book.

Chaired by Tali Lavi.

Kurnai woman Veronica Gorrie grew up with a fear of the police. So she joined the force. In the first half of her powerful memoir, Black and Blue: A Memoir of Racism and Resilience, Ronnie describes a childhood full of both love and trauma. Her time as a police officer is detailed in its second half. Ronnie’s accounts of being Black and Blue are told with power and humour and provide harrowing but important insight into the rampant racism in our community and our police.

Supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

Chaired by Tory Shepherd.

ABC journalist Paul Kennedy and former Sydney Swans player Brandon Jack were forced to challenge and transcend their own expectations, and that of those around them, before they could fi nd and embrace their life’s true calling. In Funkytown, Paul focuses on a critical year of his adolescence that became a turning point. 28 is the number of games Brandon played for the Swans and details the pressure and challenge of failing to succeed. Both are evocative accounts of sport, masculinity and breaking free.

Chaired by Geordie Williamson.

Omar Sakr is an acclaimed Arab-Australian poet and author. His most recent collection, The Lost Arabs, won the 2020 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Poetry. His debut novel is Son of Sin (2022), a searing look at the impact of violence and repressed desires on a queer Arab Muslim man's life in Western Sydney.

With Thomas Keneally, Hannah Kent and Christos Tsiolkas. Chaired by David Sly.

Established by passionate readers to support the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival and Adelaide Writers’ Week, the MUD Literary Club celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2022. As the only philanthropic organisation in the country exclusively dedicated to supporting literature, MUD is a unique and proudly Adelaide institution that has supported Australian authors since its inception. A powerhouse panel of “MUD Mates” Thomas Keneally, Hannah Kent and Christos Tsiolkas discuss the role of literature in contemporary culture and MUD in Australia and we learn the winner of the 2022 MUD Literary Prize.

Chaired by Kerry O'Brien.

Two deep thinkers and fine writers turn their minds to contemporary Australia. In Lies, Damned Lies: A Personal Exploration of the Impact of Colonisation, Claire G. Coleman gives us insight into the stark reality of the ongoing trauma of Australia’s violent colonisation. Julianne Schultz’s The Idea of Australia: A Search for the Soul of the Nation interrogates what defines us as a country. It tracks the contest between an imaginative and defensive country, and what we must do to become our best selves.

Hosted by Yves Rees & Clare Wright with guests John Carty & Jared Thomas.

In a special live recording of the peak-nerd podcast Archive Fever, historians Clare Wright and Yves Rees dig into settler colonial record-keeping with guests Professor John Carty and Dr Jared Thomas from the South Australian Museum. Launching the fourth season of the popular history podcast, the duo ask how the Museum is grappling with its collection of unidentified Indigenous remains, and explore how its historical artefacts can operate as a cultural seedbank to help Aboriginal people remember and reconnect with Indigenous knowledges.

Chaired by Angela Savage.

Turning the crime genre on its head, Jacqueline Bublitz’s Before You Knew My Name and Laura Elizabeth Woollett’s The Newcomer both centre the victim in their stories of violent death and the investigations that follow. The haunting, strangely joyous Before You Knew My Name tells of Alice Lee arriving in New York with just a camera and hope, destined to be a Jane Doe one month later. The Newcomer, which fictionalises an infamous 2002 murder on Norfolk Island, is a smart, provocative portrait of prejudice, violence and grief.