Adelaide Writers' Week

This Writers' Week session is part of our Kids' Day program

This Writers' Week session is a part of our Kids' Day program.

When Vikki Wakefield’s This is How We Change the Ending won the 2020 CBCA’s Award for Book of the Year: Older Readers, it cemented her reputation as an author of incredible power and empathy. Join moderator Clare Sawyer to find out why and how Vikki can write “from inside a teen boys head, illuminating his thoughts and words with searing understanding and empathy, along with hints of hope.” (The Australian)

Chaired by Clare Sawyer

After the blockbuster success of Jasper Jones, Craig Silvey’s highly anticipated new novel is Honeybee. Chronicling the coming of age of its transgender narrator, Sam, the story opens with Sam and another despairing soul standing on an overpass ready to end it all. Sam and Vic save each other and their tentative friendship gives them their first reason to live. Equal parts heartbreaking and heartwarming, Honeybee is a deeply empathetic novel of identity, vulnerability and masculinity.

Chaired by Yves Rees

Described by The Observer as one of the “world’s leading thinkers”, global economist Noreena Hertz dissects the contemporary epidemic of loneliness in The Lonely Century. This meticulously researched and highly readable book describes how we have become alienated from each other, and analyses the structures, influences and trends that cause and exacerbate our isolation. The Lonely Century is an urgent message about one of the most far-reaching issues of our time.

Chaired by Natasha Cica

Pulitzer prize-winning author and historian Anne Applebaum deconstructs the psychology and motivations of today’s crazed conspiracy theorists and populists in Twilight of Democracy, an incisive examination of the longstanding struggle between democracy and dictatorship. Drawing on experience and high-level relationships forged across Europe and America, and an exemplary understanding of contemporary and historical politics, Twilight of Democracy is a confronting and illuminating analysis of a polarised world.

Chaired by Sally Warhaft

Do Australians extend the right of free speech only to those we agree with, saying things we approve of? In Truth is Trouble: The Strange Case of Israel Folau, or How Free Speech Became So Complicated, Malcolm Knox documents the curious case of how footballer Israel Folau became the centre of our free speech debate. Patrick Mullins’ The Trials of Portnoy: How Penguin Brought Down Australia’s Censorship System, recounts the pervasive literary censorship of our puritanical past, brought to an abrupt end with Portnoy’s Complaint and Penguin’s brave decision to publish and be damned. Malcolm and Patrick discuss our history of censorship and today’s fraught debate around bigotry and cancel culture.

Chaired by David Marr

It began with Australia ablaze and ended with a scramble to avoid the latest cluster of the clusterf*** that was COVID-19. In between were floods, flailing democracies, dodged accountabilities, and a weird fugue that swallowed April – July. It’s no wonder we emerged from 2020 wondering: “What just happened?”. Sophie Cunningham’s Fire Flood Plague pondered just that. She facilitates a conversation with contributors Richard McGregor and Gabrielle Chan, joined by Danielle Celermajer, whose essay collection Summertime: Reflections on a Vanishing Future is an an urgent elegy for looming loss.

Chaired by Sophie Cunningham

When historian Mark McKenna set out to write a history of Uluru, he had no idea where the story would take him. Researching the shooting death of an Aboriginal man by policeman Bill McKinnon, Mark uncovered shocking evidence that was typical of Australian frontier justice, and astonishing in its contemporary resonance. With support from the families of key individuals, and the assistance of South Australian Museum, Mark uncovered critical new evidence, and Return to Uluru became a true crime story of the most explosive kind, and an important exploration of what truth telling and reconciliation means in practice.

Chaired by Jared Thomas

When should you start to think about your author brand? How are you going to promote your message and when should you connect with your audience? Featuring Scribe Publications Publicity Manager Cora Roberts and novelist and critic Jessie Tu, this event will give aspiring authors practical tips on all the ins and outs of promotion, including creating and curating a brand, time-management, self-promotion and working with an in-house marketing team.

Hosted by Georgia Richter