Adelaide Writers' Week

After writing her best-selling book, Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When The World Goes Dark, Julia Baird said she hoped it would prove useful to “a few people going through an ‘In the Case of Emergency, Smash Glass’ kind of moment.” And then 2020 happened, and the world went dark for everyone. Part memoir, part cultural commentary, this intimate and inspiring book exhorts us to “reach for those tiny moments of stillness” as we search for the light within.

Chaired by Nicole Abadee

Naoise Dolan and Jessie Tu were responsible for two of the most bracing, exciting debuts of 2020. Naoise’s Exciting Times and Jessie’s A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing are witty, bold accounts of the power dynamics of sex and relationships in the twenty-first century, with heroines that deadpan their way through relationships – transactional, erotic and romantic – as they navigate love, vulnerability and ambition and muster the courage to find their true selves.

Chaired by Jo Case

Debra Adelaide and Tegan Bennett Daylight have lived their lives immersed in books – as writers, editors, critics, teachers and, most importantly, as readers. In Debra’s The Innocent Reader: Reflections on Reading and Writing and Tegan’s The Details: On Love, Death and Reading, they reflect with candour and generosity on their love of reading, and the joy and fulfillment it offers them, exploring the deep emotional connection they have forged with the written word and the worlds it can contain.

Join Peter Goldsworthy for an hour of poetry reading, featuring a line-up of celebrated poets drawn from Writers’ Week guests and South Australia’s vast pool of poetic talent. Including Julie Janson, Jessie Tu, Nardi Simpson and Adelaide’s own legendary street poet, Geoff Goodfellow.

With her acclaimed BBC radio series just commissioned for a seventh series, broadcaster, author, stand up comedian and classicist Natalie Haynes is celebrated for taking those pillars of our cultural understanding, the Greek myths, and retelling them from the female perspective. Her novel, A Thousand Ships, centres Creusa’s experience of the Trojan War and in her most recent book, the eloquent and witty essay collection Pandora’s Jar, Natalie “gives voice to the women, girls and goddesses who, for so long, have been silent.”

Chaired by Tom Wright

In Andrew Pippos’ lively debut Lucky’s, his eponymous soldier stays in Sydney after World War II to forge a life amongst the Greek diaspora and the homey diners they establish on each corner, to which he adds with a string of initially successful franchises. The Coconut Children is an evocative coming of age story of a schoolgirl and a community, written in and about contemporary Cabramatta by the prodigiously talented 19 year-old Vivian Pham. These compelling, vibrant stories remind us how Australia is shaped and lifted by the waves of immigration that reach our shores.

Chaired by Lur Alghurabi

In Mirandi Riwoe’s award-winning Stone Sky Gold Mountain, we experience Australia’s Gold Rush through the eyes of Chinese immigrants Ying and Lai Yue as family circumstances force the two siblings to seek their fortune far from home. Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s The Mountains Sing recounts Vietnam’s dark history of colonialism and war from the perspective of its people rather than its invaders. These illuminating and engaging novels provide new perspectives on familiar stories in ways as refreshing as they are important.

Chaired by Yves Rees

Across the COVID-plagued year that was 2020, many of the great South Australian authors featured at this year’s Writers’ Week had to pivot to online launches, with celebratory glasses raised only virtually and individually as their books began their journeys in the world. The Zoom launch was a useful substitute… but not quite the same.

To compensate in some small way, we invite you to celebrate the wonderful array of South Australian books that missed out on in-person launches in 2020, as we re-launch 8 great works from 8 fantastic local authors from this year’s Writers’ Week program.

From memoir, to debut novels, to sly satire, to magic realism, to investigative reporting and more – help give this diverse and compelling range of books their moment in the spotlight by joining us for (Re)launch: Live and Local! as we shake our fist at Covid and 2020 and celebrate great South Australian writing – in person!

How much work does a bestselling author need to do to promote their book? What do they wish they had known about promotion that they have learned along the way? What exactly is it that a bookseller does? And how can new writers forge a great relationship with their local, busy bookseller to aid in the promotion of their book?

Hosted by Georgia Richter

The Business of Being a Writer is presented in partnership with Fremantle Press.

Shortlisted for this year’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, Kylie Maslen’s Show Me Where It Hurts explores the impact of chronic illness on the lives of sufferers, and is marked by its eloquence, candour and generosity.  Drawing on her own life and illness, Kylie documents the experience of living with pain with humour and courage, detailing its impact across such areas as housing, dating and work, and building her readers’ understanding through pop cultural references ranging from Frida Kahlo to Sally Rooney to Sponge Bob Squarepants.

Chaired by Jane Howard