Adelaide Writers' Week

Sarah Krasnostein’s first book, The Trauma Cleaner, was a runaway bestseller and swept literary prizes nationally. Her new book is The Believer, an exploration of the power of belief. In it, she listens to the “human song of longing for the unattainable”, with each note in the song a story of unshakeable and often unfathomable faith. The stories are told to her by six extraordinary individuals – including Death Doulas, Ghostbusters, Creationists and survivors of domestic violence – individuals Sarah meets, follows, interrogates and seeks to understand in this profound and deeply compassionate book.

Chaired by Rebecca Huntley

The suburb looms large in the physical and imaginary landscape of this country, a loaded repository of hopes and aspirations. In his long anticipated memoir, Out of Copley Street: A Working Class Boyhood, Geoff Goodfellow deploys clear lucid prose to describe the South Australian suburbs that forged him. Christopher Raja was eleven when he settled in the Melbourne suburbs, a world away from the teeming streets of Kolkata from whence he came. He describes the culture shock and the life he built in Into the Suburbs: A Migrant’s Story.

Chaired by Royce Kurmelovs

When is a manuscript ready to submit? Do you need an agent or should you go straight to the publisher? How to best present your work and choose the destination for submission? And how do you make yourself stand out in the pack?

Hosted by Georgia Richter

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

What changes do we need to make in our lives to get the lives we want to live? Spurred by a sense of something lacking in their own lives, Rick Morton and Christine Jackman step out of their comfort zones to find out. In My Year of Living Vulnerably, Rick Morton describes his journey into love after a diagnosis of Complex PTSD. Despite its outward trappings of success, Christine Jackman’s life felt off kilter and unrewarding. She recounts her efforts to reclaim peace in Turning Down the Noise: The Quiet Power of Silence in a Busy World.

Chaired by Natasha Cica