Join Benjamin Law and Artistic Director Ann Mossop as they discuss the 2025 Sydney Writers’ Festival program.

The pair talk about the 2025 Festival theme, In This Together, and how books bring us closer to one another, our planet and ourselves.

The 2025 Sydney Writers' Festival is out now. Head to our website to explore the program: https://www.swf.org.au/

Tickets on sale Saturday 15 March at 10am.

Thank you to 2SER for facilitating the recording of this podcast.

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Bruce Pascoe and Lyn Harwood invite us onto the Country they call home in Black Duck: A Year at Yumburra, reflecting on life after publishing Dark Emu.

In the aftermath of devastating bushfires in north-eastern Victoria, the couple rebuilt their farm. Here, they run the Aboriginal social enterprise Black Duck Foods, committed to traditional food-growing processes that care for Country and give back to the community.

Sit down with Bruce and Lyn, in conversation with Kerry O’Brien to explore how Australian agriculture can be transformed through the practices of the past.

This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

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Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms. 

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We all know the importance of literacy for school and life, but what happens when, despite all your efforts, reading just doesn’t “click”?

Sally Rippin, the Australian Children’s Laureate and author of the book Wild Things: How we learn to read and what happens if we don’t is joined by journalist and Dyslexia advocate, Cat Rodie, in an exploration of literacy, education and those who often fall through the gaps.

This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel. 
Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms. 

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Jennifer Croft, Bri Lee and Louise Milligan have earned widespread acclaim in the realms of translation, non-fiction and investigative journalism, respectively.

Now, these authors are branching out into novels for the first time in their illustrious careers, revisiting themes in their previous writing to create stunning, gripping and beguiling works of the imagination.

Separate fact from fiction with Jennifer, Bri and Louise as they discuss the pleasures and pitfalls of braving a new genre.

This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel. Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms. 

After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:

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Explore the literary histories of Charmian Clift, Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Harrower.

Following her biography The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift, Nadia Wheatley contributed the afterword to The End of the Morning, Clift’s final manuscript, which was recently published more than 50 years after her death. Literary scholar Brigitta Olubas (Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life) joins forces with journalist Susan Wyndham to edit Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Harrower: The Letters, which reveals the deep and vexed friendship between two of Australia’s greatest writers. 

Learn more about these fabled authors’ work and writing lives with the scholars who are salvaging their stories from the archives.

This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel.
Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms. 

After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:

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Humankind stands at a crossroads: will artificial intelligence make us superhumanly productive, liberating us from life’s most mundane tasks? Or have we opened Pandora’s box, unleashing sentient technology that will eventually destroy us?

In a colossal contest of persuasion and wit, two teams of our best and brightest debate whether artificial intelligence is better than the real thing.

Decide once and for all with team captains Annabel Crabb and David Marr, as they duke it out alongside teammates Matilda Boseley, Rhys Nicholson, Tracey Spicer and Toby Walsh. Adjudicated by Yumi Stynes.

This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel.
Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms. 

After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:

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Robyn Davidson once described Unfinished Woman as an “infinite book”. “I feel absolutely that I have to write it and absolutely that I can’t write it.”

Twenty-five years in the making, this unforgettable memoir charts her expeditions since crossing the Gibson Desert with camels –  the subject of her debut, Tracks, which her then-landlord, Doris Lessing, presciently declared “a classic”.

Robyn’s exploits include having a “volcanic” love affair with Salman Rushdie in London, migrating with nomads in Tibet and marrying an Indian prince in the Himalayas. She finally returns to the long-avoided country of her childhood and her mother’s tragic suicide.

Explore her remarkable life, in conversation with Michaela Kalowski.

This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel. Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms.

After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:
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Some consider Pride and Prejudice the first romantic comedy, with Jane Austen having set the ground rules for others to follow.

Certainly, with its witty heroine and enemies-to-lovers plotting, Pride and Prejudice has created many of the tropes we continue to see in rom-coms today. YA authors Kate and Angourie Rice (Stuck up and Stupid), Sophie Gonzales (The Perfect Guy Doesn't Exist) and Gabrielle Tozer (The Unexpected Mess of it All) talk with Nathan Luff about Austen’s lasting influences on the genre and the fun involved in reimagining rom-coms for contemporary readers.

This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel. Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms. 

After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:

Instagram: @sydwritersfest

Facebook: @SydWritersFest

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What kind of world could we create if we stopped believing inequality is the price of progress?

Archaeology professor David Wengrow’s groundbreaking book, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, co-authored with the late David Graeber, overturns the theories of Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens), Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel) and Steven Pinker (Enlightenment Now). Challenging dominant narratives that the agricultural revolution meant abandoning an egalitarian Eden, the book unearths advanced early civilisations that weren’t governed by kings, presidents or authoritarian rule.

Transform your understanding of human evolution with David, in conversation with ABC RN’s Richard Fidler, and learn how rewriting history may provide political inspiration for today.

This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel. Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms. 

After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:
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In Your Favourites’ Favourites, our most loved writers introduce one of their favourite authors.

Acclaimed Women & Children author Tony Birch sits down with debut writer Graham Akhurst, a Fulbright Scholar who drafted his YA novel, Borderland, while studying in renowned writing program at Hunter College in New York City. This gripping coming-of-age story follows a city-born First Nations teenager on an epic quest to figure out who he is.

Join Tony and Graham as they discuss First Nations identity, the impact of colonisation and what happens when you take a stand. 

This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel. 

Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms.

After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:
Instagram: @sydwritersfest
Facebook: @SydWritersFest
X (Twitter): @SydWritersFest
TikTok: @sydwritersfest

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.