The Wheeler Centre

Bhakthi Puvanenthiran, Shaad D'Souza, Ashleigh Wilson and Luke Carman talk addiction, mental illness and cults of personality in the arts, as well as cancel culture and boycotts in the era of #metoo.

Palestinian-born writer Samah Sabawi’s work is concerned with displacement, conflict and diaspora. ‘Through writing our stories, our poems and songs,’ she has written, ‘we reconstruct our erased past, assert our present and try to shape our future.’ Appearing live at the Wheeler Centre for our PEN Writing in Exile series, she talks to Sami Shah about writing for her life.

Australia’s prison populations are booming and their demographics are heavily skewed – with Indigenous Australians shockingly over-represented. At the Wheeler Centre for Melbourne Knowledge Week, Robyn Oxley, Debbie Kilroy and Meriki Onus discuss why we rely so heavily on prisons in our criminal justice system.

The experts have spoken – there’s no doubt the water is rising. But what will it mean for Melbournians? Your suburban backyard might not be growing seaweed, but the effects will be felt across our city as we adapt to new ways of being. What might rising water levels mean for our ports and for waste management? How will our roads and sewage systems be affected? Will we see a new wave of migration from other Australian cities that have been hit even harder? The reality of our future is upon us – how will we stay afloat? Presented in partnership with Melbourne Knowledge Week, and featuring Erin O'Donnell, Karen White, David Sornig and host Andi Horvath.

At this special event at the Wheeler Centre, we hear from some of the stars of Australian romance. Jenna Guillaume, C.S. Pacat, Jodi McAlister, Angelita Biscotti, Anne Gracie and Minnie Darke each share a short reflection or provocation on the genre, followed by a panel discussion and audience Q&A. What are the reactionary conventions of romance, and what are its more subversive elements? What do stolen kisses, ripped bodices and father figures mean today? What's changing, what's here to stay, and what sets the 21st-century woman’s heart aflutter?

Young Australian voices across intersecting political movements – Paige Burton, Lawrence Reginald Chang and Maiysha Moin – discuss the tide of youth activism sweeping many parts of the globe, and the increasing appetite for challenging the status quo here at home. Presented in partnership with the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare.

Louise Swinn, chair of the 2019 Stella Prize judging panel, and Vicki Laveau-Harvie, the winner of this year's award for her memoir, The Erratics, discuss the winning book and the evolution of the Stella Prize.

The F Word Address is our annual talk from an outstanding Australian woman on a pressing feminist issue. This year, our speaker is the phenomenal Alison Whittaker: poet, essayist, legal scholar and Gomeroi woman. In a 30-minute talk, followed by a short interview with host Claire G. Coleman, Whittaker draws on her legal research and writing work to consider the limits of storytelling – and to propose new ways to strengthen and centre storytellers themselves.

In 2013, Graeme Simsion published his first novel, The Rosie Project, and the world fell in love with its big-hearted, socially inept protagonist, Don Tillman. Though some readers and reviewers read Don as a character who was ‘on the spectrum’, Simsion himself has resisted labels in public discussions of his wildly successful series of romantic comedy novels. In conversation with Clem Bastow – who has written about her own recent autism diagnosis – Simsion and Yenn Purkis – an autistic and non-binary author, blogger, presenter and mentor – discuss neurodiversity and writing. How has the public conversation changed? And what are the responsibilities of writers who choose to portray neurodiverse characters or address their own diagnoses in their work?

In this episode, London-based scholar Kenan Malik outlines his ideas on the limitations of our preoccupation with identity. What do we mean by ‘identity politics’ anyway? And how does the debate about identity relate to the wider debates that now dominate politics, on immigration, populism and diversity? After presenting his own arguments, he discusses them with Vanessa Pigrum and takes audience questions. Join him for a conversation about the complicated meaning of justice, liberation and solidarity today.