The Wheeler Centre

Bri Lee is a qualified lawyer and the author of Eggshell Skull, a memoir of sexism in the courts. Kate Wild is a Walkley-winning journalist and the author of Waiting for Elijah, an investigation into the shooting of a mentally ill man by police in country New South Wales. Shireen Morris is a constitutional lawyer and the author of Radical Heart, an account of the campaign by activists and Indigenous leaders towards the Uluru Statement of the Heart. All three have written about personal encounters, and painful struggles, with state institutions. At this event they discuss bias, blind spots and some promising new initiatives in the pursuit of justice in Australia today.

Dark, complex and utterly addictive, Veronica Roth's blockbuster dystopian YA novels have ensnared a generation of young readers. In Melbourne for the first time, this superstar of YA sci-fi talks fantasy worlds, fan fiction and unseen, fate-deciding forces with Amie Kaufman.

Gerald Murnane has been writing and searching – seeking revelation beyond the surface of things – for more than 20 years. A perfectionist and cult hero, his career spans more than four decades and 13 books, including 10 strange, masterful novels (Inland, A Million Windows and Border Districts among them). In recent years, thanks to heightened international press and academic attention, Nobel Prize rumours and some high-profile fans (Teju Cole has described Murnane as a 'a genius on the level of Beckett'), there's been a growing appreciation of Murnane's work in Australia and abroad. At this event, he appears in a rare conversation with Sean O'Beirne to discuss his life and work.

At this event we checked in with some recent past winners of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript: Jane Harper (2015 winner for The Dry), Melanie Cheng (2016 winner for Australia Day), and Christian White (2017 winner for The Nowhere Child). Hosted by Toni Jordan, the trio discuss their writing journeys – from laptop-clutching hopefuls to published debut authors, and beyond.

Peter Temple, the winner of prestigious crime fiction prizes including five Ned Kelly Awards and the Crime Writers’ Association Duncan Lawrie Dagger, as well as the Miles Franklin for his last novel, Truth, passed away in March this year. To celebrate his contribution to Australia’s crime fiction canon, we brought together some of his contemporaries, friends and admirers for a night of readings from his work – and stories from his own life. Hosted by Jason Steger.

In an outstanding new essay collection, Balancing Acts: Women in Sport, a dream-team of Australia’s finest writers, including Ellen Van Neerven, Tegan Higginbotham, Nicole Hayes and Kate Doak, wrestle with these questions and more. The essays explore the ways women and non-binary people negotiate a traditionally male-dominated space, with topics ranging from sexualisation in surf culture to marginalisation in boxing, and the vast power imbalance between athletes and coaches. At the Wheeler Centre, these contributors discuss shifting perspectives and shifting goal-posts in gender and sport.

Sports writers and sports stars rarely meet on the same playing field. But veteran sports journalist Martin Flanagan and former Western Bulldogs captain Bob Murphy are doing just that. Both, now, as authors. And both drawing on a true triumph-of-the-underdog tale: the Bulldogs’ miraculous 2016 Grand Final victory. If you missed the pair’s last Wheeler Centre event, now is your chance to catch the long-awaited rematch. Join them as they share tall footy tales and discuss the scrappy, winsome club they both love.

In his new book, The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities and the Remaking of the Civilized World, award-winning environmental journalist Jeff Goodell sets out to confront the specific implications of rising sea levels. ‘It’s often argued that climate change is a problem that impacts everyone on the planet,’ he writes. ‘What’s less obvious is that the solutions to climate change are already deepening the divide between the doomed and the saved.’ At this event with Tony Birch, Goodell talks coastlines, climate apartheid and new frontiers.

In this discussion, Jessie Taylor, Jackie Huggins, Elise Klein and Beverley Walley explore Cashless Debit Card regimes, such as those operating in Ceduna, South Australia, and East Kimberley, Western Australia, since 2016. Does the evidence support the extension of the programme? Is there a dark side to the regime? And in choosing the locations for the scheme to be rolled out, is remoteness a proxy for race?

At the Athenaeum Theatre, American author Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad, Manhattan Beach) discusses history, hope and American upheaval with Michael Williams.