Festival 2021

Imagining our futures

Jane Gleeson-White, Bronwen Morgan, Amelia Thorpe with Ashley Hay
Sponsored by Griffith Review

Join Jane Gleeson-White, Bronwen Morgan and Amelia Thorpe –contributors to Griffith Review’s latest edition, Hey, Utopia! – as they explore the power of asking ‘as if’. How can this simple question open up new possibilities in law, in economics, in governance and policy in the world as we inhabit and experience it, and what happens when we disrupt and explode premises taken for granted for so long? In conversation with Griffith Review editor Ashley Hay.

A time of beauty and loss

Delia Falconer with Danielle Celermajer
Sponsored by Paula McLean

In her new book Signs and Wonders, Delia Falconer how global warming is changing our culture, our very selves and our experiences of the world as well as our climate and the life of all living creatures on the planet. In these poetic essays she explores how to live now. Delia will be talking to Danielle Celemajer whose recent Summertime: Reflections on a Vanishing Future invites us to look at all that is dying around us as our shared home is lost.

Food for thought

Sam van Zweden with Fiona Wright

In her personal and cultural exploration of what it means to eat in the broken food system within which we live, Sam van Zweden doesn’t hold back from exploring the links between food and family, food and mental illness, between trauma but also talks about hunger, about the pleasure and joy of eating. 

She is in conversation with Fiona Wright. 

Rewriting the past changes the present

Larissa Behrendt and Anita Heiss with Meg Keneally
Sponsored by Rebecca Davies AO

In Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray, Anita Heiss tells a story never before told in fact or fiction and in doing so rewrites the stories and the history of Australia. Larissa Behrendt tells the story of mother and daughter, Della and Jasmine on a literary tour of England, and in doing so rewrites the relationship of the English ‘classics’ and indigenous culture and storytelling, as well enabling her characters to revisit the story of their own lives and their relationship.

They are in conversation with historical novelist Meg Keneally.