Sydney Writers' Festival
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In The White Girl, Miles Franklin Award-shortlisted author Tony Birch shines a spotlight on 1960s Australia and the then-government’s devastating policy of taking Indigenous children from their families. Set in a fictional Australian town at th
In this special Sydney Writers' Festival edition of Guardian Australia’s monthly book club, Helen Garner discusses the second volume of her diaries, One Day I’ll Remember This, which tracks a particularly tumultuous decade of her life: it begin
Trent Dalton's novel, All Our Shimmering Skies, is an exhilarating tale of love, friendship and gifts that fall from the sky. Set in the Northern Territory during World War II, it’s filled with Trent’s typically acute observations, larger-than-
For some, DNA testing is a harmless foray into their family’s past. But for others, it can be life-changing. The increase in popularity of DNA testing means thousands of people all over the world are unearthing long-held secrets, opening up a f
From the award-winning novelist Nicole Dennis-Benn, Patsy is the brave and stirring saga of a Jamaican woman who upends her life for a new start in America, leaving her young child behind. Fellow author Alexander Chee calls Pasty a “stunningly
In Vicki Laveau-Harvie’s Stella Prize-winning memoir The Erratics, two sisters reckon with the convalescence and death of their outlandishly tyrannical mother and the care of their psychologically terrorised father. Darkly comic and savagely ho
Lucia Osborne-Crowley’s I Choose Elena and Ellena Savage’s Blueberries interrogate what it means to make one’s way through the world as a woman, within its structures of power and oppression. Lucia's powerful memoir explores how trauma affects
Uncanny Valley is Anna Wiener’s prescient, page-turning account of our digital age. Set against the backdrop of our generation’s very own gold rush, Anna retells her days in San Francisco’s 2010s Silicon Valley culture, which Rebecca Solnit des
Mainstream media has long been guilty of not giving enough exposure to Indigenous stories and failing to prioritise the voices of Indigenous reporters. In this podcast from the Stories Worth Telling series, hear from a panel of leading journali
For more than 15 years, Walkley Award–winning journalist Sophie McNeill has reported on some of the most war-ravaged and oppressive places on earth, including Syria, Gaza and Iraq. Her memoir, We Can’t Say We Didn’t Know tells the human stories
On Friday 15 March 2019, an Australian-born white supremacist entered two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand and massacred 51 Muslims peacefully conducting their sacred Friday prayers. One year after the Christchurch attacks, Muslim writers i
In 2018, Layla F. Saad ran a 28-day Instagram challenge under the hashtag #MeAndWhiteSupremacy, designed to encourage those with white privilege to unflinchingly examine their complicity in upholding an oppressive power system. The challenge ca
Women and Leadership, co-authored by Julia Gillard and acclaimed development economist Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, combines research with interviews with some of the world’s extraordinary women leaders. It examines the influence of gender on women’
Golriz Ghahraman’s memoir Know Your Place tells her powerful story of becoming the first refugee elected to New Zealand’s parliament. Since her election, the former UN lawyer and Iranian-Kiwi asylum seeker has received a barrage of hate that in
Based on almost a decade of immersive research, Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women is a bestselling work of narrative non-fiction that traces the private lives of three ordinary American women. Its many fans include Elizabeth Gilbert, who called it “a n
Bob Brown led the Australian Greens from the party's foundation in 1992 until April 2012. Bob was elected to the Australian Senate in 1996. He was also the first openly gay member of the Parliament of Australia, and the first openly gay leader
The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive is the exhilarating follow-up to the bestselling East West Street from Philippe Sands, who sets out to uncover what happened to Nazi fugitive Otto von Wächter. Philippe – a pro
In the newest contribution to the Writers on Writers book series, author and The Monthly's Contributing Editor Richard Cooke turns his attention to the seminal Australian travel writer Robyn Davidson. Robyn’s bestselling Tracks recounted her so
Gomeroi poet, essayist and legal scholar Alison Whittaker takes us through the work of First Nations writers who would have joined us this week as she addresses the 2020 Sydney Writers’ Festival theme, Almost Midnight. She considers our fates –
Two of the most acclaimed writers in fiction today, Ann Patchett (The Dutch House) and Kevin Wilson (Nothing to See Here) have been close friends for more than 20 years. In a rare and intimate glimpse into their literary and personal bond, the
Drawn from years of investigative reporting on domestic abuse, Jess Hill’s 2020 Stella Prize-winning book See What You Made Me Do vividly conjures the scale of our national emergency, evoking a sense of urgency in the reader. Rather than asking
Top End Girl is the rollicking and thought-provoking memoir from actor, activist and writer Miranda Tapsell, spanning the world from Kakadu to Cannes. It captures her love of Darwin and the Tiwi Islands, and a childhood of barely seeing herself
In the past decade of climate and energy warfare in Australian federal politics, Malcolm Turnbull – the nation’s 29th prime minister – is the only leader to have lost his job over the issue twice. In his new memoir, A Bigger Picture, Turnbull r
It is not surprising that Helen Garner has kept a diary for almost all of her life – chronicling her thoughts, observations, frustrations and joys. Beginning in the late 1970s, following the publication of Monkey Grip, these accounts of her eve
Reckoning with his identity as a Korean–American, gay man, activist and artist, Alexander Chee examines everything from his father’s death to the AIDS crisis to moonlighting as a Tarot reader in his non-fiction essay collection, How to Write an
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