A mesmerising tale from one of Australia’s literary stars

‘He has no notion of how to care for a saint. Even a small one. Does not even believe … Still. Catholic or not. You don’t turn away a saint.’

In the north-western corner of 1950s Australia, a saint arrives at the home of a retired engineer, who unwittingly becomes her custodian. A girl of indeterminate age, her body remains as it was when she died, incorruptible. And though no one knows it, she is conscious, reflecting on past and present.

Little World stretches across continents and eras – from the Canal Zone in Panama and the island of Nauru all the way to the onset of Covid in contemporary Victoria. Beautiful, rich and strange, it weaves a tale of interconnected fates as characters grapple with the unknowable, and in this way come face to face with their deepest needs.

The gripping story of Australia’s first female crime writer and her career-criminal son

When Mary Fortune arrived in Melbourne with her infant son in 1855, she was determined to reinvent herself. The Victorian goldfields were just the place.

After a time selling sly grog and a bigamous marriage to a policeman, Mary became a pioneering journalist and author. The Detective’s Album was the first book of detective stories to be published in Australia and the first by a woman to be published anywhere in the world. Her work appeared in magazines and newspapers for over forty years – but none of her readers knew who she was. She wrote using pseudonyms, often adopting the voice of a male narrator to write about ‘unladylike’ subjects.

When Mary died in 1911, her identity was nearly lost. In Outrageous Fortunes, Megan Brown and Lucy Sussex retrieve Fortune’s astonishing career and discover an equally absorbing story in her illegitimate son, George. While Mary was writing crime, George was committing it, with convictions for theft and bank robbery. In their intertwined stories, crime fiction meets true crime, and Melbourne’s literary bohemia consorts with the criminal underworld.

Lucy Sussex‘s books include Blockbuster! Fergus Hume and The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, which won the 2015 Victorian Community History Award, Women Writers and Detectives in the Nineteenth Century and Saltwater in the Ink: Voices from the Australian Seas. She has a PhD from the University of Wales and is an honorary fellow at La Trobe University.

Megan Brown completed her PhD at the University of Wollongong, examining the work of Mary Fortune. She has contributed chapters to The Routledge Companion to Australian Literature and The Unsocial Sociability of Women’s Life Writing.

Join award-winning author Kate Grenville as she discusses Unsettled, a deeply personal memoir of family legacies, truth-telling and reckoning with what it means to be on land that was taken from other people.

Intertwining her family’s history with the broader story of First Nations peoples’ dispossession and displacement, Grenville considers what it means to be descended from people who were ‘on the sharp edge of the moving blade that was colonisation’.

She speaks about historical facts and historical fictions, writing challenging histories and confronting the ghosts of the past, in conversation with Daniel James. 

Top 100 Books with ABC Radio National

Join some of the Festival’s most esteemed guests as they discuss the greatest contemporary books of the 21st century so far, inspired by ABC Radio National’s forthcoming Top 100 Books Countdown.

Kaliane Bradley (The Ministry of Time), Kate Grenville (Unsettled) and Colum McCann (Twist) settle in to make a case for their favourite books – fiction, nonfiction, Australian and international. Plus, submit your own favourites live on the day and vote for which reads you think should make the cut! Come together with fellow book nerds to discuss, debate and dissect which books are worthy of making the Top 100.

Hosted by ABC Radio National’s Sarah L'Estrange. 

In partnership with ABC Radio National

Unsettling Australian Stories

Award-winning authors Kate Grenville and Anita Heiss take a personal, political and cultural look at writing frontier histories and unsettling colonial narratives.

Grenville’s new work of non-fiction, Unsettled, is a deeply personal reckoning with what it means to be on land that was taken from other people, intertwining her family’s history with larger forces of colonialism and dispossession. Heiss’s recent novels, including Dirrayawadha and Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray, offer powerful and engrossing stories of Australia's colonial past told through Wiradyuri eyes.

Together, these two extraordinary authors consider the intersections of history and fiction, how fiction can illuminate silences in the archives, and the challenges and necessity of truth-telling. With ABC Radio National’s Kate Evans.

Celebrated authors Emily Maguire and Josephine Rowe come together to discuss their new novels of faith, fate and the nature of belief.

Inspired by the legend of Pope Joan, Maguire’s Rapture is the story of a young woman who defies gendered expectations and enters the monastic life by disguising herself as a man. Rowe’s Little World opens with the body of a child saint stranded in the Australian bush, and goes on to weave a mesmerising story of the lives she touches across time and continents.

Together, they discuss the mundane, the miraculous and writing the ineffable, with Jaclyn Crupi.

Join us for a spoken-word salon celebrating words, stories and human experiences. Kaliane Bradley, Gideon Haigh, Marcia Langton, Samah Sabawi and Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts will reflect on ‘The Words I Wish I’d Said,’ and philosopher A. C. Grayling will deliver a Living Eulogy, celebrating life while we’re still here to hear it.

The afternoon will close with a very special musical performance by Eliza Hull.

Hosted by Emilie Zoey Baker and produced by Marieke Hardy.

A memoir about saying the unsayable with food, how our eating lives can bring us together and – sometimes – keep us apart.

Acclaimed journalist, editor and memoirist Candice Chung reflects on her ideas of love and solitude and the way food can both unite and divide us through personal stories in her new book Chinese Parents Don’t Say I Love You.

Join Candice in an intimate conversation with the award-winning author Alice Pung as they delve into identity, longing and food as a language of love.

Artificial intelligence’s collision with human creativity is one of the most important stories of our time.

With the accelerating impact of AI, so much of what we understand about being human is being re-written.

Acclaimed writer Jeanette Winterson (12 Bytes: How artificial intelligence will change the way we live and love) sees AI changing our lives in unprecedented ways. Academic and researcher Toby Walsh (The Shortest History of AI) predicts the place AI will have in our futures.

Hear Jeanette and Toby bring the perspectives of an artist and a scientist together in this important contemporary conversation. With an introduction from Verity Firth.

An expert in Chinese politics looks back at China under Mao Zedong and birth of the Cultural Revolution.

With more than 40 years experience studying Chinese language, politics and culture, author and translator Linda Jaivin brings it all to work into her new book Bombard the Headquarters!. It’s a holistic profile of the Cultural Revolution that is both deftly precise and brilliantly concise.  

Join Linda in this fascinating talk about one of the world’s most significant and lethal sociopolitical movements.

“What does it mean to be on land that was taken from other people? Now that we know how the taking was done, what do we do with that knowledge?”  

After the success of her two best known works, The Secret River, adapted for stage and television, and Restless Dolly Maunder, shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Festival favourite Kate Grenville is still grappling with what it means to be a descendant of colonisation in Australia.

Journey through time and place with Kate as she reframes her family’s history in Unsettled: A Journey Through Time and Place, placing First People in the same picture. With Beejay Silcox.

The Curiosity Lecture series returns to the Festival with a line-up of our most thought-provoking speakers delivering one-time talks on topics of intrigue, interest and importance.

As one of the world’s leading researchers in artificial intelligence, Toby Walsh has been awarded the Humbolt Research Award and elected as a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of AI. In The Shortest History of AI, Toby outlines the six key ideas for understanding artificial intelligence today.

Hear Toby trace the origins of artificial intelligence in science and culture and predict where the technology is heading in the future.

Anne Summers’s Damned Whores and God’s Police was first published 50 years ago – a time when sexual harassment, domestic violence and date rape were unnamed and often ignored experiences for women in Australia.

It would be another nine years before the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984.

Join Anne as the bestselling and multi-award-winning writer and journalist – also an Officer of the Order of Australia and inductee to the Australian Media Hall of Fame – reflects on her groundbreaking book, what she has done since and what she is doing now with host Alecia Simmonds.

The Curiosity Lecture series returns to the Festival with a line-up of our most thought-provoking speakers delivering one-time talks on topics of intrigue, interest and importance.

In the fascinating account of 1966 China in Bombard the Headquarters!: The Cultural Revolution in China, Linda Jaivin focuses on the start of the Cultural Revolution and the ideological quarrels and personalities that underpinned it. Because the Cultural Revolution is still heavily censored in the People’s Republic, many remain in the dark, leaving these pivotal events unexplained.

Hear about the lead-up to this key historic moment from an expert in Chinese politics.

Whether you seek escape, challenge, inspiration or delight, you’ll find your next favourite book at this special panel event as some of the Festival’s most exciting novelists introduce their acclaimed new releases.

Join Robbie Arnott, Lech Blaine, Sarah Firth and Yumna Kassab in conversation with Michael Williams, as they share insight into their rich and rewarding stories.

The steady growth of the billionaire class in the 21st century and members’ absurd wealth represent the pinnacle of economic inequity.  

Dean of the UTS Business School Carl Rhodes unpacks four myths about billionaires as forces for good to argue for international economic justice in his new book, Stinking Rich: The Four Myths of the Good Billionaire.

He is joined in conversation with journalist and political biographer Paddy Manning, who has written on the likes of Malcolm Turnbull and Lachlan Murdoch. Listen as they critique popular narratives around the ultra-wealthy that keep them powerful and dangerous. 

The scintillating chronicler of human weakness, Oscar Wilde, once said, “True friends stab you in the front”.

In this popular event, writer and presenter Annabel Crabb and writer David Marr lead opposing teams in a rollicking debate on the legitimacy of this aphorism about friends who betray each other.

Featuring debaters Matilda Boseley, Rhys Nicholson, Justine Rogers and Jennifer Wong, and adjudicated by Yumi Stynes, this debate is sure to get provocative, pithy and personal.    

Editor in Chief of Schwartz Media Erik Jensen discuss today's headlines with Jess Hill and Malcolm Knox.

For Lech Blaine’s family, their biggest worries were the footy scores and the chance that Lech’s foster siblings’ Christian extremist parents would find and kidnap them.

The Blaines and the Shelleys couldn’t have been more different parents and their fierce battles for custody – in the courts, the foster system and the front yard – created enough fear and tension to last many lifetimes. In Australian Gospel: A Family Saga, a stranger-than-fiction tale of love and loss in country Queensland, Lech spins an epic that questions what makes a family.

Hear Lech unpack the makings of memory and inheritance, in conversation with Ashley Hay.

Making big stories bite-sized.

Join history writers Andrew Ford and Andrew Leigh as they discuss how to trim complex histories of music and economics while still keeping the essence of truth.

As politicians and analysts attempt to manoeuvre with the global superpower, these writers reflect on how the 20th century got the nation where it is today.

Bombard the Headquarters!: The Cultural Revolution in China is Linda Jaivin’s account of the ideological quarrels and personalities that underpinned the violent beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Louisa Lim’s Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong and Edward Wong’s At the Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning with China mix national history with personal archives to paint detailed portraits of Hong Kong and China, respectively.

Join Linda, Louisa and Edward in conversation with Peter Hartcher as they discuss the crucial history that made China what it is today.

The Curiosity Lecture series returns to the Festival with a line-up of our most thought-provoking speakers delivering one-time talks on topics of intrigue, interest and importance.

Economics professor at UNSW Sydney Richard Holden (Money in the Twenty First Century) and Parliamentarian Andrew Leigh (Battlers & Billionaires and The Shortest History of Economics) unpack economics as a global force that impacts wars, technological innovation and social change.

In our contemporary world, what are the causes and consequences of economic inequality? And can economics be used as a tool for justice for the oppressed?

The promises of global peace and prosperity that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union have failed to come to fruition in the way that many in the West had imagined.

Now, President Donald Trump is swinging a wrecking ball at the alliances, values and institutions that underpin Western power, while countries like Russia, China, Iran, India and Brazil forge powerful new partnerships.

If the sun is really setting on the West, what does that mean for countries like Australia? Is it a moment of opportunity or something else? Join hosts Geraldine Doogue and Hamish Macdonald for this Global Roaming live event, as they discuss who the winners and losers will be in this fast-changing world with guests Philippe Sands, Bec Strating and Edward Wong.

Join Founding Editor of The Saturday Paper and Editor in Chief of Schwartz Media Erik Jensen to discuss the latest news with Louisa Lim and Kate McClymont.

The Curiosity Lecture series returns to the Festival with a line-up of our most thought-provoking speakers delivering one-time talks on topics of intrigue, interest and importance.

Journalist and political commentator George Megalogenis examines the changing reality of Australian politics in his most recent Quarterly Essay: Minority Report: The New Shape of Australian Politics. With politics as usual not enough for many Australians, minority governments are a real possibility in our future. How did we get here and will this change damage our democracy or revitalise it?

The Curiosity Lecture series returns to the Festival with a line-up of our most thought-provoking speakers delivering one-time talks on topics of intrigue, interest and importance.

What will it take to stop gendered violence?

Expanding on her Quarterly Essay 97, Losing It: Can We Stop Violence Against Women and Children?, investigative journalist and Stella Prize winner Jess Hill challenges Australian governments’ promise to end gendered violence in a single generation. As recently as last year, Australians took to the streets again to protest the lack of funding, innovation and resources needed to achieve the goal of ending gendered and family violence.

Hear Jess analyse what’s working in our current system and what’s not and map out what we can do to finally change things.

“To be Indian growing up in Australia is to tread the narrow line between here and there, to constantly code-switch and navigate between filling the needs and aspirations of your family, your community – and yourself.”   

Growing Up Indian in Australia brings together a diverse diaspora of storytellers whose experiences straddle the boundaries of Indian and Australian identities and who write of building something new in the middle.

In this panel discussion, contributors to the anthology, including established and emerging writers, share their stories of shapeshifting between cultures and expectations.

Featuring contributors Kavita Bedford, Aarti Betigeri, Nicholas Brown, Hardeep Dhanoa and host Jeremy Fernandez.

Josephine Rowe’s Little World is a compact, lyrical read that feels both mythic and frighteningly current. When the perfectly preserved body of a child is brought to Western Australia, it raises questions of miracles, divinity, and how sainthood and holiness are bestowed.

Josephine Rowe is one of Australia's greatest living authors, and I will stand by that claim. 

Complimentary refreshments included. 

Festival favourite State of the Nation returns bigger and better than ever for an Australian post-election wrap-up. 

What is the future of Australian politics? What are the failures of a two-party system? How are voters resisting ‘politics as usual’ during housing, cost of living and climate crises? What difference can we expect from this government?

Assess the state of Australian politics in this panel discussion featuring broadcaster and Walkley Award–winning journalist Waleed Aly, Prime Minister’s Literary Award– and Walkley Award–winning journalist George Megalogenis, The Australia Institute’s chief political analyst Amy Remeikis and Melbourne Press Club Lifetime Achievement Award winner Niki Savva. They join veteran political journalist and former host of Insiders and Offsiders Barrie Cassidy.

We know writers work well on their own, tapping away at a keyboard, but in this event, we push them out on stage to entertain with song, dance and big emotions.

Multi-award-winning actor, singer, writer and comedian Michelle Brasier has curated the funniest, most fabulous Festival writers to share their more hidden talents of the comedy, cabaret and confessional variety.

Come together for this celebration of life in all its joy, mess and brevity. Be moved to laughter and tears with special guests Virginia Gay, Tanya Hennessy, Tim Lancaster, Benjamin Law and Maeve Marsden.

Feminism has a checkered past, but what can we expect from feminist ideas these days?

CEO of independent news commentary platform Cheek Media Co. Hannah Ferguson (Taboo: Conversations we never had about sex, body image, work and relationships), Stella Prize winner and investigative journalist Jess Hill (See What You Made Me Do, Quarterly Essay 97 Losing It) and human rights lawyer and Fulbright Scholar Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts (Long Yarn Short) discuss whether feminism can find solutions to some of our current crises.

Join them as they reckon with what feminism has to offer and predict future solutions to complex social problems in this panel discussion with host Sisonke Msimang. 

Every family has their secrets – but what happens when a writer dives into the family archive to uncover and share those stories with the world?

In this live episode of Archive Fever podcast, co-hosts Yves Rees and Clare Wright are joined by Lech Blaine and Anne-Marie Te Whiu to probe the promise and pitfalls of working with stories close to home. Why dig up the family skeletons? How do you navigate the minefield of the truth about loved ones and forebears? And what does journeying into family history do to the writer themself? 

What does it mean to reclaim a language? In the UN International Decade of Indigenous Languages, determined leaders are revitalising and cultivating languages in their communities. Join Barada, Yiman, Gangulu and Gureng Gureng linguist Gari-Tudor Smith, co-author of Bina: First Nations Languages, Old and New, contributor to Words to Sing the World Alive Cheryl Leavy, and Samantha Penangka Armstrong, a Language Nest co-ordinator at the Pertame School, in conversation with Camille Dobson, Senior Project Officer at the Centre for Australian Languages and Linguistics.

This project is supported by the Copyright Agency's Cultural Fund.

THE POWER OF A GOOD ESSAY

Esther Anatolitis, Brooke Boland, David Marr. Moderator: Ashleigh Wilson

Inspired by the release of Essays That Changed Australia, we are discussing the influence an essay can have. Editor of Meanjin, Esther Antatolitis, presents her picks of influential essays, writer Brooke Boland presents her debut collection Gulp Swallow, and iconic journalist, author and essayist David Marr talks about his collection, My Country.

CAN WE STOP THE VIOLENCE?

Jess Hill, Sonia Orchard, Shannon Molloy. Moderator: Ginger Gorman

In this hard-hitting session, we grapple with violence against women and children in Australia and the failures of our legal system. Jess Hill expands on her groundbreaking Quarterly Essay and Australia’s National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children. Sonia Orchard and Shannon Molloy share works that are part-memoir, part-investigation; adding a crucial personal reflection to the conversation. What is working? And what needs to change for a brighter future?

It’s been two decades since The Secret River was released, a landmark book exploring colonial history that was then transformed into a smash-hit stage play and mini series. Now in Unsettled, celebrated author Kate Grenville returns to the site of the Hawkesbury River and the rich terrain of her family history.

But this celebrated Australian author has been plenty busy in between. From the Women’s Prize shortlisted Restless Dolly Maunder, a reimagining of the life of Kate’s grandmother; to A Room Made of Leaves which speculates an alter-ego for historical figure Elizabeth Macarthur; and much more besides, there is so much to dip our curious oars into.

At this exhilarating evening event, we chart a course through Kate Grenville’s incredible life and literary works alongside conversation host and historian Clare Wright. It is all the more significant as our venue sits beside Broken Bay and the mouth of the mighty Hawkesbury, where it all began. We hope you can join us.

UNSETTLED COUNTRY

Kate Grenville & David Marr. Moderator: John Maynard

‘What does it mean to be on land that was taken from other people? Now that we know how the taking was done, what do we do with that knowledge?’ In their deeply personal and unflinchingly political books, Kate Grenville and David Marr square up to their past. How implicated are they in a bloody history of colonial dispossession? Two of Australia’s leading intellectuals lead us through the reckoning.

BLOOD LINES

Lech Blaine & Gideon Haigh. Moderator: Dominic Knight

We all know the saying: All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. But what does that mean for these two brilliant writers? Gideon Haigh’s deeply moving memoir My Brother Jaz explores what it means to lose someone you love, while Lech Blaine’s iconic Australian Gospel untangles a web of adoption and fanaticism, obsession and fate.

Delve into the complex intersections of history, identity, and national narrative with journalist, author, and political commentator David Marr. David’s unflinching exploration of his family’s role in frontier brutality, detailed in his acclaimed Killing for Country, is widely recognised as a profound meditation on Australia’s past. This conversation promises to dissect the uncomfortable truths embedded within our collective memory, examining how personal histories shape our understanding of national identity. Join us to uncover the nuances of David’s work and its implications for contemporary Australia.       

Don’t miss this powerful conversation with three exceptional voices: Marcia Langton, Shireen Morris, and Tara June Winch. Together, they will lead a powerful exploration into the resilience, sovereignty, and enduring richness of First Nations culture in Australia. Join them for an insightful discussion tracing the journey towards constitutional recognition, celebrating the vital tradition of Indigenous storytelling, and thoughtfully considering the path forward following the recent result of the Voice referendum. This is a crucial opportunity to listen, and to learn.

Don’t miss this keenly anticipated session exploring the high-stakes realities of international reporting. Renowned journalist Peter Greste sits down with David Marr to lay bare the urgent importance of press freedom in today’s world. They will examine the far-reaching influence of political power on the media, and the profound human cost endured by those who courageously seek and report the truth. This promises to be a festival highlight, challenging our understanding of accountability and the vital role of a free press in a democratic society.

Embark on a captivating journey into the heart of personal narratives with four remarkable storytellers.   Join acclaimed biographer and journalist David Marr, celebrated memoirist Gina Chick, and award-winning journalist and author Kumi Taguchi as the ever-engaging Wendy Harmer guides this extraordinary conversation. Together, they will unveil the power and profound impact of this year’s most compelling memoirs.

Explore the interplay of truth and memory, the weight of history, and the ache of heartbreak as these outstanding authors share their experiences and insights. This promises to be a festival highlight, offering a unique opportunity to understand the craft and emotional resonance of sharing life’s most significant stories.

Join award-winning historian Clare Wright in conversation with Shireen Morris for a fascinating discussion of Naku Dharuk: The Bark Petitions. The third and final volume in Clare’s Democracy trilogy, it explores the 1963 Yirrkala Bark Petitions – text that was delivered to Parliament by the Yolŋu people, which ultimately became the very first time that Indigenous relationships to Country were recognised by the Australian government.

Clare and Shireen discuss the profound significance of these documents – a powerful assertion of sovereignty and a foundational moment in the Australian Indigenous land rights movement. This promises to be a truly powerful and illuminating discussion, exploring this historic intersection of art, law, and resistance, revealing a vital chapter in national history.

Grab a coffee and sit back while three of Australia’s leading authors, journalists and commentators unpack, dissect and try to make sense of the news that matters here and around the globe.

Richard Glover
Holly Wainwright
Lech Blaine

Artificial Intelligence: Bogey Man or Saviour?

Technology makes life easier, right? But how easy is too easy? How do we manage the consequences - expected or otherwise - of AI on society, and with it the future of employment, health, education and democracy? Join Professor Toby Walsh, Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales and CSIRO’s Data61 and author of five books on AI including The Shortest History of AI, in conversation with journalist Annie Markey as they unpick the ramifications of our brave new world.

Family dynamics are rich territories for fiction and non-fiction writers. Join this discussion between three great storytellers who explore the complexities and richness of family life, from the big burning issues to those smaller, sometimes mundane elements that define so much of who we are and how we are perceived.

Debra Oswald
Jessie Tu
Lech Blaine