Did AI write this event copy? Can you tell, and does it matter? And as machines grow ever more capable, what – if anything – remains uniquely human? Drawing on expansive imaginations and deep research, our panel considers how AI is reshaping our identities, work, ethics and creativity. 

In The Thinning, Inga Simpson imagines a future where mass extinctions and dwindling diversity threaten what's left of our environment, introducing us to a new breed of evolved humans, the Incompletes. In Cadance Bell’s Letters to Robot Son, we are thrust even further through time to a desolate world devoid of humanity, where a robot with no memory embarks on a quest to understand its existence. Meanwhile, back in 2025, Toby Walsh’s global advocacy for limits to ensure AI enhances – rather than threatens -- our lives, has led to him being banned indefinitely from Russia.

Don’t miss these big, bold, deeply human brains, in conversation with ABC Sydney’s Rae Johnston.

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, literary legend Kate Grenville is still grappling with what it means to be a descendant of colonisation in Australia.

Delve deep with Kate as she reframes her family’s history in Unsettled: A Journey Through Time and Place, and asks, ‘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?’

Kate Grenville has published 18 books. Her nine novels include the bestseller The Secret River, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Others have also won international and Australian prizes, been adapted for stage and screen, and appear in translation. Kate's non-fiction work includes biographies and books about the writing process. Her latest book is Unsettled: A journey through time and place. 

Nicole Abadee is an interviewer, facilitator and journalist who writes for Good Weekend Magazine, Harpers Bazaar, Spectrum and Australian Book Review. She has been a regular interviewer at writers’ festivals including Sydney Writers Festival, Adelaide Writers Week and Canberra Writers Festival. She was the curator of the Woollahra Writers’ Festival 2025. Nicole has been a literary judge, podcaster and a guest on ABC Radio to discuss books. She is a board member of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.

Twenty years from now, what is the best-case scenario for humanity? What about the worst-case scenario? Maybe a middle ground? While discussions of our future(s) are often rightly focused on climate change, we’ve brought together experts in lifestyle, politics and evolving technologies to play a little game of hypotheticals, discussing how their extensive research informs their hope – or despair – for the decades to come. 

Get back to the future, with Director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program Sam Roggeveen and Chief Scientist of UNSW.AI, UNSW’s new AI Institute Toby Walsh, in conversation with Lifestyle Editor at Guardian Australia and author of All Women Want Alyx Gorman.

Yes, it probably is. 

Don’t miss this timely discussion, with Sam Roggeveen, author of The Echidna Strategy: Australia’s Search for Power and Peace and director of the Lowy Institute's International Security Program; Carl Rhodes, Professor of Business and Society at UTS Business School and author of Woke Capitalism: How Corporate Morality is Sabotaging Democracy, and Melissa Phillips, WSU Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences and Acting Director, Policy and Research for the Whitlam Institute.

Democratically wrangled by facilitator Beejay Silcox, this event is presented in partnership with the Whitlam Institute.

For half a century, Bob Brown has been standing up to the powerful interests who would put profit before planet. In Defiance, he draws on this experience to inspire a new generation of individual and collective action.

He reflects on the people and places that have shaped him, celebrates the irreplaceable beauty and value of nature and shares what motivates him to keep fighting. He considers the challenges facing nature’s defenders – hostile corporate lobbyists, vilification in the press, the powerful pull of consumerism – and shows how courage, persistence and community can defeat them all.

Told with Brown’s trademark warmth and humour, these stories will galvanise, uplift and inspire.

Mark McKenna sits down with Frank Bongiorno to discuss Mark's new book and how it came together.

In The Shortest History of Australia, Mark McKenna offers a compelling new version of our national story. This is a modern Australia permeated by First Nations history; a multicultural society with an island mindset; a continent of epic beauty and extreme natural events; a country obsessed by war abroad but blind to its founding war at home; and a thriving nation-state still to realise its political independence.

McKenna’s wise and humane history reveals the surprising in the familiar, and reframes the past so we can see the present more clearly.

Join Emily Gallagher as she introduces her book Playtime: A History of Australian Childhood.
Children’s play has long been an important part of Australia’s cultural landscape. It is how we learn to live, to forge friendships and to make sense of the world. In this talk, Emily Gallagher delves into the imaginative lives of the children that grew up in the early-to-mid twentieth century. It is a story about young dreamers and aspiring journalists, old schoolrooms and backyard cubbies, war and modernity, sibling rivalries and intergenerational alliances, and the enduring power of the imagination to defy the routine and powerlessness of everyday life.

The history of Australia has been written before – but not like this. Mark McKenna’s wise and humane history reveals the surprising in the familiar, and reframes the past so we can see the present more clearly.

On Tuesday 11th November at The Royal Oak, Balmain, join Mark McKenna in conversation with Anna Clark.

Copies of The Shortest History of Australia will be available for purchase at the venue through Roaring Stories, with McKenna signing copies after the discussion.

Hosted by Roaring Stories. 

Join Readings for 24-hours celebrating books, culture and community

La Mama Salon is a series of intimate conversations at La Mama theatre. Seating only 30 people, it’s a space designed for confessions and creations.

Join us to hear Moreno Giovannoni in conversation with Arnold Zable about The Immigrants.

In The Immigrants, Giovannoni depicts a family as they build a new life in a strange land. Through love and exile, industry and tragedy, their unspoken dreams and fears unfold in this astonishing and moving book.

The Readings pop-up bookshop will be open at this event.

Tickets are $20 per person. Very limited spots.

Join Readings for 24-hours celebrating books, culture and community

We are delighted to invite you to a conversation between Quentin Sprague and Eric Jensen about What Artists See.

Quentin Sprague is an award-winning author and art critic. His work appears widely, including regularly in The Monthly. His latest collection of essays, What Artists See, offers glimpses into the lives of Australia’s best contemporary artists, exploring the impetus for creativity and the role of art in making meaning of this place and time. 

Erik Jensen is an award-winning journalist, biographer, screenwriter and poet. He is the founding editor of The Saturday Paper.

The Readings pop-up bookshop will be open at this event.

Join Readings for 24-hours celebrating books, culture and community

We are thrilled to have Sean O’Beirne introducing a discussion between Don Watson and Dr Emma Shortis about the United States of America. 

Don Watson is the author of many acclaimed books. His latest work, The Shortest History of the United States of America, tells the extraordinary story of the United States, a nation that contains multitudes. Full of character and humour and told with great learning and insight, it’s a perfect introduction to America, past and present.

Dr Emma Shortis is director of the Australia Institute’s international and security affairs program and a historian, focused on the history and politics of the United States and its role in the world. Her latest work, After America, draws on her longstanding research on America's place in the world. Now that the people of the United States have elected Donald Trump as their president, how will his presidency affect Australia? More importantly, will Australia be able to act in its own interests, or will it simply defer to Trump's idea of America?

Sean O'Beirne is an author, bookseller and critic.

This event is currently sold out.

If you would like to be added to the waitlist, please email [email protected].

Celebrate 100 editions of Quarterly Essay as special guests Sean Kelly, David Marr and Laura Tingle discuss the power, impact and legacy of the agenda-setting journal.  
Three of Australia’s most remarkable writers come together to discuss their Quarterly Essay contributions and what they have learned about politics, writing and Australia’s evolving identity.  

Hear from five-time Quarterly Essay contributor David Marr, four-time essayist Laura Tingle and award-winning columnist and author Sean Kelly, whose essay, Belief in Politics, is Quarterly Essay’s 100th edition.   

Join them for a broad ranging discussion about the series that illuminates the most pressing political, intellectual and cultural issues of our time.

Join us for the 100th edition of the Quarterly Essay. Sean Kelly will be in conversation with Ellen Fanning. 

From revolution to civil rights, Hollywood and the Gilded Age

The extraordinary story of the United States, a nation that contains multitudes

When Britain’s thirteen American colonies declared their independence on 4 July 1776, the United States of America was born. But it was hardly united.

In this superbly written book, Don Watson traces how the central conflicts of the United States – those over freedom, race, frontiers, enterprise, religion and violence – play out throughits history- a country at war with itself in the 1860s, the leader of the free world less than a hundred years later, and a nation beset by wild division and turmoil in the twenty-first century.

This is a story full of character and humour, told with great learning and insight – a perfect introduction to America, past and present.

Hosted by Gleebooks.

Elizabeth Harrower is an Australian Literary enigma, who stopped writing at the height of her much-admired career. Helen Trinca set about to find out why. In Looking for Elizabeth: The Life of Elizabeth Harrower, the first biography of Harrower, Helen unravels the mystery, uncovering a legacy of abandonment that Harrower carried through her career.

Join us at Ramona as Helen shares insight into her conversations with Harrower, access to her full archive and her process in masterfully documenting someone who has shaped the Australian literary scene as we know it today. Helen will be in conversation with Judith Brett, a political historian and biographer, whose latest book, Fearless Beatrice Faust, features another great Australian woman who went about things in her own way. The duo will have a lot to unpack when it comes to the two women's complex inner worlds and the impact they have on society around them. Tickets include a drink on arrival!

In 1986, Australian journalist Mark Aarons produced an explosive radio documentary series that drew attention to the number of former Nazi war criminals living in Australia. This led to a parliamentary enquiry that resulted in the formation of Australia’s first Special Investigations Unit, directed by Graham Blewitt from 1991-1992. Professor Konrad Kwiet served as the chief historian for this unit as they excavated killing fields in Ukraine, and sought to prosecute war criminals here in Australia.

On November 19, Mark Aarons, Graham Blewitt and Konrad Kwiet will be in conversation at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum, speaking about the history of the Special Investigations Unit and their experience investigating Nazis in Australia.

This is in promotion of their new book, Nazis in Australia, which we will be selling on the night.

Join Avid Reader for an author talk by Don Watson about The Shortest History of the United States of America

ABOUT THE BOOK

The extraordinary story of the United States, a national that contains multitiudes

When Britain's thirteen American colonies declared their independence on 4 July 1776, the United States of America was born. But it was hardly united.

In this superbly written book, Don Watson traces how the central conflicts of the United States – those over freedom, race, frontiers, enterprise, religion and violence – play out throughits history: a country at war with itself in the 1860s, the leader of the free world less than a hundred years later, and a nation beset by wild division and turmoil in the twenty-first century.

This is a story full of character and humour, told with great learning and insight – a perfect introduction to America, past and present.

'These were indeed strange times. Yet the forces at work in them were not new. Men like Donald Trump are embedded in US history, mythology and popular culture. Rank populists, hucksters, fakers, grifters, rent-seekers, blowhards, tycoons, kleptocrats, narcissists, psychopaths and delinquents – or, from the other point of view, rugged individualists, entrepreneurs, men of vision, men of destiny, instruments of God. No diorama of mainstream American life in any era could be without them.'—Don Watson, The Shortest History of the United States of America.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Don Watson is the author of many acclaimed books, including Caledonia Australis, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart, American Journeys, The Bush, Watsonia and The Story of Australia.

Don Watson loves America. He has been writing about it for years – its tumultuous past, its people, its landscape, its idiosyncrasies, its politics. Don’s 2008 book American Journeys – an account of travelling around the US – was awarded The Age Book of the Year and the Walkley Book Award. His 2016 Quarterly Essay on the rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement revealed a deep understanding of where America had come from – and where it might be heading.  

And just last October, on the eve of the 2024 presidential election, Don Watson produced another Quarterly Essay on the Trump phenomenon and wondered whether the Democrats might have a chance. Once again, his prescience and innate understanding of how American voters were thinking was sharp and compelling.  

 Who better to put together an illuminating history of the USA at this challenging moment? And what an important time for non-Americans to learn a bit about the so-called “leader of the free world”? As Don Watson writes: “Men like Donald Trump are embedded in US history, mythology and popular culture. Rank populists, hucksters, fakers, grifters, rent-seekers, blowhards, tycoons, kleptocrats, narcissists, psychopaths and delinquents – or, from the other point of view, rugged individualists, entrepreneurs, men of vision, men of destiny, instruments of God. No diorama of mainstream American life in any era could be without them.” 

 Help us celebrate the arrival of The Shortest History of the United States of America and join Don Watson in our special South Yarra Library event. Don will be “in conversation” with Sorrento Writers Festival Director Corrie Perkin. This is our final author event for 2025 – we hope you’ll join us. 

In Quarterly Essay 100, Sean Kelly considers the strange transitional moment we are in. We seem sick of neoliberalism but afraid of what might replace it. We are obsessed with work but resentful of it; desperate for community but stuck inside our phones; protective of our way of life while wanting to change everything.

Amid this uncertainty about who we are, what we believe and what we want, it seems harder than ever to make out where our politicians want to take us. The Liberal Party is in crisis. Labor, meanwhile, as it leaves old ideologies behind, insists it is both bold and incrementalist, committed to progressive values but middle of the road.

With vividness and insight, Kelly diagnoses the state of the nation and the prospects for change and renewal. He argues that the end of ideology may yet offer hope for a new politics. As the prime minister promotes a new nationalism, could Australia show other countries the way forward?

Award-winning journalist Sean Kelly joins Misha Ketchell, Editor of The Conversation, to discuss the state of the nation and the prospects for change and renewal.

In Quarterly Essay 100, Kelly captures the strange transitional moment we find ourselves in: sick of neoliberalism yet afraid of what might replace it. We are obsessed with work but resentful of it; desperate for community but stuck inside our phones; protective of our way of life while wanting to change everything.

Amid this uncertainty about who we are, what we believe and what we want, it seems harder than ever to make out where our politicians want to take us. The Liberal Party is in crisis. Labor, meanwhile, as it leaves old ideologies behind, insists it is both bold and incrementalist, committed to progressive values but middle of the road.

With vividness and insight, Kelly reflects on this period of uncertainty. He argues that the end of ideology may yet offer hope for a new politics. As the prime minister promotes a new nationalism, could Australia show other countries the way forward?

Imprints Booksellers will be selling copies of Sean Kelly's Quarterly Essay 100: On Belief In Politics in the Auditorium foyer on the night of the event.

Presented by The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre