We couldn't be more excited to present Meet the Author: Bob Brown for the launch of his new book, Defiance: Stories from Nature and Its Defenders. Bob, environmental and social justice campaigner and former senator, will be in conversation with Greens Senator, Sarah Hanson-Young, talking about stories of courage and conviction from the environmental frontline. We will be presenting Bob and Sarah, in partnership with the Burnside Library at 7pm on Thursday October 23rd at The Regal Theatre, 275 Kensington Road, Kensington Park.

Defiance draws on Bob's 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.

Bob Brown is an environmental and social justice campaigner, former senator, and founding member of the Wilderness Society. From 1978 he led the successful campaign against the construction of the Franklin Dam. He served in Tasmanian state parliament for a decade, was leader of the Australian Greens, and in 1996 was elected to the federal Senate. His books include Memo for a Saner World and Optimism. After retiring from the Senate in 2012, he established the Bob Brown Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation supporting environmental causes.

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young is Greens Senator for South Australia and is a passionate environmentalist, community campaigner, feminist, and human rights activist. With over 17 years in the Parliament, Sarah has become one of the country's leading voices on women in politics, environmental protection, climate change, media laws and diversity, and human rights policy.

Tickets are $15 or you can purchase Ticket + Pre-Signed Book for $37 (Defiance is $37 RRP) with the book to be collected at the event. Defiance will be on sale for the night for $37. If you are unable to attend on the night, there is also a Book Only (signed) option available for $37 for SA addresses (signed book will be posted after the event). Part ticket proceeds donated to Bob Brown foundation.

Canberra Writers Festival presents:

Words, photos, paintings, plays and films all provide windows into our world. Each of our panellists has worked in different ways with the interaction between these forms and seeks to elevate and celebrate the space artists need to express their creativity. Gail Jones (The Name of the Sister) started as a visual artist and painter, coming later to the sensuous delight of words and now one of Australia's most prolific literary authors. Kate Grenville (Unsettled: A Journey Through Time and Place) began in film and has had fascinating experiences seeing her iconic Australian books translated to stage and screen. Quentin Sprague (What Artists See) writes exquisitely about art and offers glimpses into the lives of some of Australia's best contemporary artists. Together they reflect on their journeys and explore the question: what can images do that words can’t, and what can words do that images can’t? Moderated by writer and artist Kim Mahood. 

Canberra Writers Festival

A powerful and timely essay can wake us up. Esther Anatolitis, editor of Essays That Changed Australia, has identified some of the best from Meanjin over the decades. This session also celebrates the immense contribution regular pieces across key publications including The Monthly and Quarterly Essay have in shaping our political, social and cultural life. Esther will be joined by award-winning journalist, Marian Wilkinson (Woodside vs. the Planet: How a Company Captured a Country: Quarterly Essay 99) and long-time authority on the art of the essay and Keating speechwriter, Don Watson (Quarterly Essays High Noon and Enemy Within). Moderated by Michael Williams, editor of The Monthly.

Presented by Canberra Writers Festival

Today we bear witness to the end of so much previous generations took for granted. Our two authors explore what it takes to stay truly human in the face of global cataclysm, or within a world shrunk to the size of a box. Josephine Rowe’s Little World examines existence from the perspective of a saint, conscious in death; and Cadance Bell imagines a life lived post humanity in Letters to Our Robot Son. Together, our authors will show us what we stand to lose, and to gain, at the end of our old world. Moderated by Kaya Wilson.

Canberra Writers Festival presents

How can science and reason fight back against society’s growing fear and yet complacency? Vaccine denial is surging in countries around the globe, just as for the first time in human history, fatal diseases are on the verge of eradication. Elizabeth Finkel (Prove It) and Raina MacIntyre (Vaccine Nation) make a compelling case that defending the scientific method of inquiry is a matter of life and death today, and for future generations. Join Elizabeth and Raina, moderated by ABC TV news editor Tracey Kirkland (author of Pandemedia), in the fight to save scientific progress.

Canberra Writers Festival Presents

Kate Grenville’s ancestors were ‘the sharp edge of the moving blade’ of colonisation through the Hawkesbury region – the subject of her bestseller The Secret River. Now in Unsettled: A Journey Through Time and Place, she reflects on the reckoning that comes with truly confronting the past and her family story. She’s joined by Paul Daley, whose novel The Leap examines fear and violence in a frontier town. Two years after the Voice referendum, this timely conversation is about non-Indigenous Australians doing the work and personally reckoning with the past.

Canberra Writers Fesitval presents

For half a century, Bob Brown has been on the frontline of environmental protection, Australian politics and collective action to safeguard and celebrate our precious earth. His direct activism has inspired generations of environmental defenders and saved immeasurable tracts of pristine wilderness for future Australians to discover. In his new memoir Defiance, Bob sets out why it’s now more important than ever to speak up and fight for environmental and land justice. Sarah Hanson-Young, Greens Senator for South Australia, will join Bob for this special conversation about the challenges facing nature's defenders and what motivates him to keep fighting.

Bob Brown is an environmental and social justice campaigner and former senator. A founding member of the Wilderness Society, from 1978 he led the successful campaign against the construction of the Franklin Dam. He served in Tasmanian state parliament for a decade, was leader of the Australian Greens, and in 1996 was elected to the Federal Senate. His books include Memo for a Saner World and Optimism. After retiring from the Senate in 2012, he established the Bob Brown Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation supporting environmental causes. His latest book is Defiance: Stories from Nature and its Defenders.

Canberra Writers Festival Presents

We've all seen the chaos, standover tactics and unlikely new ‘friends’ come and go. But what sort of political and economic system allowed Donald J Trump to reach the pinnacle of power...twice? How does understanding America and key moments in its foreign policy history help us work out what is going on now? Are we in totally unchartered waters? Join this expert America-watching panel of Don Watson (author of no fewer than three Quarterly Essays on American culture and politics and forthcoming work, The Shortest History of the United States of America), Professor Amin Saikal (How to Lose a War: The Story of America’s Intervention in Afghanistan) and Clinton Fernandes (Turbulence: Australian Foreign Policy in the Trump Era), moderated by Allan Behm, International & Security Affairs advisor at The Australia Institute, as they look back, project forward and try to make sense of it all.
 

Saul Griffith (Plug In!) is Australia's leading voice on the switch to renewable power. In this workshop he takes us, step by step, through his new handbook to electrify our lives. Saul will make ditching coal and gas simple: where to source electricity, how to heat your home, keep your shower hot, and travel conveniently and comfortably. If you want to make the switch to a renewable energy life, but are intimidated by the apparent complexity and hurdles, this workshop-style conversation is for you. Moderated by Stephen Corby, journalist and former editor of Top Gear and Wheels and co-founder of EV Central.

Saul Griffith is an engineer and entrepreneur specialising in clean and renewable energy technologies. Over two decades in Silicon Valley, he has founded more than a dozen technology companies. He is the author of three books, including Electrify, The Big Switch, and his most recent release Plug In!. Saul has shifted his focus from his R&D lab, Otherlab, to public policy and advocacy, founding Rewiring America, Rewiring Australia, and Rewiring Aotearoa, non-partisan organisations dedicated to electrification and decarbonisation and the associated policy and regulatory implications of meeting our climate goals.

Canberra Writers Festival presents

The shadows cast by past dictatorships loom long and large. What do the reigns of Stalin and Mao have to teach us about the threats faced by nations and peoples today? We need to remind ourselves of the past. Linda Jaivin (Bombard the Headquarters! The Cultural Revolution in China) and Sheila Fitzpatrick (The Death of Stalin & Lost Souls: Soviet Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War) examine what unrestrained power can do to a leader and the nations they rule. The lessons for our current era are inescapable. Moderated by Kyle Wilson, Visiting Fellow at the ANU Centre for European Studies.

Canberr Writers Festival presents

Women everywhere are noticing signs of backlash after all the feminist progress forged in the 1960s-70s. Misogyny, rising rates of domestic violence, winding back of abortion rights… Women are in an unfinished revolution and the stakes could not be higher. This is the intimate but LOUD conversation we need to have that sets out the radical history of women’s liberation in Australia, tells hard truths about family violence, and issues a war cry for all women and girls. Above all, it will be a celebration of womanhood. 

Join journalist and author Virginia Haussegger, gender violence expert and journalist Jess Hill and award-winning author and poet Maxine Beneba Clarke for an honest chat that will also give YOU a chance to ask questions and be a part of the discussion. Moderated by Canberra author, artist and performance poet, Jacqui Malins.

Canberra Writers Festival presents

Something magical happens when beautiful writers approach the topic of the sacred and divine and tell a tale replete with human desire and frailty. In Little World, Josephine Rowe travels with a girl saint through North-west Australia in the 1950s all the way through to the onset of Covid in Victoria. Emily Maguire took the literary scene by storm with Rapture, the story of a medieval girl who rises to become a Pope, and all the twists and turns and qualities that would have needed to unfold in her life to make it so. Here they are in conversation with Canberra author, Tabitha Carvan.

Canberra Writers Festival presents

Pleasure should be a simple thing but a lot of the time – it isn’t! Perhaps the plot of sweet romance and erotic fiction books contain part of the answer? Cue the handsome prince, male best friend, girl next door, or something else altogether... whatever you fancy! 

Join Rachael Johns (Queen of Aussie Romance), Linda Jaivin (Erotic novelist from the get-go) and superstar locals, Alyx Gorman (All Women Want) and Freya Marske (author of queer romantic fantasy) as they talk romance, fantasy and sex! This is going to be fun... Moderated by Books+Publishing’s Kate Cuthbert.

Canberra Writers Festival presents

Objects and records tell tales, spark imagination and are fascinating sources of social history. In Playtime: A History of Australian Childhood, Emily Gallagher explores the history of childhood play and imagination in Australia, with reference to the toys and artefacts that inspired generations growing up between the 1890s and WW2. After thirty years confined within museum walls, Anne-Marie Condé, a restless history curator, steps out for air with The Prime Minister’s Potato and Other Essays. She tours cemeteries, war memorials and junk shops asking fresh questions about the significance of objects and places. A session for those who love hearing about precious objects and the stories they contain. Moderated by Kathryn Favelle.

Canberra Writers Festival presents

Jenny Macklin was known as a Minister on a Mission and implemented life-changing reforms for many Australians through the Rudd & Gillard eras. Now she issues her must-read book Making Progress: How Good Policy Happens on how to lock in progressive change and deliver on-the-ground results. Sarah Hanson-Young is Greens Senator for South Australia and is a passionate environmentalist, community campaigner, feminist, and human rights activist. With over 17 years in the Parliament, Sarah has become one of the country's leading voices on women in politics, environmental protection, climate change, media laws and diversity, and human rights policy.

There is no shortage of big policy issues that must be tackled in Australia including family violence and rising inequality. Together the panel will bring different perspectives on how to create impetus for much needed big ideas and bold reforms. And deliver!  This is an essential session for politics-watchers, public service reformers and engaged community members alike. Moderated by Jess Hill who will draw on years of experience working with government, researchers and the community sector trying to achieve better outcomes for families and communities.  

Canberra Writers Festival presents

What's the true cost of progress, and what do we lose in trying to attain it? Facing a rapidly approaching Artificial Intelligence existence, Big Tech promises that geoengineering, nanotech and AI can solve our health, environmental and social crises. So why does it feel so dystopian? In Brave New Wild, Richard King shows us that corporations and governments are attempting to remake nature itself – and could break the foundational connection that sustains us as a species. In her novel One Story, Pip Finkemeyer dives into the power of narrative in an AI world, and a turning point for Big Tech in the 2010s that paved the path we are on today. Saul Griffith lives in labs and boardrooms trying to harness the power of innovation, tech and corporate might for good – because if innovation can’t save us, what can? Moderated by Jennifer Mills (Salvage).

Join us for the launch of Nazis in Australia: Exploring the Legacy of Australia’s Special Investigations Unit, 1987-1994, which will be available for purchase and signing on the night.

Nazis in Australia tells the story of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) tasked with tracking down Nazi war criminals who had made Australia their homes after World War II. Join authors Mark Aarons and Graham Blewitt, as well as Dr Grant Niemann and Michael David in a conversation facilitated by David Bevan as they reflect on the SIU’s work and share their personal experiences investigating Nazis in Australia.

In 1986, journalist Mark Aarons released a groundbreaking radio documentary that exposed the presence of former Nazi perpetrators living in Australia. The public outcry led to a parliamentary inquiry and then the establishment of the SIU, Australia’s first body dedicated to investigating suspected war criminals. The SIU examined over 800 cases, excavated mass graves in Ukraine, and pursued prosecutions on Australian soil.

The SIU left an important legacy. As well as pursuing justice for victims of the Holocaust, it demonstrated that historical investigation of war crimes was possible, even decades later. In the words of former SIU director Graham Blewitt, "Australia should be proud that, for a brief period in our legal history, we stood up and did the right thing. There was a time when Nazi collaborators living in Australia were wondering when the SIU knock on the door would come."

Dr Grant Niemann was the former Commonwealth Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions in South Australia and was responsible for the three prosecutions arising from the SIU’s investigations in that State.

David Bevan reported the Polyukhovich case for The Advertiser and the ABC. He wrote the book-length account of the proceedings in “A Case to Answer”. 

Michael David, King's Counsel, appeared as defence counsel for all three accused indicted for war crimes following the SIU’s investigations. He is now a retired Supreme Court Judge.

The Australia Institute Webinar

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.

About the author

Bob Brown is an environmental and social justice campaigner and former senator. A founding member of the Wilderness Society, from 1978 he led the successful campaign against the construction of the Franklin Dam. He served in Tasmanian state parliament for a decade, was leader of the Australian Greens, and in 1996 was elected to the federal Senate. His books include Memo for a Saner World and Optimism. After retiring from the Senate in 2012, he established the Bob Brown Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation supporting environmental causes.