Sydney Writers' Festival
Episodes
2026 Program Announcement: Yumi Stynes and Ann Mossop
10 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Join Yumi Stynes and Artistic Director Ann Mossop as they discuss the 2026 Sydney Writers’ Festival program. The pair talk about the 2026 Festiv...
A.C. Grayling on Cancel Culture
24 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
‘Cancel culture’ may seem like a 21st century invention sparked by contemporary politics and stoked by social media, sometimes with deadly...
Ian Rankin: Master of Crime
11 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Detective Inspector John Rebus first hit bookshelves in 1987 as a witty Scottish crime fighter but now the legendary detective is behind bars himself,...
Your Favourites’ Favourites: Michael Robotham and Chris Whitaker
04 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In Your Favourites’ Favourites, our most loved writers introduce one of their favourite authors. Bestselling Australian crime writer Michael Rob...
Maggie O’Farrell: Portrait of a Writer
16 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Over a masterful career spanning 10 novels, a memoir and various children’s books, Maggie O’Farrell has established herself as a modern li...
Spies, Lies and Secrets
12 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Undercover agents aren’t just the stuff of stories for writers Jack Beaumont and Ben Macintyre. A French intelligence officer turned spy thrille...
Robbie Arnott: Dusk
02 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Myths of cryptid big cats stalking the Australian landscape are as old as colonisation. In Dusk, the puma hunting Tasmania’s lowlands has left e...
Zoë Foster Blake Things: Will Calm Down Soon
26 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Zoë Foster Blake is a multi-talented and ambitious novelist, beauty journalist and skincare entrepreneur whose bio is long enough to leave you wo...
Ben Macintyre: The Siege
18 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On 30 April 1980, armed gunmen stormed the Iranian embassy in London and took 26 hostages in what would become a six-day siege. Millions around the wo...
China Past, Present, Future
12 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Catherine Chidgey: The Book of Guilt
06 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Commonwealth Writers’ Prize winner Catherine Chidgey’s 9th novel, The Book of Guilt, sparked an international bidding war. With undertones...
The Moriarty Sisters
29 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This trio of Australian literary talents make writing a family affair. The Moriarty sisters, Jaclyn (the Kingdom and Empires series), Liane (Here One ...
Family Secrets
21 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Every family has a secret but not every family has a memoirist to reveal it to the world. Writer and former restaurant reviewer Candice Chung’s...
Out of This World
15 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Space, in all its awe-inspiring, mind-blowing expanse, is still the final frontier. Its greatness and grandness force us to reflect on our humanity, o...
Harriet Walter: What Shakespeare's Women Might Have Said
07 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After a lifetime of bringing Shakespeare’s female characters to life on stage, multi-award-winning British actor Harriet Walter lends them her p...
The F Word
30 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
[Content warning: sexual assault] Feminism has a checkered past, but what can we expect from feminist ideas these days? CEO of independent news c...
Rumaan Alam's American Dream
25 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Rumaan Alam’s Entitlement probes complex racial and social dynamics much like his New York Times bestselling Leave the World Behind, which was a...
Liane Moriarty and David Nicholls
23 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
International bestselling novelists Liane Moriarty and David Nicholls share the experience of seeing their powerful local stories turn into bingeable ...
Turmoil and Tyranny
16 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Wars, coups and economic and climate crises: each new headline can make it feel like the world is suddenly falling apart. But behind many dramatic wor...
Kate Grenville: Unsettled
09 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After the success of her two best known works, The Secret River, adapted for stage and television, and Restless Dolly Maunder, shortlisted for the Wom...
Ferdia Lennon: Glorious Exploits
04 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Stories about brotherhood are a mainstay of classical writing, from brothers Romulus and Remus to brothers-in-arms Achilles and Patroclus. Ferdia Lenn...
Colm Tóibín: From Brooklyn to Long Island
03 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Colm Tóibín returns to the world of Brooklyn – adapted into a BAFTA- and Oscar-nominated film starring Saoirse Ronan – with ...
Home and Homesick
28 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Home is a beginning, an origin, a safe harbour, a memory or a dream. Some homes we arrive at, some find us and some we make ourselves. Internat...
Yael van der Wouden: The Safekeep
26 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Safekeep, the debut novel from Yael van der Wouden, took the literary world by storm when it was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. Incorporat...
Jessica Townsend: In Conversation
21 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jessica Townsend, one of Australia’s bestselling and most loved authors, discusses the highly anticipated fourth book in The New York Times best...
Untrue Crime
20 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Distinguished international and local writers working across the crime genre unpick the relationship between fact and fiction. Miles Franklin Literary...
Torrey Peters: Stag Dance
14 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Torrey Peters burst onto the literary scene in 2021 with her debut novel, Detransition, Baby, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and wa...
Bakers' Delight
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Meet the baking besties who are queens of the Australian pastry game. Nadine Ingram of Sydney’s Flour and Stone, Natalie Paull of Melbourn...
Kaliane Bradley: The Ministry of Time
07 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Ministry of Time landed on multiple bestseller lists thanks to its highly original, genre-defying story, which combines elements of time travel, r...
Trumpocalypse Now
05 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It seemed improbable enough in 2016, but here we are now in Donald Trump’s second term at the White House. What does the return of the 45th P...
Marian Keyes: My Favourite Mistake
30 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Beloved Irish author Marian Keyes unpacks her latest story of lost sparks and old flames and what happens when high-flyer Anna swaps New York’s ...
Philippe Sands: 38 Londres Street
29 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1998, at the beginning of his esteemed career as an international human rights lawyer, Philippe Sands was invited to advise Augusto Pinochet as the...
Mariana Enriquez: Mastering the Macabre
24 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The dead permeate the supernatural and strange worlds of Argentinian writer Mariana Enriquez. Sometimes they’re simple ghosts, but other times t...
Peter Beinart: Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza
22 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Acclaimed columnist and political commentator Peter Beinart issues a bold appeal to rewrite the narrative of Jewish identity to embrace nuance, tradit...
Culinary Culture
17 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On the one hand, food is about comfort, love and passion. On the other, it’s about the economics of the restaurant rat race and the politics of ...
Samantha Harvey: Orbital
15 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On the International Space Station, a team of astronauts watch our big blue planet as it silently turns beneath them. This 2024 Booker Prize–...
The Art and Science of AI
10 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Artificial intelligence’s collision with human creativity is one of the most important stories of our time. With the accelerating impact of AI,...
Queer Love and Longing
08 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Local treasure Dylin Hardcastle and international gems Alan Hollinghurst and Yael van der Wouden trace love, longing and queer experience through the ...
Barrie Cassidy and Friends: State of the Nation
03 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Festival favourite State of the Nation returned bigger and better than ever this year for an Australian post-election wrap-up. Assess the state of ...
Closing Address: Anna Funder: Bears Out There
01 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We closed out the 2025 Festival with an address from award-winning Australian writer Anna Funder. As a writer who places being human at the centre of ...
Past and Future of Indigenous Recognition
27 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
[Content warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners should be aware that this podcast contains reference to deceased persons.] The fight...
Making a Writer
24 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What enables writers to grow and flourish? Writing is mostly a solitary pursuit that draws on individual reserves of talent and skill. But writers are...
State of the Art: The Novel
19 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The novel has continued to evolve since its inception as a major literary form centuries ago. It has seen styles and genres come and go, adaptation an...
2025 Program Announcement: Benjamin Law and Ann Mossop
13 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Join Benjamin Law and Artistic Director Ann Mossop as they discuss the 2025 Sydney Writers’ Festival program. The pair talk about the 2025 Festi...
Bruce Pascoe and Lyn Harwood: Black Duck: A Year at Yumburra
05 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bruce Pascoe and Lyn Harwood invite us onto the Country they call home in Black Duck: A Year at Yumburra, reflecting on life after publishing Dark Emu...
How We Learn to Read with Sally Rippin
27 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We all know the importance of literacy for school and life, but what happens when, despite all your efforts, reading just doesn’t “click&r...
First Fictions
18 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jennifer Croft, Bri Lee and Louise Milligan have earned widespread acclaim in the realms of translation, non-fiction and investigative journalism, res...
Literary Legends
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Explore the literary histories of Charmian Clift, Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Harrower. Following her biography The Life and Myth of Charmian C...
SWF Great Debate: Artificial Intelligence is Better Than the Real Thing
03 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Humankind stands at a crossroads: will artificial intelligence make us superhumanly productive, liberating us from life’s most mundane tasks? Or...
Robyn Davidson: Unfinished Woman
30 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Robyn Davidson once described Unfinished Woman as an “infinite book”. “I feel absolutely that I have to write it and absolutely that...
The Austen Formula
28 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Some consider Pride and Prejudice the first romantic comedy, with Jane Austen having set the ground rules for others to follow. Certainly, with its wi...
David Wengrow: The Dawn of Everything
23 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What kind of world could we create if we stopped believing inequality is the price of progress? Archaeology professor David Wengrow’s groundbrea...
Your Favourites’ Favourites: Tony Birch and Graham Akhurst
21 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Your Favourites’ Favourites, our most loved writers introduce one of their favourite authors. Acclaimed Women & Children author Tony Birc...
Hedley Thomas: How to Catch a Killer
16 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If you thought you knew the backstory of The Teacher's Pet, the gripping whodunnit podcast downloaded by over 80 million listeners, think again. Two-t...
Bringing the Past to Life
14 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“The past is a foreign country”, L.P. Hartley famously wrote. It is also a place readers can visit via masterful historical fiction. Be tr...
Fantastical Worlds
18 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine another world with the fantasy writers who are redefining the wildly popular genre. Australian fantasy heavyweight Garth Nix (The Old Kingdom ...
Sad Girl? Bad Girl? Mad Girl?
17 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
She may be self-absorbed, adrift or unhinged, but the ‘sad girl’ is taking the publishing industry by storm. Debut novelists Nadine J. Coh...
Aussie Crime All-Stars
10 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From parched paddocks to sleepy coastal towns, the bodies keep piling up – and Australian readers can’t get enough. This panel brings toge...
Australia’s Place in the World
06 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of a shift in the global power balance, how can Australia best protect itself? Two of Australia’s most interesting foreign policy thinke...
In Defence of Nature
02 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is the writer’s role in an era of profound ecological change? This panel event brings together leading local nature writers James Bradley and B...
Paul Murray: The Bee Sting
28 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"People have crazy lives," says Paul Murray. "The stuff that happens to – quote-unquote – ordinary folks is very operatic." Case in point: his Boo...
Feminist Firebrands
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Four waves in, the feminist fight for gender equality is far from over. This panel brings together the powerful and incendiary feminist voices of Hann...
The Drowning with Bryan Brown and Sam Neill
14 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Last year, Bryan Brown interviewed Sam Neill at the Festival. This year, it was Bryan’s turn in the hot seat as Sam interviewed him about his grippi...
Hidden Heroines
12 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Going deep into the historical past, Lauren Groff (The Vaster Wilds, Matrix) and Francesca de Tores (Saltblood) create memorable heroines, real and im...
Richard Flanagan and Anna Funder on Writing
06 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Join two of the most admired writers in Australia today, Booker Prize–winning Richard Flanagan and Miles Franklin–winning Anna Funder as they disc...
Dirty Laundry
29 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
While everyone has dirty laundry in their lives, not everyone will choose to air theirs publicly. Whether on social media, in written memoir, public s...
PEN Lecture: Writing From Prison in Myanmar
22 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sean Turnell spent almost two years in Myanmar’s terrifying Insein Prison, accused of being a spy. Ma Thida was also incarcerated there, where, deni...
Melissa Lucashenko: Edenglassie
15 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Melissa Lucashenko describes her latest novel, Edenglassie, as her “big book” – a multigenerational epic that torches Queensland’s colonial my...
Julia Baird: Bright Shining
09 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Following broadcaster and author Julia Baird’s multi-award-winning international bestseller, Phosphorescence, comes a beautiful and timely explorati...
The Presence of the Past
03 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As conflict plays out across an unnamed region, the protagonist in Parramatta Laureate of Literature Yumna Kassab’s Politica imagines how she will l...
Lauren Groff: The Vaster Wilds
01 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After smash-hit Fates and Furies, the modern-day marriage story that was Barack Obama’s book of the year in 2015, Lauren Groff’s novels have looke...
Richard Flanagan: Question 7
24 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Join Richard Flanagan as he discusses this hypnotic, genre-defying new book which entwines memoir, biography, autofiction and history through a daisy ...
Survival, Sustenance and Stories
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Social change is driven by conversation, in sharing ideas, and translating those ideas for audiences who don’t agree or understand what is at stake....
A.C. Grayling: The Meaning of Life in a Technological Age
17 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The quest for a life worth living has been the business of philosophers for millennia. How can we pursue answers to life’s big questions in a world ...
Kate Manne: Fighting Fatphobia
12 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Anti-fatness is a system of oppression, argues Kate Manne, afflicting vulnerable bodies in intersectional ways. Building on her incisive studies of mi...
Abdulrazak Gurnah: Afterlives
09 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
At 18, Abdulrazak Gurnah arrived in England as a refugee from the Zanzibar Revolution. Receiving the Nobel Prize more than 50 years later, he reflecte...
Katy Hessel: The Story of Art Without Men
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How many women artists do you know? Who makes art history? And what is the Baroque anyway? Enter art historian and curator Katy Hessel’s The Story o...
Michael Connelly’s Life of Crime
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Crime fiction king Michael Connelly discusses the highlights of his illustrious career and the characters who have populated the pages of his cult cla...
Coffee and Headlines with Read This
29 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How do you support writers if the market for their books is being steadily destroyed? As bookshops close their doors in record numbers and writers see...
Jake Adelstein: Tokyo Noir
22 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jake Adelstein has spent decades reporting on Japanese organised crime and is the only American journalist to be admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropo...
Samantha Shannon on The Roots of Chaos series
20 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
At 21, Samantha Shannon was hailed as the next big thing in genre fiction for her bestselling dystopian debut, The Bone Season. Samantha’s latest qu...
Suzie Miller: Prima Facie
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
[Content warning: Sexual assault] Suzie Miller’s disturbingly prescient play, Prima Facie, dramatises the price sexual assault victims pay for speak...
Nick Bryant: America's Unending Conflict With Itself
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is driving American decline, and what does it mean for the world? Long-time foreign correspondent Nick Bryant’s most recent posting took him to...
Celeste Ng: Our Missing Hearts
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Banning books, waving flags and persecuting racial minorities. Sound familiar? After New York Times–bestselling novel Little Fires Everywhere –...
Creativity, Joy, Grace
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Find sanctuary in this uplifting celebration of creativity, chaired by Michaela Kalowski. Award-winning journalist Julia Baird follows her internation...
Charlotte Wood: Stone Yard Devotional
01 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Can a person truly be good? What is forgiveness? Is losing hope a moral failure? And is the business of grief ever really finished? These questions pe...
Queer Love and Longing
30 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Love is indeed a many splendoured thing in the work of K Patrick and Christos Tsiolkas, who know firsthand the pleasures of writing queer love stories...
The Secret Lives of Women
25 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“We are invisible”, writes Balli Kaur Jaswal in Now You See Us. “We clean your houses, we look after your children, we know your secrets.” The...
Paul Lynch: Prophet Song
23 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In his Booker Prize acceptance speech, Paul Lynch admitted his fifth novel, Prophet Song, had been difficult to write. “The rational part of me beli...
The War on Journalists
18 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
War correspondent Marie Colvin stated: “It has always seemed to me that what I write about is humanity in extremis, pushed to the unendurable, and t...
Play Like a Girl
16 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Matildas fever swept across Australia during the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, taking hold of new soccer fans and diehards alike. But where do we go ...
Abraham Verghese: The Covenant of Water
10 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Physician and writer Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone, crafts a masterly narrative of three generations of a family in Kerala, through th...
Bonnie Garmus: Lessons in Chemistry
05 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After a male colleague took credit for her work, Bonnie Garmus channelled her rage into the unforgettable protagonist of Lessons in Chemistry Elizabet...
Fragile Democracy
02 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Australia has been a close ally of the United States since 1940, but what does this mean for contemporary politics when democracy is more fragile than...
In Conversation: 2024 Stella Prize Winner Alexis Wright
27 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“Praiseworthy is mighty in every conceivable way: mighty of scope, mighty of fury, mighty of craft, mighty of humour, mighty of language, mighty of ...
Viet Thanh Nguyen: A Man of Two Faces
25 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces”, begins Viet Thanh Nguyen’s debut novel, The Sympathizer, the internationally acclaimed bes...
Ann Patchett on Ordinary Joys
20 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“How other people live is pretty much all I think about,” writes Ann Patchett. Since her breakthrough novel, Bel Canto, won the Women’s Prize fo...
Closing Address: Kate Manne on the Future of Misogyny
18 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
[Content warning: misogynistic violence, sexual assault] When Kate Manne’s first book Down Girl, a tightly argued analysis of misogyny, was publishe...
2024 Program Announcement: Annabel Crabb and Ann Mossop
07 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Join Annabel Crabb and Artistic Director Ann Mossop as they discuss the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival program. The pair talk about the 2024 Festival...
Daniel Lavery: Dear Prudence and more
07 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
[Content warning: Child sexual abuse] Join internet darling Daniel Lavery as he lifts the lid on his writing life and Dear Prudence, a collection of t...