Imagine another world with the fantasy writers who are redefining the wildly popular genre.

Australian fantasy heavyweight Garth Nix (The Old Kingdom series) takes to the stage with ascending local star Shelley Parker-Chan (The Radiant Emperor duology) and global sensation Samantha Shannon (The Roots of Chaos series) to explain how they create expansive universes for their epic stories, heroes and heroines.

This is must-listen episode for YA and fantasy fans alike! Hosted by Aimée Lindorff.

This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel. 

Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms. 

After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:
Instagram: @sydwritersfest
Facebook: @SydWritersFest
X (Twitter): @SydWritersFest
TikTok: @sydwritersfest

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

She may be self-absorbed, adrift or unhinged, but the ‘sad girl’ is taking the publishing industry by storm.

Debut novelists Nadine J. Cohen (Everyone and Everything), Madeleine Gray (Green Dot) and Jessie Stephens (Something Bad is Going to Happen) have all created unforgettable protagonists who are fallible, at times unlikeable and painfully relatable.

Hear from these exciting debut novelists as they discuss making and breaking this emerging genre’s rules, and how they crafted compelling portraits of present-day womanhood. In conversation with The Guardian’s Steph Harmon.

This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel. 

Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms. 

After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:
Instagram: @sydwritersfest
Facebook: @SydWritersFest
X (Twitter): @SydWritersFest
TikTok: @sydwritersfest

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From parched paddocks to sleepy coastal towns, the bodies keep piling up – and Australian readers can’t get enough.

This panel brings together some of Australia’s hottest local crime writers, with Sulari Gentill (The Mystery Writer), Dinuka McKenzie (Tipping Point) and Benjamin Stevenson (Everyone on this Train is a Suspect).

Dust off your Akubra for a thrilling chat about the outback noir genre and what makes Aussie crime fiction unique, with host Alex Adsett.

This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel. 

Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms. 

After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:
Instagram: @sydwritersfest
Facebook: @SydWritersFest
X (Twitter): @SydWritersFest
TikTok: @sydwritersfest

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 thinkers take a fresh look at Australia’s place in the world and come to some surprising conclusions. Clinton Fernandes (Sub-Imperial Power) and Sam Roggeveen (The Echidna Strategy: Australia’s Search for Power and Peace) tackle the big questions about the US alliance, the threat of China, and underneath it all, what kind of country Australia really is.

Listen as Sam and Clinton reshape Australia’s understanding of itself in the international arena, in conversation with Verity Firth.

This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel. 

Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms. 

After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:
Instagram: @sydwritersfest
Facebook: @SydWritersFest
X (Twitter): @SydWritersFest
TikTok: @sydwritersfest

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Bruce Pascoe to discuss how best to defend our environment. James’ latest book, Deep Water: The World in the Ocean, dives into the waves, and Bruce’s Black Duck: A Year at Yumburra investigates traditional agricultural practices that offer a blueprint for our farming futures.

Reflect on our relationship with the natural world and what lies ahead, as James and Bruce are joined in conversation by Ashley Hay.

This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel. 

Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms. 

After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:
Instagram: @sydwritersfest
Facebook: @SydWritersFest
X (Twitter): @SydWritersFest
TikTok: @sydwritersfest

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"People have crazy lives," says Paul Murray. "The stuff that happens to – quote-unquote – ordinary folks is very operatic."

Case in point: his Booker Prize shortlisted The Bee Sting which follows an unravelling household in the Irish Midlands who embody Tolstoy's proverb about unhappy families. Paul's third novel has been acclaimed by critics as “generous, expansive and glorious as a cathedral” (The Guardian).

One of three superb Irish writers at this year's Festival, this is your chance to catch Paul solo, in conversation with Kate Evans (ABC RN's The Bookshelf).

This episode was recorded live in May 2024. 

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel. 

Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms. 

After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:
Instagram: @sydwritersfest
Facebook: @SydWritersFest
X (Twitter): @SydWritersFest
TikTok: @sydwritersfest

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Four waves in, the feminist fight for gender equality is far from over.

This panel brings together the powerful and incendiary feminist voices of Hannah Ferguson, Sisonke Msimang and Jennifer Robinson. Hear from these leading writers and activists who between them offer daring feminist opinions on topics ranging from freedom of speech, right-wing politics, racism, xenophobia, belonging and identity, taboos around sex and pleasure, as well as the legal judgements that continue to silence and disadvantage women.

Be inspired by the feminist firebrands who are fighting for meaningful social change. Hosted by the inimitable Jo Dyer, this is an important examination of the most pressing issues facing women today.

This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel. 

Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms. 

After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:
Instagram: @sydwritersfest
Facebook: @SydWritersFest
X (Twitter): @SydWritersFest
TikTok: @sydwritersfest

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 gripping new crime novel, The Drowning. Bryan is one of the most recognisable faces on our screens with more than 80 film and television projects to his name. This sensational new thriller with his characteristic laconic style – humorous, tough and suspenseful – confirms his place as one of the great Australian storytellers.

This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel. 

Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms. 

After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:
Instagram: @sydwritersfest
Facebook: @SydWritersFest
X (Twitter): @SydWritersFest
TikTok: @sydwritersfest

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Going deep into the historical past, Lauren Groff (The Vaster Wilds, Matrix) and Francesca de Tores (Saltblood) create memorable heroines, real and imaginary, whose stories have not been told.

Their portrayals of ordinary women doing extraordinary things – a girl escaping alone into the wilderness, a pirate on the high seas – are richly detailed and vividly alive. Coming out of hiding into our imaginations, these heroines are so fierce they jump off the page. Join Lauren and Francesca in conversation with novelist and scholar Sophie Gee.

This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel. 

Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms. 

After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:
Instagram: @sydwritersfest
Facebook: @SydWritersFest
X (Twitter): @SydWritersFest
TikTok: @sydwritersfest

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Join two of the most admired writers in Australia today, Booker Prize–winning Richard Flanagan and Miles Franklin–winning Anna Funder as they discuss writing in the margins between fiction and non-fiction, history and memoir, personal and public.

Historian Clare Wright leads this conversation, examining their genre-bending masterpieces. Through a hypnotic melding of dream, history, science and memory, Question 7 traces the ripples of history through Richard’s own family and is described by Anna as holding “a life between its covers”. Wifedom is Anna’s “counterfiction”, an attempt to write Eileen O'Shaughnessy, George Orwell’s first wife, back into the narrative from which history has so carefully excised her. Not only a New York Times Notable Book of 2023, Wifedom also described by Geraldine Brooks as “Simply, a masterpiece”.

Redefine genre with Richard and Anna as they discuss the craft of writing, the parts of themselves left excavated on the page and the consequences of the choices we make.

This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel. 

Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms. 

After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:
Instagram: @sydwritersfest
Facebook: @SydWritersFest
X (Twitter): @SydWritersFest
TikTok: @sydwritersfest

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

While everyone has dirty laundry in their lives, not everyone will choose to air theirs publicly.

Whether on social media, in written memoir, public speaking or on television, how can sharing the ‘self’ when the story touches on family and community, still be navigated ethically? What are the consequences and ramifications of bringing the personal into the public realm? Join writers Benjamin Law, Rhys Nicholson and Amy Thunig as they unpack the fallout on the other side of publication, with host George Haddad.

This episode was recorded live in May at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow our channel. 

Sydney Writers’ Festival podcasts are available on all major podcast platforms. 

After more? Follow Sydney Writers’ Festival on social media:
Instagram: @sydwritersfest
Facebook: @SydWritersFest
X (Twitter): @SydWritersFest
TikTok: @sydwritersfest

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.