This year’s festival features the authors of topical new books on politics in America, India, and the Middle East, as well as feminism, land rights, inequality, law and media. Book your festival passes at www.byronwritersfestival.com.
Polarisation in America
Following the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump, foreign correspondent Nick Bryant’s new non-fiction title could not be more timely. In The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict With Itself, Bryant tells the story of America’s extreme polarisation and how the roots of its modern-day malaise are found in its troubled past. He will be joined in conversation by festival founder Chris Hanley.
Mungo MacCallum Panel
Nick Bryant joins Indigenous author Amy McQuire (Black Witness) and ABC Four Corners’ Louise Milligan (Pheasants Nest) for the annual journalism panel in honour of the late Mungo MacCallum. Focused on press freedom, the panel discusses emerging threats and what needs to be done to ensure a robust and independent media in Australia and abroad, chaired by Julianne Schultz.
Environment in focus
In what is set to be a festival highlight, Bob Brown leads a conversation about the urgent need to care for the natural world, alongside literary writers, scientists and environmentalists, including poet Ali Cobby Eckermann (She is the Earth), Booker Prize-winner Richard Flanagan (Question 7), ecologist David Lindenmayer (Forest Wars) and Greens MLC Sue Higginson.
Resistance and solidarity
International guest Meena Kandasamy comes to Australia from India with her latest poetry collection Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You, cementing her as one of the most exciting, radical thinkers at work today. As an activist and academic documenting India’s 2024 election, Kandasamy will speak on politics, poetry, caste issues and feminism, as well as performing at the evening feature event ‘Electric Poetics’.
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