Sydney Writers' Festival

Curiosity Lecture Series: Paul Muldoon On Seamus Heaney

Sarah Ferguson: The Killing Season Uncut

Gloria Steinem: Life on the Road

America: Writers Talk Politics

Elizabeth Harrower: A Celebration

Marlon James: A Brief History Of Seven Killings

Charlotte Wood: The Natural Way Of Things

Vivian Gornick: The Odd Woman and New York City

James Rebanks is the latest in a long line of sheep farmers stretching back more than 600 years in England’s Lake District. His phenomenal bestseller, The Shepherd’s Life, is a love song to the land. It describes the mundane and magnificent tasks required to keep a Herdwick sheep farm running and what it means to be at peace with whatever nature throws your way. While most people daydream about ‘where to next?’, in this podcast James talks to ABC Radio’s Richard Fidler about the joys of staying put.

Professor Gillian Triggs, celebrated human rights lawyer and President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, delivered the 2016 Sydney PEN Free Voices lecture at this year's Festival. In her address Gillian Triggs discusses the nature and implications of freedom of expression as an internationally recognised human right.

As a writer, is there a limit to what you can expect from your reader? Is there an amount of violence or a level of brutality that crosses the line? The relationship between author and reader, if it exists at all, is one of give and take. The reader offers time and emotional complicity, while the writer promises a compelling story. In this podcast, Hanya Yanagihara, author of one of the most talked-about and most confronting books of the year, A Little Life, asks whether an author owes her reader anything more than that? How much can a reader be expected to handle?

A brilliant thinker and incredibly charismatic speaker, Yanis Varoufakis discussed his new book, And the Weak Suffer What They Must?, at the 2016 Sydney Writers' Festival. The celebrated former finance minister of Greece, well known for voting against the terms of the third European Union bailout package, is founding a pan-European political movement he hopes will help ‘democratise’ Europe. Hear his opinions, in a special talk, followed by a discussion with George Megalogenis, on the state of the global economy and how Europe could again drag down the world.

Stan Grant has been gracing our screens as a journalist for almost 30 years. He’s a Wiradjuri man whose speech on racism this year went viral. Now he has written Talking to My Country. Is Australia really a multicultural safe haven of equal opportunity? Is racism more prevalent or declining? In this podcast Stan gives a special talk urging all Australians to think deeply about how we can be better. Both heartbreaking and inspiring, this goes beyond previous conversations, and is a powerful meditation on race, indigenous heritage and national identity. Hosted by Rhoda Roberts.

Kate Tempest, dubbed a young Patti Smith and one of the most spectacular performers today, opened the 2016 Sydney Writers' Festival. With award-winning books of poetry, a critically acclaimed album and new novel, Kate’s collective output is defined by a fierce lyricism. Her work is electric. In this podcast Kate recites her poems and talks about how the stories we choose define us. With the world in a state of crisis, literature is one of the greatest teachers of empathy and it's empathy that must be the motor for change.

For both writers and readers, there is an alchemical power in literature that can bring solace, wisdom, laughter and tears. Some of the world’s most acclaimed authors took to the stage during the 2016 Sydney Writers' Festival to share the books that have defined them and saved them as writers and human beings. Hear from luminaries including Jeanette Winterson, Kate Tempest, Vivian Gornick, Herman Koch, Marlon James and Andrew Denton, as they invite you into the inner sanctum of their bookshelves. Hosted by 702 ABC Sydney’s Richard Glover.