Location: Canterbury, NSW, 2193, Australia

In 1999, on a shoestring budget, Vagabond Press started with the Rare Object Series, producing beautifully handmade chapbooks of poetry in limited editions, signed and numbered by the authors, with cover art by Sydney artist Kay Orchison. Vagabond Press are overjoyed to welcome long-time fellow traveller Luke Davies to launch new Rare Objects by David Malouf, Robert Adamson, Martin Harrison and Adam Aitken. (shawjonathan)… (more)

A mesmerising novel, Questions of Travel follows the two very different lives of Laura, who travels the world before returning to Sydney, and Ravi, who dreams of being a tourist until he is driven from Sri Lanka by devastating events. Award-winning novelist Michelle de Kretser speaks with The Sydney Morning Herald’s Literary Editor, Susan Wyndham, about Questions of Travel, described as ‘a grand and intellectual work, a unique study on the essence of modern time, how we travel in it and through it’ (SMH). (shawjonathan)… (more)

Harbour City Poets – Margaret Bradstock, John Carey, David Musgrave, Louise Wakeling, Les Wicks – have been performing together for over seven years now, basing their presentations on the premise that it is the poems (rather than the poets) that have something to say to each other. With multiple voices, sometimes serious and frequently humorous, the result is cumulative and cutting-edge. Showcasing poems about personalities, fictional characters, individuals and types, Harbour City Poets deliver a fast-paced, witty and professional onstage dialogue. (shawjonathan)… (more)

Luke Davies interviews fellow author and poet, Dermot Healy, who Roddy Doyle has called 'Ireland’s greatest writer’. A warm and personal discussion about everything from the oral tradition to literary history, Irishness, exile, otherness, poetry, novels, and the universality of literature. Healy’s latest novel is Long Time, No See. Luke Davies is an Australian author, poet and screen writer, he was awarded the inaugural Prime Minister’s Poetry Prize in 2012. (shawjonathan)… (more)

In an election year, there seems less impetus for climate action than ever. Why has the Left, which has always regarded itself as having science on its side, been outflanked on climate policy? What does the bizarre success of denialism and the radical calls for planetary scale geo-engineering portend for the changing status of science in our society? Antoinette Abboud, Jeremy Walker and Robert Manne untangle the complex relationships between climate, politics and economic doctrines in a discussion with Overland editor Jeff Sparrow (shawjonathan)… (more)

A potentially explosive event on the state of Indigenous Australian literature. Peter Minter leads a discussion with Lionel Fogarty, Jeanine Leane and Melissa Lucashenko. These searingly talented writers read from their work and consider: Does being a writer construct identity, indigenous or otherwise? Is their writing political and should it be? They’ll throw a collective molotov cocktail of ideas into the ‘canon’ and decide if it has been hamstrung by all or some of these notions. (shawjonathan)… (more)

Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, the UK’s foremost campaigning organisation that protects basic rights, joins us to deliver the WOW at Sydney Writers’ Festival Lecture. She will set out the story of women’s struggles for freedom across the world and the distribution of power – and why it’s important that we don’t stop making noise. Followed by a conversation with Jude Kelly, Southbank Centre's Artistic Director. (shawjonathan)… (more)

In 1976, the young Bob Brown fasted at the top of Hobart’s Mount Wellington in protest against the arrival of a nuclear warship. Now, after 16 years in the Senate, where he consistently took courageous and often lonely stands on issues across the national and international spectrum, he’s joined the Sea Shepherd to direct their campaign against Japanese whalers. Amanda Lohrey will talk to him about the future of activism. (shawjonathan)… (more)

Really smart people have argued that the Western model - market economies and democracy - is no longer the best way forward. Might they finally be right? With the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, a nasty first world recession, terrorism, and rising sea levels, what economic model will bring the world the most stability? Former New York Times economic correspondent and bestselling author Sylvia Nasar draws on thinkers from her latest book, Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius and the historical record to parse the evidence. She talks with the author of Double Entry, Jane Gleeson-White (shawjonathan)… (more)

Karl Ove Knausgaard discusses My Struggle with Sarah Kanowski, part of his six volume autobiographical novel that intrigued the people of Norway to the extent that some workplaces had to declare ‘Knausgaard-free days’. By turning a frank and unforgiving eye on his childhood, adolescence, marriage and the death of his father - without changing any names - Knausgaard shocked his family and became a media sensation. He emerges from ‘virtual hiding’ to discuss the novel and its first two volumes published in English (shawjonathan)… (more)