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Byron Writers Festival full 2022 program announced

Byron Writers Festival, Australia’s largest regional writers festival, has announced the full line-up for its 2022 event, which runs 26–28 August.

After a two-year hiatus due to Covid, the festival returns with a program featuring more than 140 guests appearing in person at the new festival site at North Byron Parklands, Bundjalung Country. International guests include British philosopher A C Grayling, Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen, New Zealand writer Becky Manuwatu and Zimbabwean spoken word poet Thando Sibanda.

The program, themed ‘Radical Hope’, is the first under new artistic director Zoe Pollock. Sessions include Trent Dalton, Hannah Kent and Nigel Featherstone sharing love stories; Charlotte Wood, Nikki Gemmell and Micheline Lee revealing how writing has helped them to survive; and in-depth conversations with Emily Bitto, Robert Drewe, Arnold Zable, Chloe Hooper, Kathryn Heyman, Steve Toltz and Christos Tsiolkas.

The annual Thea Astley Address will be delivered by Judy Atkinson, author of Trauma Trails, Recreating Song Lines: The transgenerational effects of trauma in Indigenous Australia (Spinifex), while Marcia Langton, Chelsea Watego and Veronica Gorrie will discuss the importance of Indigenous intellectual sovereignty. Barrie Cassidy will host the inaugural Mungo Panel, a politics and current affairs session named in honour of the late Mungo McCallum, while, according to the festival organisers, ‘Climate change will be front and centre of the discussions at this year’s festival, with a particular focus on the green future we need to build.’

‘Radical hope imagines a future goodness that transcends our current reality,’ said Pollock of the festival theme. ‘It is a provocation to seek and create a new world in the face of incredibly challenging circumstances. Radical hope is a denial and refusal of cultural destruction and a determination to build a new culture for a changed environment.’

Tickets to the festival are on sale now. For more information, see the Byron Writers Festival website.

 

Category: Local news