Byron Writers Festival Byron Writers Festival

Silent quitting, climate quitting, goblin mode, human sustainability, leaning out. What are all these terms and what age are we living in? How is language evolving to describe how we live now and what do all those catch-phrases mean?

Ellen van Neerven, Alison Pennington, Kristine Ziwica and Paul Barclay.

The science has long been there, but it will take imagination to win the world over to climate action. Two authors who have reimagined songs and witchy tales discuss how fiction can spark the energy we need.

Eliza Henry-Jones, Mark Smith with Nell Schofield.

Stories are passed down through the generations. Expectations are too. Three novelists whose writings reflect their diverse family backgrounds share how the stories they inherited inform their writing.

Shankari Chandran, Shirley Le, Peter Polites with Jemma Birrell.

Speculating about the future, interrogating the past and understanding through storytelling unite three writers. A historian and two novelists describe how their approaches to writing allow them to imagine – and reimagine – past, present and future.

Michelle Arrow, Grace Chan, Shankari Chandran with Phillipa McGuinness.

We are surrounded by death in news, true-crime podcasts and even nursery rhymes. Yet from an early age, we are told that death is to be feared. How can we know what we're so afraid of, if we don’t examine it?

Hayley Campbell in conversation with Kerry Sunderland.

Investigative journalist, Anke Richter, discusses how she immersed herself in the wild world of cults around the globe, exposing the ways they attract, entrap and destroy otherwise ordinary people.

Anke Richter in conversation with Zacharey Jane.