Creative Conversations China Australia Writing Centre

The final instalment in the Looking Forward/Looking Back series, episode 4 features our very own Liz Byrski, who joins Beth Yahp and Brooke Davis to discuss Age. The panel is chaired by Geraldine Blake.

With a rapidly ageing global population, questions of how we age are paramount across cultures. Three women writers of varying ages explore how older characters are represented. Are they represented enough, and is there gender and diversity equity in these representations? And what of older writers themselves; what does it mean to sustain a writing practice over many years?

In episode 3, “Youth and Childhood”, Meri Fatin chairs a panel consisting of three authors who write for and about children: Cleverman creator Ryan Griffen, Western Australian YA author Dianne Touchell, and Chinese scifi writer Xia Jia.

The panel discuss writing from the perspective of the child; treating child protagonists with the seriousness they deserve, and young audiences with the respect that is their right; what this means from an indigenous perspective; and how trauma can act as the doorway to empathy.

The four episodes in this series were recorded in October, 2017, at Creative Conversations: Looking Forward/Looking Back. This public event was held at the Esplanade Hotel in Fremantle, Western Australia. Over the course of the day four panels discussed problems of positioning, distance and perspective in relation to the past and the future.

Proceedings on the day were recorded by David Le May from ABC Radio National.

Music by Patrick Liddell and Matthew Liam Nicholson.