Literary La Trobe La Trobe University

Readers love Helen Garner’s three volumes of diaries, the apparent ease with which this brilliant writer skewers those who, barely disguised, are part of her life history. For Shannon Burns, writing a memoir about a difficult and chaotic childhood was an act of recovering flashes of memory: to go back is both necessary and dangerous. They talk to Sophie Cunningham about whether writing is an act of forgiveness and, if so, for whom?

Recorded on 7th May, 2023.

One of the four pillars of the Albanese Government’s national cultural policy is ‘First Nations First’. What does this mean for Australian writing and its influence on other cultural practices? This panel discusses how to put first nations at the heart of Australian culture.

Michael Donovan (Pro Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous), La Trobe University)

Claire G Coleman (writer, poet, author of Terra Nullius)

Jilda Andrews (Research Fellow, Australian National University)

Chair: Neane Carter (solicitor and Aboriginal advocate)

Recorded on 5th May, 2023.

In a year when Revive: National Cultural Policy is inviting us all to lift our game, it’s a brilliant opportunity to celebrate a decade of Stella: how it started, how it’s developed, and the future for Stella.

Clare Wright (2014 Stella Prize Winner)

Catherine Andrews (Stella Ambassador)

Sarah Holland-Batt (2023 Stella Prize winner)

Chair: Kirstin Ferguson

Recorded on 7th May, 2023.

Is this the story Don Watson was always meant to write? It begins 50 years ago, at the fledgling La Trobe University where young people were fired up with passionate intensity and protesting the Vietnam War. It tracks the return from Vietnam of a man who would discover, in the isolation of Arnhem Land, how old and new, colonised and coloniser, rigid and adaptable could meet.

Don Watson (author, ‘The Passion of Private White’)

Chair: Professor Clare Wright (La Trobe University)

Recorded on 6th May, 2023.

I’m not a journalist, I’m a poet.” Says the narrator of Cristos Tsiolkas’ novel ‘seven and a half’. Following on from the complex challenge of Damascus, which followed on from Barracuda and Merciless Gods, and the rip-roaring success of The Slap, novel number eight is the author’s ode to beauty. What is it that links all Tsiolkas’ books? Is this one his most personal, his most audacious, the one that’s impossible to pin down? Cristos Tsiolkas discusses beauty, writing, and the surprise of a new book.

Chair: Bec Kavanagh (La Trobe University)

Recorded on 6th May, 2023.

Is the moral outrage of an individual enough? What makes groups or institutions work? What can threaten their efficacy, and how do they help us care without despair? This panel features three writers whose work has shown the positive power of a well led, well organised, determined group.

Paul Cleary (Investigative journalist)

Simon Holmes a Court (Philanthropist)

Richard Denniss (Economist, Australian Institute)

Chair: Associate Professor Liz Conner (History, La Trobe University)

Recorded on 5th May, 2023.