The sessions from Adelaide Writers’ Week 2019 are now available in podcast form and will transport you back to the sunny Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden in Adelaide. So whether you couldn’t make it or you would just like to hear it all again, settle in for a suite of erudite and contemplative conversations with MUP authors Gillian Triggs, Bob Carr, Don Watson, Katharine Murphy, Paul Daley, Rick Morton and Natasha Stott Despoja. Listen to their sessions below or find the full playlist here.

Speaking Up with Gillian Triggs

As President of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Gillian Triggs embodied grace under pressure as she came under increasingly hysterical criticism for her unflinching advocacy of the victims of Australia’s human rights abrogations.  Her memoir Speaking Up offers a lucid account of her time in the line of fire, and a compelling critique of those who seek to dodge both our international obligations and scrutiny of the consequences. Gillian speaks here with Rick Sarre.

Run for Your Life with Bob Carr

Bob’s Run for Your Life is no standard political memoir.  Candid, witty and full of wildly entertaining anecdotes, it is the welcome next instalment of Bob’s political writings. Bob speaks here with Dave Penberthy.

Queerstories with Rick Morton

‘There’s more to being queer than coming out and getting married.’ Maeve Marsden’s Queerstories events are passionately supported around the country and make their overdue Adelaide debut at Writers’ Week. Queerstories invites a diverse line-up of LGBTQI+ writers to the stage to share an unexpected tale—a reflection on pride, prejudice, love and laughter; on battles fought and lives well lived. Maeve is joined here by MUP author Rick Morton along with Teddy Dunn, Victoria Falconer, Melissa Lucashenko and Joelle Taylor.

Global Frenzies: Caught in an Emotional Storm with Don Watson and Paul Daley

Are we caught in a worldwide corrosive emotional storm? Subject to a dangerous kind of global mob rule? In a polarised world buffeted by entrenched and extreme emotions, our panel of considered thinkers, philosopher Carolin Emcke, psychologist Paul Bloom and author Don Watson examine how destructive emotions seize hold of individuals and communities and how we can temper their impact, and reach across the emotional divide. Chair Paul Daley is joined by Don Watson, Paul Bloom and Carolin Emcke.

Countries’ Chasm The Urban Rural Divide with Don Watson

Does Real Australia live in the Canberra Bubble or in Weatherboard and Iron? Is Real America Red or Blue? In a time where binary divisions seem to define so much of our identities, is the biggest division of all between a nation’s cities and the rest? Gabrielle Chan (Rusted Off), Sarah Smarsh (Heartland) and Don Watson (The Bush) ponder the myths of a country’s heartland, and the neglected class that lives there.

Approaching China: Hug The Panda Or Slay The Dragon with Bob Carr

Australia’s official approach to China is has been criticised as contradictory if not confused. Our biggest trading partner, we welcome their business but not their investment.  We worry at their growing influence in our region even as we smoothed their path with past cuts to our foreign aid.  Bruno Maçães, Richard McGregor and Bob Carr are expert observers of China: they examine its growing might and its strategies to assert dominion.

WTF Australia? How Australia's politics let us down with Katharine Murphy

Five Prime Ministers in five years. A Government unable to govern.  Former leaders sniping from the sidelines. Preference-whispering electing Senators with the merest skerrick of support.   Formerly respected institutions revealed to be rife with base corruption and criminal self-interest. WTF is going on?  Crikey’s Bernard Keane (The Mess We’re In), The Guardian’s Katharine Murphy (On Disruption) and George Megalogenis (The Football Solution) explain.

The Supremacy of Class with Rick Morton

In an era with an increasing focus on identity-based politics, the impact of class can be overlooked or downplayed.  What are the lasting effects of growing up poor, and the stress and trauma poverty can engender? Rick Morton (One Hundred Years of Dirt) and Sarah Smarsh (Heartland) offer analysis and their own personal experiences to consider the mobility and rigidity of class.

Riding the Third Wave with Natasha Stott Despoja

Has the feminist revolution stalled? Or are we enduring a last gasp backlash against equality that the weight of numbers will inevitably defeat? Novelist Sarah Henstra, Director of New York’s Women’s Media Center Speech Project Soraya Chemaly and former Australian Ambassador for Women and Girls Natasha Stott Despoja discuss the ongoing battle for gender equality, and what the Third Wave can learn from the Second, and pass to the Next.

Happy listening!