ONLINE EVENT: ABC RN Big Ideas and The Elemental Summer with Joëlle Gergis

Are we on the brink of another unstable summer?

In anticipation of what the next summer might bring, Griffith Review is publishing The Elemental Summer, a new online initiative featuring writing from a selection of Australia’s most respected thinkers on climate.

Join Radio National Big Ideas presenter Paul Barclay as he explores the coming season with Elemental Summer contributors Joëlle Gergis, James Bradley and Susan Harris Rimmer.

The Elemental Summer will lead coverage of the season’s stories and contribute to a necessarily unpredictable conversation about our extreme new weather.

This is a free, online event hosted by Avid Reader and Griffith Review. Click here for more information and to register.


About the panellists

Joëlle Gergis is an award-winning climate scientist and writer from the Australian National University. Her book Sunburnt Country: The History and Future of Climate Change in Australia is available through MUP.

Joelle’s powerful personal essay, out now in Griffith Review 70: Generosities of Spirit, explores the realities of the climate emergency and the extreme altruism of the scientists who seek to translate it for the world.

James Bradley has twice been named one of The Sydney Morning Herald‘s Best Young Australian Novelists and has won the Fellowship of Australian Writers Literature Award and the Kathleen Mitchell Literary Award, and has been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. His books include WrackThe Deep Field, The Resurrectionist, Clade and Ghost Species.

Building out from the quintessential Australian summer experience of water – in the surf, catching the waves – his compelling new essay for Griffith Review, published 1 December, rockets back through water’s past to its most distant and mysterious beginnings, while also exploring the role the oceans play and the stories they tell of the changing climate in today’s here and now.

Professor Susan Harris Rimmer is the Director of the Griffith University Policy Innovation Hub. With Professor Sara Davies, she is co-convenor of the Griffith Gender Equality Research Network. She also leads the Climate Justice theme of the Griffith Climate Action Beacon.

Susan’s riveting exploration dives deep into the intersections between human rights and climate justice through her hometown of Coonabarabran in western New South Wales, where long-term residents made the decision to leave after the fires of 2013, 2019–20, and other extreme weather events in between. Published online on 7 December, this essay begs the question: is this an early instance of climate mobility in Australia?

When

15 December 2020, 6:30pm

Where

Online Event

Online

When

📅

15 December 2020, 6:30pm

Where

Online Event
Online