Live and Local - Sydney Writers festival presented by Tamar Valley Writers Festival

The Tamar Valley Writers Festival invites you to a Live and Local streaming of the 2023 Sydney Writers Festival. Please join us at the new UTAS Inveresk Library to participate in sessions with literary greats ranging from Maggie Beer to Pip Williams, on topics from crime to food to history to activism. We are thrilled to be able to offer this opportunity for Tasmanian readers, writers and thinkers. Single session and day passes are available.

Program details below:

10:00 - 11:00am - A LIFE IN FOOD: STEPHANIE ALEXANDER AND MAGGIE BEER

Culinary icons Stephanie Alexander and Maggie Beer have inspired generations of home cooks and fundamentally transformed how we think about food. They reflect on their decades-long friendship, and their partnership in running a cooking school for Australians in a medieval villa in Italy. They also talk about their influential books on preparing, cooking and savouring delicious food, including their co-authored Tuscan Cookbook, which was recently optioned to be made into a feature film. They are joined on stage by cook, writer and presenter Adam Liaw.

12:00 - 1:00 - CRIME AND JUSTICE 

We are fascinated by stories of crime and how they unfold. There are no finer narrators of such stories than legendary author Helen Garner and The Teacher’s Pet podcaster Hedley Thomas, whose work explores the link between confronting terrible things that happen and the people who are involved. They sit down with Sarah Krasnostein to explore the compelling nature of crime and the pressing question of what happens when justice takes a lifetime – or if it never comes at all? Helen Garner appears thanks to the support of Kathy.

2:00pm – 3:00pm GREAT ADAPTATIONS

Four favourite writers come together to give the lowdown on having their works adapted into TV shows and movies and adapting the work of others. Hear from Eleanor Catton, whose novels The Rehearsal and The Luminaries have made their way to the screen; Holly Ringland, whose bestseller The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is being turned into a series starring Sigourney Weaver; and Tom Rob Smith, whose novel Child 44 became a movie with Tom Hardy and whose adaptations for the screen The Assassination of Gianni Versace have won him an Emmy and a Golden Globe. They chat with Benjamin Law.

4:00pm – 5:00pm - PIP WILLIAMS: THE BOOKBINDER OF JERICHO

Australian novelist Pip Williams drew wide acclaim for her bestselling debut, The Dictionary of Lost Words, “a marvellous fiction about the power of language to elevate or repress” (Geraldine Brooks). Her new novel, The Bookbinder of Jericho, covers similar terrain, with the story of a young British woman working in a book bindery who gets a chance to pursue knowledge and love when World War I upends her life. Pip is in conversation with Cassie McCullagh.

6:00-7:00pm STATE OF THE ART

How is fiction evolving with our times? Is the novel a vulnerable art or more vital than ever? Could AI one day pen a masterpiece or do our storytellers guard an inimitable craft? Join some of the leading names in literature today – Eleanor Catton, Richard Flanagan, Tracey Lien and Colson Whitehead – for a lively discussion about the state of the novel and the future of fiction. They are joined in conversation by ABC RN’s The Bookshelf’s Kate Evans.

7:30pm – 8:30pm REAL SELVES

Women and girls have long been pressured to conform to written and unwritten rules about how to think, act, look and feel. But a new generation of writers and activists are breaking down barriers to allow women and girls to show their real selves. Hear from Heartbreak High actress, advocate and Different, Not Less author Chloé Hayden, Wadjanbarra Yidinji, Jirrbal and African-American filmmaker and Gigorou author Sasha Kutabah Sarago, and activist for sexual assault survivors and The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner author Grace Tame in conversation with disability and women’s rights advocate Hannah Diviney about their pathbreaking work.