Redefining genre with Australian literary greats. 

Join two of the most admired writers in Australia today, Booker Prize–winning Richard Flanagan and Miles Franklin–winning Anna Funder as they discuss writing in the margins between fiction and non-fiction, history and memoir, personal and public.

Historian Clare Wright leads this conversation, examining their genre-bending masterpieces. Through a hypnotic melding of dream, history, science and memory, Question 7 traces the ripples of history through Richard’s own family and is described by Anna as holding “a life between its covers”. Wifedom is Anna’s “counterfiction”, an attempt to write Eileen O'Shaughnessy, George Orwell’s first wife, back into the narrative from which history has so carefully excised her. Not only a New York Times Notable Book of 2023, Wifedom was also described by Geraldine Brooks as “Simply, a masterpiece”. 

Redefine genre with Richard and Anna as they discuss the craft of writing, the parts of themselves left excavated on the page and the consequences of the choices we make.

Richard Flanagan – Presenter

Richard Flanagan's novels have received numerous honours and are published in 42 countries. He won the Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North and the Commonwealth Prize for Gould’s Book of Fish. A rapid on the Franklin River is named after him.

Anna Funder – Presenter

Anna Funder is the author of Stasiland and All That I Am – both international bestsellers, published in more than twenty-four countries – and the novella The Girl with the Dogs. Her books have won multiple literary awards, including the UK's premier award for non-fiction, the Samuel Johnson Prize for Stasiland, and Australia’s most prestigious, the Miles Franklin, for her novel All That I Am. Originally trained as an international human rights lawyer, Anna is a former DAAD Fellow in Berlin, Australia Council Fellow and Rockefeller Foundation Fellow. She lives in Sydney.

Clare Wright – Facilitator

Clare Wright is an historian, author, broadcaster and podcaster. Her books include the Stella Prize–winning The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka and You Daughters of Freedom, which comprise the first two instalments of her Democracy Trilogy. The third, a history of the Yirrkala Bark Petitions, will be published by Text in October 2024. Clare hosts the RN podcast Shooting the Past and co-hosts the La Trobe University podcast, Archive Fever. Clare is a past Board Director of the Wheeler Centre and current Council member of the National Museum of Australia Council. She is currently Professor of History and Professor of Public Engagement at La Trobe University.