Complete 2022 schedule for the Byron Writers Festival released

on Jul 13, 2022

The full lineup for the 26–28 August 2022 Byron Writers Festival, the largest regional writers festival in Australia, has been released.

After a two-year absence brought on by Covid, the festival is back with a programme that includes more than 140 visitors who will be present in person at the new festival location in Bundjalung Country's North Byron Parklands. International visitors include Zimbabwean spoken word poet Thando Sibanda, Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen, New Zealand author Becky Manuwatu, and British philosopher A C Grayling.

The show is the first under new artistic director Zoe Pollock and has the topic of "Radical Hope." In-depth discussions with Emily Bitto, Robert Drewe, Arnold Zable, Chloe Hooper, Kathryn Heyman, Steve Toltz, and Christos Tsiolkas are among the sessions that feature Trent Dalton, Hannah Kent, and Nigel Featherstone sharing love stories, Charlotte Wood, Nikki Gemmell, and Micheline Lee discussing how writing has helped them to survive, and others.

Judy Atkinson, author of Trauma Trails, Recreating Song Lines: The transgenerational effects of trauma in Indigenous Australia (Spinifex), will present the annual Thea Astley Address, and Marcia Langton, Chelsea Watego, and Veronica Gorrie will talk about the significance of Indigenous intellectual sovereignty. While the festival's organisers state that "Climate change will be front and centre of the discussions at this year's festival, with a particular focus on the green future we need to build," Barrie Cassidy will serve as the moderator of the inaugural Mungo Panel, a politics and current affairs session named in honour of the late Mungo McCallum.

Radical hope, according to Pollock, "imagines a future goodness that surpasses our present existence." It is a challenge to look for and build a new world in the midst of such difficult circumstances. Radical hope is the denial and rejection of cultural destruction as well as the will to create a new culture in response to environmental change.