When Hilton Koppe was diagnosed with PTSD, the much-loved country doctor had no choice but to retire from general practice. In this session Hilton chats with courageous authors, Roz Bellamy and Jonathan Seidler about their own personal and familial experience with mental health, as well as with social worker, Romi Grossberg whose work with street…

How does our sense of self form, and how much of our identity is shaped by our genes, by the imprint of our forebears and by our own life experience? In this session, Debbie Lee speaks with Hilton Koppe, Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo and Michelle Scheibner, three authors who follow different paths but find common ground in the…

The scale of history can be overwhelming. Fiction allows us to focus on the individual. Our panel of Australian Jewish authors has recently published four acclaimed novels all with Jewish protagonists. A life in middle-class Vienna upended by the Great War; a woman leading an extraordinary spy ring in Palestine; a self-effacing Japanese diplomat saving…

Unflinching, raw, honest. Hear from three of the hottest new voices on the contemporary literature scene, Nadine J. Cohen, Elise Esther Hearst and Jonathan Seidler, in conversation with Elissa Goldstein. They will be discussing their latest novels, books which don’t shy away from the beauty and the heartache of the human condition.

Three authors, three very different books. But one common thread: families in the 21st century. From parenting together and apart, to how the concept of “family” has changed, to what happens when pregnancy doesn’t end with a baby, this session -featuring Katia Ariel, Isabelle Oderberg, Marina Kamenev, and Roz Bellamy as moderator – delves into…

Oma, bubba, nanna, gran – whatever we know them by, our grand and great grandmothers leave an indelible mark. Yet their matriarchal reach and rich histories are often untold or defined by stereotype, undermining the complexity and vibrancy of their lives. In this panel, three writers re-imagine their grandmothers’ lives across genre, from poetry to…

Poetry lends itself to being lifted off pages and into the air. When asked to read their own work poets might consider how and why some verses wield performative power in terms of theme, rhythm and sounds. Some resonate and echo — travel through space with striking clarity or confounding chaos. Join Alex Skovron, Louise…

Australia has had the largest influx of Holocaust survivors post war outside of Israel. Those survivors are now few in number leaving second and third generations to piece together their family’s stories. Rachelle Unreich has captured her mother’s story in A Brilliant Life. Tess Schofield -Peters’s book, Dear Mutzi tells of her grandfather’s experience fleeing…

Join Tali Lavi in conversation with Eleanor Reissa, Dr. Leah Kaminsky and Professor Rebecca Margolis as they speak of the power of Yiddish in representing the Ashkenazi Jewish experience in new fiction, television and film. What happens when today’s artists employ Yiddish in their work? This session will draw upon the mysterious and the uncanny in reimagining Jewish pasts….

Creative writing that draws on our various identities has been flourishing in recent decades. We can write as women, as queer people or migrants, and so on. But what specifically does it mean to be writing as a Jew, especially in the current wake of widespread antisemitism where our identity has been systematically devalued? This…