Writers' Week 2025

February 2025

Adelaide hosts Australia’s largest literary festival and after offering multiple streaming sites across the City of Unley, we are happy to offer those authors and their books with links to our catalogue below. Enjoy a browse to find a great new read.

Download the streaming schedule(PDF, 2MB)

Writers Week Live Streaming - Fullarton Park

Sit back and relax in our Live Streaming Lounge. Beat the weather and crowds. Enjoy the interviews live from the East Stage in comfort.

Writers Week Live Streaming - Unley

Sit back and relax in our Live Streaming Lounge. Beat the weather and crowds. Enjoy the interviews live from the East Stage in comfort.

Writers Week Live Streaming - Clarence Park

Sit back and relax in our Live Streaming Lounge. Beat the weather and crowds. Enjoy the interviews live from the East Stage in comfort.

Writers Week Live Streaming - Goodwood Library

Sit back and relax in the Library Live Streaming Lounge. Beat the weather and crowds. Enjoy the interviews live from the East Stage in comfort.

Live-Streamed Authors at Unley Libraries

Unley Libraries will be live-streaming sessions featuring the following authors. Please click on their names to explore their further works on our catalogue.

Monday 3 March

	Geoffrey Robertson Rather His Own Man In this witty, engrossing and sometimes poignant memoir, a sequel to his bestselling The Justice Game, Australia's inimitable Geoffrey Robertson charts his progress from pimply state schoolboy to top Old Bailey barrister and thence onwards and upwards to a leading role in the struggle for human rights throughout the world.
	Geraldine Brooks Memorial Days Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls that exquisitely captures the joy, agony and mystery of life.
	Rachel Kushner Creation Lake Creation Lake is a novel about a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics, bold opinions, and clean beauty, who is sent to do dirty work in France. Written in short, vaulting sections, Rachel Kushner’s rendition of “noir” is taut and dazzling. Creation Lake is Kushner’s finest achievement yet as a novelist, a work of high art, high comedy, and unforgettable pleasure.
	Nick Bryant The Forever War The Forever War tells the story of how America's political polarisation is 250 years in the making, and argues that the roots of its modern-day malaise are to be found in its troubled past. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the American experiment is failing. Division, mistrust and misinformation are now its defining characteristics.
	John Crace Decline and Fail This unremittingly entertaining collection of John Crace's lifegiving political sketches will get you through the darkest of days - or failing that, will at least help you see the funny side. Miss it at your peril...
	Kara Swisher Burn Book Part memoir, part history, this is a necessary chronicle of tech's most powerful players. This is the inside story we've all been waiting for about modern Silicon Valley and the biggest boom in wealth creation in the history of the world.
	Sir Simon Schama Foreign Bodies Foreign Bodies crosses borders between east and west, Asia and Europe, the worlds of rich and poor, politics and science. Its thrilling story carries with it the credo of its author on the interconnectedness of humanity and nature; of the powerful and the people. Ultimately, Schama says, as we face the challenges of our times together, 'there are no foreigners, only familiars'.

Tuesday 4 March

	Tobias Buck Final Verdict The gripping narrative of one of the last Nazi criminal trials in Germany--that of Bruno Dey, a 93-year-old former concentration camp guard charged with aiding the murder of more than 5,000 people--and a larger exploration of Germany's reckoning with the Holocaust, from silence to memory to today's rising tide of fascism and antisemitism.
	Dava Sobel The Elements of Marie Curie Approaching Marie Curie from a unique angle, Sobel navigates her remarkable discoveries and fame alongside the women who became her legacy - from Norway's Ellen Gleditsch and France's Marguerite Perry, who discovered the element francium, to her own daughter, Irene, a Nobel Prize winner in her own right. The Elements of Marie Curie deftly illuminates the trailblazing life and enduring influence of one of the most consequential figures of our time.
	Peter Godwin Exit Wounds In Exit Wounds: A Story of Love, Loss and Occasional Wars, Peter Godwin considers, with both tenderness and candour, the life of emigres, exiles and refugees, and grieves the many losses that make life both magnificent and unbearable. He brings us into the spaces which make us question, suffer and celebrate the relationships we have among family and friends, and the healing of our own wounds.
	Amy McQurie Black Witness From one of this country's leading Indigenous journalists comes a collection of fierce and powerful essays proving why the media needs to believe Black Witnesses. Black Witness showcases how journalism can be used to hold the powerful to account and make the world a more equitable place. This is the essential collection that we need right now - and always have.
	Kara Swisher Burn Book Part memoir, part history, this is a necessary chronicle of tech's most powerful players. This is the inside story we've all been waiting for about modern Silicon Valley and the biggest boom in wealth creation in the history of the world.
	Brigitta Olubas Hazzard and Harrower: The Letters Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Harrower met in person for the first time in London in 1972, six years after they began a correspondence that would span four decades. Edited by Brigitta Olubas, Hazzard's official biographer, and Susan Wyndham, who interviewed both Hazzard and Harrower, this is an extraordinary account of two literary luminaries, their complex relationship and their times.
	Charlotte Mendelson Wife Set in the world of London academia, both past and present, Wife by Charlotte Mendelson is heart-breaking and funny, profound and gripping, as it takes the reader from the end of a relationship to its beginning, and back again.

Wednesday 5 March

	Hanif Kureishi Shattered "Shattered" by Hanif Kureishi is a poignant memoir that recounts the author's life-altering experience following a fall in late 2022 that left him paralyzed. The book explores themes of pain, loss, and the journey of rebuilding life after such a devastating event. Kureishi shares his hospital experiences and the emotional impact on himself and his loved ones, reflecting on feelings of gratitude, humility, and love that emerged from his struggles.
	Eric Beecher The Men Who Killed the News This book reveals the distorted role of the media moguls of the past two centuries: their techniques, strategies, behind-closed-doors machinations, and indulgent lifestyles. It explains how they have exploited the shield of the freedom of the press to undermine journalism and truth. In an era of fake news, AI and misinformation, this is democracy's chillingly important story: how a small coterie of flawed and narcissistic moguls created a shadow of power that has contributed to making the media an agent of mistrust.
	Orlando Figes Revolutionary Russia In his book "Revolutionary Russia," historian Figes argues that the Russian Revolution lasted until the Soviet Union’s end in 1991. He divides the century following the revolution into three generational phases: Lenin and the Bolsheviks, the Stalinist generation, and the generation of 1956. Figes provides a deeply human narrative of the events leading to the revolutions of 1905, February and October 1917, and the subsequent developments in Soviet history.
	Josh Bernstein Working for the Brand Josh Bornstein asks how our major corporations have come to exercise repressive control over the lives of their employees, and explores what can be done to repair the greatest threat to democracy - the out-of-control corporation. When you go to work, you agree to exchange your labour in exchange for your pay packet, right? Actually, you may not realise it, but you are also selling your rights to free speech and to participate in democracy. Welcome to corporate cancel culture, a burgeoning phenomenon that is routinely ignored in debates about free speech.
	Robert Dessaix Chameleon Robert Dessaix's testament to a wonderful life is funny, incisive and literary. His voice is completely distinctive and utterly compelling.
	John Lyons Balcony Over Jerusalem A gripping memoir of life in Jerusalem from one of Australia's most experienced Middle East correspondents. Leading Australian journalist John Lyons will take readers on a fascinating personal journey through the wonders and dangers of the Middle East. Lyons explains the Middle East through every day life and experiences - his son's school, his wife's friends and his own dealings with a range of people over six years. If you only read one book on the Middle East, this is it.
	Nick Harkaway Karla's Choice Set in the missing decade between two iconic instalments in the George Smiley saga, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Nick Harkaway's Karla's Choice is an extraordinary, thrilling return to the world of spy fiction's greatest writer, John le Carre.

Thursday 6 March

	Joe Aston The Chairman's Lounge From the must-read journalist on how power, money and influence work in this country, the full story of how one of the nation's favourite brands brought itself to ground. The Chairman's Lounge takes us behind the scenes as crisis after crisis hit the national carrier. The result is the definitive, compelling story of how Qantas was brought to ground and who did it. It is a parable of our times.
	Orlando Figes The Story of Russia From "the great storyteller of Russian history", an account of the myths that have shaped and reshaped Russia's identity and politics from its founding.
	Wesley Lowery American Whitelash Wesley Lowery charts the return of this bloodstained trend, showing how the forces of white power retaliated against Obama's victory -- and both profited from and helped to propel the rise of Donald Trump. Interweaving deep historical analysis with firsthand reporting on victims and perpetrators of violence, Lowery uncovers how this vicious cycle is carrying us into ever more perilous territory, how the federal government has failed to intervene, and how we still might find a route of escape.
	Daisy Goodwin Diva New York Times bestselling author Daisy Goodwin returns with a story of the scandalous love affair between the most celebrated opera singer of all time and one of the richest men in the world. In this remarkable novel, Daisy Goodwin brings to life a woman whose extraordinary talent, unremitting drive and natural chic made her a legend.
	Ronni Salt Gunnawah It's 1974 in the Riverina. The weather is hot. But the body in the Murray River is stone cold . . . A captivating and compulsive crime thriller about guns, drugs and a young woman dead on the money. Set deep in the heart of rural Australia during the era of Gough Whitlam, pub brawls and flared jeans, Gunnawah is a compulsive crime thriller of corruption, guns and drugs from Australian Noir's most arresting new voice.
	Bettany Hughes The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World In a thrilling, colourful narrative enriched with the latest archaeological discoveries, bestselling historian Bettany Hughes walks through the landscapes of both ancient and modern time. This is a journey whose purpose is to ask why we wonder, why we create, why we choose to remember the wonder of others. She explores traces of the Wonders themselves, and the traces they have left in history. A magisterial work of historical storytelling, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World reinforces the exciting and nourishing notion that humans can make the impossible happen.
	Tom Lamonts Going Home A funny, achingly sad, sneakily wise story of family and what happens when three men-all of whom are completely ill-suited for fatherhood-take charge of a toddler following his mother's sudden death.

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