Literary Salon: A World Without Writers

What would the world look like if we did not have writers? In this special Brisbane Writers Festival Literary Salon, four great writers will contemplate how they, and others in their field, contribute to the world. Join them for an evening of big ideas.

Benjamin Law

Benjamin Law is a journalist, TV screenwriter, columnist and the author of two books: The Family Law (2010) and Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East (2012), both of which were nominate for Australian Book Industry Awards. The Family Law is now an award-winning and AACTA-nominated TV series on SBS. Benjamin was also an associate producer and researcher of the SBS feature documentary Deep Water: The Real Story, the author on the current Quarterly Essay on Safe Schools and has a PhD in writing from QUT.

Adrian Levy

Former writer and foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times, and then The Guardian, Levy won the One World award for foreign reporting, and One World Media’s Press Journalists of the Year. He has produced documentaries for HBO, BBC 1, BBC 2, C4 and VICE on HBO. In 2010, his film City of Fear, on Pakistan’s bloodiest year, was nominated for an award at the Edinburgh International Festival. In 2012, Torture Trail, won the 2013 Amnesty International award and was short-listed for a Grierson and a Rory Peck award. Chinese Murder Mystery, an investigation into the death of Neil Heywood, was long-listed for a BAFTA and nominated for the Monte Carlo Television Awards 2013. He produced the Emmy-winning Season Three, Four and Five of Vice-on-HBO.

Richard Glover

Richard Glover is the author of more than a dozen books, most recently Flesh Wounds, described as “a comic romp for anyone whose parents were not what they ordered.” He presents the comedy show ‘Thank God It’s Friday’ on ABC local radio, and writes regularly for the Sydney Morning Herald, the Brisbane Times and the Washington Post.

Rutger Bregman

Rutger Bregman is a historian and author. He has published four books on history, philosophy, and economics. The Dutch edition of Utopia for Realists became a national bestseller and sparked a basic income movement that soon made international headlines. The book will be translated in 22 languages. Bregman has twice been nominated for the prestigious European Press Prize for his journalism work at The Correspondent. His work has been featured in The Washington Post, The Guardian and on the BBC.

Min Jin Lee

Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko is a national bestseller, a New York Times Editor’s Choice and an American Booksellers Association’s Indie Next Great Reads. It is an Amazon Top Ten Books of the month and a selection of the Book of the Month Club. Pachinko is a top read or a most anticipated book for BBC.com, Newsweek.com, Stylist UK, Publishers Weekly, Esquire.com, LitHub, The Millions, Chicago Review of Books, BuzzFeed, Book Riot, BookPage, Elle.com, Daily Mail UK, and Nylon. It has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, WNYC’s The Leonard Lopate Show, Publishers Weekly Radio, and NPR’s Book Reviews. Lee’s debut novel Free Food for Millionaires was a No. 1 Book Sense Pick, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, a Wall Street Journal Juggle Book Club selection, and a national bestseller. It was a Top 10 Novels of the Year for The Times of London, NPR’s Fresh Air and USA Today.

Brisbane Writers Festival 2017