Richard Flanagan and Anna Funder on Writing

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 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.

“Sometimes a book is an experience felt almost in the body. Richard Flanagan’s Question 7 is such a book. It holds a life between its covers and while you read, it holds you too. ” – Anna Funder

“I think Anna Funder could well be Australia’s finest fiction writer and also Australia’s finest non-fiction writer all wrapped up in one brave and seriously creative woman.” – Trent Dalton

This event is supported by the Jibb Foundation