We’re proud to be supporting artist, writer and social entrepreneur Akala at Sydney Writers Festival, from 29 April—05 May 2019.
About Akala
Akala is a BAFTA and MOBO Award-winning hip-hop artist, writer and social entrepreneur, as well as the co-founder of The Hip-Hop Shakespeare Company. He is also known for his compelling lectures and journalism - he has written for The Guardian, Huffington Post and The Independent, and spoken for the Oxford Union and TEDx. His Sunday Times bestseller Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire is a searing polemic, covering everything from the police, education and identity to politics, sexual objectification and the far right, speaking directly to British denial and squeamishness when it comes to confronting issues of race and class that are at the heart of the legacy of Britain's racialised empire.
Talks and dates
- Fault Lines
Thursday 2 May, 11:30 AMInequality has been called the great political and moral issue of our time. Economic disparity, the country-city divide, and generational social and racial inequalities are fueling discontent and reshaping politics at home and abroad. Join Akala (Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire), Gabrielle Chan (Rusted Off: Why Country Australia is Fed Up), Beth Macy (Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America) and Rick Morton (One Hundred Years of Dirt), as they consider our fragmented age and the way forward with George Megalogenis.
- Akala: Natives - Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire
Saturday 4 May, 11:30 AMAkala joins Michael Mohammed Ahmad in conversation about his bestselling debut, Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire, a searing, modern polemic on race and class in the British Empire. He reflects on growing up poor, mixed-race and politicised in Britain during the 1980s and 90s, widening his experiences into a nuanced historical treatise that demonstrates why The Guardian has lauded his as “the kind of disruptive, aggressive intellect that a new generation is closely watching”.
Location
Carriageworks
245 Wilson Street
Eveleigh, NSW, 2015
About Sydney Writers Festival
Each year, Sydney Writers’ Festival presents more than 300 events, attracting audiences of up to 100,000 for a week-long conversation of books and ideas. The Festival programs some of the world’s most curious and compassionate, irreverent but respectful, intelligent and argumentative writers – from local and international contemporary novelists, screenwriters, musicians and writers of cutting-edge nonfiction, to some of the world’s leading public intellectuals, scientists and journalists. With the finest writing and storytelling at its core, our programming is driven by the ideas and issues that animate all types of literature.