British Council Australia is delighted to be supporting British writers as part of the 2024 Sydney Writers Festival.
Every May, the Sydney Writers Festival gathers talented storytellers across all forms for a stimulating, engaging, and enjoyable week-long celebration of literature, books, and ideas at thier home in Carriageworks in Sydney's Inner West. Since its inception in 1997, the festival has brought together top novelists, poets, journalists, public intellectuals, economists, politicians, podcasters, and scientists to delve into contemporary issues on its stages. By featuring a diverse array of Australian and international writers, the festival plays a vital role in fostering Australia's literary community and enriching its cultural landscape. This year, six British writers will take part in the festival.
Katy Hessel
Katy Hessel is an art historian, curator, broadcaster and author of The Story of Art without Men, an international bestseller and Waterstones Book of the Year 2022.
She runs @thegreatwomenartists, an Instagram account that has celebrated women artists on a daily basis since 2015, and hosts The Great Women Artists Podcast, where she has interviewed Tracey Emin and Marina Abramović.
Katy has curated exhibitions across the globe, lectured at The National Gallery and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, presented radio and television programmes for the BBC and writes a fortnightly column for The Guardian. She is a Visiting Fellow of Cambridge University. More info here.
David Wengrow
David Wengrow is an archaeologist and co-author, with David Graeber, of The New York Times and international bestseller The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. More info here.
Abdulrazak Gurnah
Abdulrazak Gurnah is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021.
He is the author of ten novels: Memory of Departure, Pilgrims Way, Dottie, Paradise (shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award), Admiring Silence, By the Sea (longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Award), Desertion (shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize), The Last Gift, Gravel Heart and Afterlives, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Fiction 2021 and longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize.
He was Professor of English at the University of Kent and was a Man Booker Prize judge in 2016. He lives in Canterbury. More info here.
Samantha Shannon
Samantha Shannon is The New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author of the Bone Season series and the Roots of Chaos series. Her work has been translated into 26 languages. She lives in London. More info here.
Anthony Grayling
A. C. Grayling CBE MA DPhil is the Principal of Northeastern University London and its Professor of Philosophy. He is a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He is the author of over thirty books of philosophy, biography, history of ideas and essays.
He was a columnist for The Guardian, The Times and Prospect Magazine. He has twice been a judge for The Booker Prize, in 2014 serving as the Chair of the judging panel.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Vice President of Humanists UK, Patron of the Defence Humanists, Honorary Associate of the Secular Society and a Patron of Dignity in Dying. More info here.
Natalie Haynes
Natalie Haynes is a writer and broadcaster and – according to The Washington Post – a rock star mythologist.
Her first novel, The Amber Fury, was published to great acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. A Thousand Ships, was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2020. Her non-fiction book, Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myth reached number two in The New York Times bestseller chart. Her latest book, Divine Might, was published in September 2023.
She is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4 where nine series of her show, Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics, have been broadcast. More info here.