Chinese history is long, sprawling and gloriously messy. It is full of heroes who are also villains, prosperous ages and violent rebellions, extraordinary cultural and scientific leaps and deep dark times. Linda Jaivin distils this vast history into a concise narrative that allows us a glimpse of its importance to the formation of China as we see it today. Right now in Australia, we desperately need this sort of understanding.

Linda is the author of twelve books, both fiction and non-fiction. Her novels include A Most Immoral Woman, Eat Me and The Empress Lover, and her non-fiction includes the memoir, The Monkey and the Dragon. She is also a renowned China scholar, working as both a foreign correspondent and translator for both of prose and film (she wrote the sub-titles for Farewell My Concubine, amongst many others).

Warren is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Queensland. His writing has appeared in many publications and he is a winner of the New Philosopher’s Award.

His book, Lovers of Philosophy explores the intimate lives of seven philosphers, investigating the way their most personal experiences came to shape their ideas.

Warren has a wonderful way of weaving the personal with the public, so that, while he tells the grim story of, for example, Nietzsche's emotional trials and Sartre and Foucault's struggles with love, he is also explaining very complex philosophical ideas in an accessible way.

He manages to draw a narrative of thought from one philosopher to another, from Nietzsche's analysis of the failure of religion through Sartre's ideas of the freedom of the individual, to Foucault's understanding of how we are bound by our culture.

Kevin grew up on the western edge of the Snowy Mountains, in a small sawmill village. He has worked primarily in drama and theatre, as actor, writer and teacher. His poetry has been published in Australia and overseas but Awake to the Rest of My Days is his first anthology.

His poems have been runners-up, finalists, short-listed, gained special mentions, commendations and honourable mentions in major competitions around the world. Mark Tredennick says that Kevin is ‘a rare voice in Australian poetry… his poems remind us what poetry is for.’

Kevin is well known in Maleny where he has lived for many years and we're very excited to have him at Outspoken, reading from and talking about his new collection.

The tag line on the cover of Scott’s remarkable new book, Full Circle, says simply: ‘Australia lost a Senator, the world gained a luminous writer’ and that just about sums it up. Ludlam proves to be more than just erudite, he’s prepared to enlist descriptions of the very foundations of life into his argument for a better understanding of our place in the world, and the responsibilities that come with it.

In Full Circle Ludlam seeks old and new ways to make our systems humane, regenerative and more in tune with nature. He shines a light on the bankruptcy of the financial and political systems that have led us here, taking the reader on a journey around the world, discovering that we stand at a unique moment in time, when billions of tiny actions by individuals and small groups have the chance to coalesce into a great movement with the power to transform history.

David Williamson is the most produced playwright in the history of Australian theatre.

Now, after 50 years of mainstage productions and numerous film scripts – a remarkable body of work – David has written his long-awaited memoir, Home Truths. In the book he reveals how a childhood defined by marital discord sparked a lifelong fascination with the capacity for drama to explore emotional conflict; but also about the anxiety that plagued him as he crafted his plays, notwithstanding the joy of connecting with an audience. He writes, too, about the great love story that defined his personal life.

Fearless, candid and witty, David discusses the plethora of odd, interesting, caustic and brilliant people – actors, directors, writers, theatre critics, politicians – who have intersected with his life and work: from the young Jacki Weaver and Chris Haywood in the first Sydney production of The Removalists in 1971 to Nicole Kidman on the brink of stardom in the 1988 feature film of Emerald City, of the lively dinners with Paul Keating, through eventful overseas travels with Gareth Evans, Peter Carey and Tim Winton to a West End production of Up for Grabs starring Madonna.

Anthony is a BAFTA and AWGIE award-winning screen-writer. His first short film STOP! was selected for Official Competition at Cannes, and one of his first television gigs was writing webisodes for the ground-breaking US television series LOST. Anthony has been a script producer and script editor on numerous award-winning shows, including Safe Harbour – which won the 2019 International Emmy for best Mini-Series. He has a doctorate in visual arts from the Queensland College of the Arts, where he teaches regularly.

Hugh Mackay is probably Australia’s best-known ‘social psychologist’. He’s written twenty-two books, including Advance Australia… where?, The Art of Belonging, and Beyond Belief. He appears regularly on television, radio and newspapers as a commentator. Being multi-talented he doesn’t stop there, he’s also published seven novels. His new book, however, is The Kindness Revolution, in which he examines the way our society is developing, asking if it might be possible that Australia be not simply the Lucky Country, if it might become the Loving Country, a place where compassion reigns.

‘Revolutions,’ Mackay writes, ‘never start at the top. If we dare to dream of a more loving country – kinder, more compassionate, more cooperative, more respectful, more inclusive, more egalitarian, more harmonious, less cynical – there’s only one way to start turning that dream into a reality: each of us must live as if this is already that country.’

Luke Stegemann is an award-winning Australian Hispanist, author of The Beautiful Obscure, recipient of the Malaspina Award for his outstanding contribution to the development of cultural relations between Australia and Spain.

His new book, Amnesia Road - winner of the Queensland Literary award for non-fiction this year - is a compelling literary examination of historic violence in rural areas of Australia and Spain. It is also an unashamed celebration of the beautiful landscapes where this violence was carried out. Travelling and writing across two locations – the seldom-visited mulga plains of south-west Queensland and the backroads of rural Andalusia - Luke uncovers neglected history and its many neglected victims, and asks what place such forgotten people have in contemporary debates around history, nationality, guilt and identity.

'This book will come to be regarded as a classic of Australian literature.'

Nicolas Rothwell

Ian Lowe AO is a bona fide Australian treasure. He is currently Emeritus Professor of Science, Technology and Society (and former Head of Science) at Griffith University; the author of ten books and uncounted articles; a former President of the Aust Conservation Society and the recipient of the Konrad Lorenz Gold Medal, awarded by the International Academy of Sciences. Just to begin with.

His new book, Long Half-life is a timely and riveting account of the political, social and scientific complexities of the nuclear industry, revealing the power of vested interests, the subjectivities of scientists and the transformative force of community passion.

Australia has been directly involved in the nuclear industry for more than a century, but our involvement has never been comprehensively documented. Long Half-life tells the social and political history of Australia’s role, from the first discovery of radioactive ores in 1906 to contemporary contentious questions. Quite presciently he discusses whether the next generation of submarines should be nuclear powered (hint: no) But he also talks about whether nuclear energy could help to slow global climate change, and if we should we store radioactive waste from nuclear power stations in our region.

Please Note: this conversation was rudely interrupted by a power failure about half way through (we had very strong winds on this particular evening). We continued recording on an iphone and then reverted to professional equipment when the power was restored. We apologise for any defects in the recording - it’s still very much worth listening to!

Melanie is a Brisbane-based writer, editor, academic and occasional actor. She is a graduate of QUT’s nationally acclaimed acting program and has a Doctorate in Creative Writing. In 2018, she won the Qld Literary Awards Glendower for an Emerging Writer for her manuscript 'Garrison Town', which was published as Meet Me at Lennon’s by UQP in 2019. Meet Me at Lennon's was shortlisted for the 2020 Qld Premier’s Award for a work of State Significance and the 2020 Courier-Mail’s People Choice Award.

Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including Kill Your Darlings, Overland, Arena Magazine, Griffith Review and Hecate, and her short fiction has won or been shortlisted for various literary awards.

Russell McGregor is Associate Professor of history at James Cook University in Townsville. He has published extensively on the history of settler Australian attitudes toward Aboriginal people. His other research interests are in Australian nationalism and environmental history. Here he speaks about his biography of Alec Chisholm, Idling In Green Places.

Alec Chisholm was a naturalist, journalist, newspaper editor and author, but, above all an ornithologist with a passion for Australian birds and the Australian landscape. All but forgotten now Chisholm was once one of the most well-known writers, editors and conservationists in the country. He started early; by the age of 17 he was being paid to write for the magazine Emu, in this case campaigning against the killing of egrets. In 1907 there was a great trade in their feathers for women’s hats. He held in disdain the idea that 'the moving finger of civilisation must move on over the bodies of the loveliest and the best of Nature's children.' He remained a vigorous campaigner for birds and the natural world his whole life, inspiring Australians to see nature anew. His book Mateship with Birds is a classic of nature writing.

Russell McGregor’s biography is the first ‘life’ of this remarkable Australian. It was short-listed for the National Biography Award.

While he’s best known for his radio and television work Karl also has degrees in Physics and Maths, Biomedical Engineering, Medicine and Surgery. He has worked as a physicist, tutor, film-maker, car mechanic, labourer, and as a medical doctor at the Kids’ Hospital in Sydney. He is the present Julius Sumner Miller Fellow at Sydney University, where his ‘mission’ is to spread the good word about science and its benefits. He is one of only 100 ‘Apple Masters’ an award which celebrates the achievements of people who are changing the world through their passion and vision, while inspiring new approaches to creative thinking. He has been awarded an ig-Noble Prize, a doctorate from USC, the Australia Skeptic Of The Year Prize and has an asteroid named after him.

He is the author of more than 45 books. I’m not going to list them, but two of the most recent, Dr Karl’s Random Road Trip through Science and Dr Karl’s Surfing Safari both include augmented reality.

In April he will be launching his Little Book of Climate Science. This little book is remarkable. Karl lays out the history of our understanding of climate change, the science of it - why it’s happening - what its effects will be and what we can do about it, all in the most simple, succint, unemotional language imaginable. It is an extraordinary resource. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

We're delighted to introduce debut novelist Katie McMahon, talking about her novel, out in March, The Mistake.

While Bec and Kate are sisters, they couldn’t be less alike. Bec is living the domestic dream with her surgeon husband Stuart and three perfect children. So why does she find herself so attracted to free-spirited Ryan?

Kate’s life is hardly a dream. But when she meets Adam – tall, kind, funny – things start looking up. Until she finds out he’s been keeping secrets from her.

‘I absolutely loved this novel: fresh, funny and heartfelt. I didn't want it to end!’ Liane Moriarty

'Addictive storytelling from an exciting new talent.' Fiona McIntosh

Marian Wilkinson is regarded as one of the most distinguished journalists in Australia. She has won two Walkley Awards and was the first executive producer of Four Corners. She was a senior journalist for many years with The Sydney Morning Herald, was the Washington correspondent for The National Times and The Age and a senior reporter for The Australian. She is the author of three books of investigative journalism, including Dark Victory, co-authored with David Marr.

In the summer of 2019/20, as Australia burned and smoke from its fires encircled the planet, a lot of people wondered why a country with so much to lose through climate change was doing so little.

The Carbon Club explores the reasons behind inaction, and investigates the small group of key players who determined it.

This is the story of how influential climate science sceptics, politicians and business leaders fought to control Australia's response to the climate crisis and why they were so determined to do so.

Central to their strategy was an international campaign to undermine climate science and the urgency of the climate crisis. The sustained success of the carbon club over two decades explains why Australian governments failed to deal with the challenge of climate change. But at what cost to us and the next generation?

As Wilkinson notes: ‘This is a story we need to know because we are still trapped in it’.

Leigh Robshaw is a journalist, free-lance writer, copywriter, business blogger and sub-editor. She writes for a remarkable range of magazines and publications. Now she has written a fast-paced, colourful and sometimes shocking memoir, You Had Me at Hola, set in South America and Mexico.

A young Australian woman meets a beautiful Peruvian artisan in a market in San Telmo, Buenos Aires. Sensing a deep connection, they fall in love and begin a new life together. Over a period of three years, they travel the continent selling handmade jewellery in the streets and squares of Latin America, dodging police and bandits, mixing with drug dealers and narrowly escaping death.

You Had Me at Hola is a love story between two very different people, with different ways of being. It is about the search for one’s life purpose and the universal quest for belonging.

Clare Bowditch is a musician, an actor, radio presenter, educator and now author (on her website she calls herself music maker/story baker/educator). She visited Maleny to talk about her memoir, Your Own Kind of Girl, a revealing story of a childhood punctuated by grief, anxiety and compulsion, a story that tells how these forces shaped her life for better and for worse. It is a heartbreaking, wise and at times playful. In this podcast she also sings a couple of her songs.

Clare won an Aria Award for Best Female Artist in 2006, was nominated for a Logie for her role in the TV series Offspring, was named Woman of the Year by Rolling Stone, as well as touring with Leonard Cohen, Paul Kelly and Gotye. She is also the founder Big Hearted Business, a love project designed to support creative people in their businesses, and businesses with their creative thinking.

Mary Garden was born and raised in New Zealand, but has lived in Australia for much of her adult life. She also spent several years in India, on a spiritual quest. Her experiences in that country were the subject of her first memoir The Serpent Rising: a journey of spiritual seduction. She moved to Maleny in 1989 and has had strong connections to the town ever since.

Her new book, Sundowner of the Skies, is a memoir/biography of her father, a famous aviator who achieved notoriety when he became the youngest and most inexperienced pilot to fly solo from England to Australia. Fellow pilots ranked his 1930 flight along with the achievements of Charles Kingsford Smith and Amy Johnson. Writing the book was a journey of discovery for Mary. Until she started her research she knew little of his life and his extraordinary history.

Before turning to writing full-time in the late 1990’s, Anna Funder worked as an international lawyer for the Australian Government, focusing on human rights, constitutional law, and treaty negotiation. After jettisoning her legal career to write Stasiland, she jobbed for a time as a radio and television documentary producer at the ABC.

Stasiland describes the period Anna spent in the former East Germany, after the wall came down. It tells the stories of people who heroically resisted the communist dictatorship of East Germany, and of people who worked for its secret police, the Stasi. Shortlisted for many awards in Australia and Britain, in 2004 Stasiland won the world’s most significant prize for non-fiction, the Samuel Johnson Prize. Hailed as ‘a masterpiece’ and ‘a classic,’ Stasiland has been published in 25 countries and translated into 16 languages, adapted for radio and CD in the UK and Australia.

In 2011 Anna published the novel All That I Am, set in pre-war Britain. When Hitler comes to power in 1933, a tight-knit group of friends and lovers become hunted outlaws overnight. United in their resistance to the madness and tyranny of Nazism, they find refuge in London. Here they take breath-taking risks in order to continue their work in secret. But England is not the safe-haven they think it to be, and a single, chilling act of betrayal will tear them apart… Based on real people and events, All That I Am is a masterful and exhilarating exploration of bravery and betrayal, of the risks and sacrifices some people make for their beliefs, and of heroism hidden in the most unexpected places. All That I Am went on to win many awards, including the Miles Franklin.

Anna lives in Sydney with her husband and three children.

I was born into a world that expected very little of women like me. We were meant to tread lightly on the earth, influencing events through our husbands and children, if at all. We were meant to fade into invisibility as we aged. I defied all of those expectations and so have millions of women like me.’

Anne Summers has been prominent in Australian media, politics and feminist activism for more than four decades. She is the author of eight books, including the remarkable Damn Whores and God’s Police, still in print forty-four years after it was first published.

Anne has had a remarkable career. She has been Editor of Good Weekend, written for the Australian Financial Review, Far Eastern Economic Review, Le Monde and the National Times. She is currently a regular contributor to what was recently the Fairfax Press. She is the winner of a Walkley Award for journalism and, in the United States, where she lived from 1986-1992, she was Editor in Chief of Ms Magazine. She was a political advisor to Prime Minister Paul Keating and ran the Office of the Status of Women in the Hawke Labor government. For six years she was chair of Greenpeace International.

Her other books include Gamble for Power, Ducks on a Pond and the recently released Unfettered and Alive, a memoir, which she discusses here with Steven Lang.

For all who know Brisbane, McWhirters, a once celebrated department store in Fortitude Valley, is an icon. For Melissa Fagan it is also the starting point for a remarkable exploration of her mother and grandmother’s lives, a poignant reminder of the ways in which retail stores and fashion have connected women’s lives across the decades.

Behind the dusty shop counters of an Art Deco treasure, Melissa discovered both what had been lost and what continued to shine. Her book is, ultimately, a tender exploration of self and family, speaking of the ways in which life surprises us and of how the legacies of others can truly enrich our own relationships and lives.