This 11-13 August, we invite you be guided by your mood and interests when exploring the five themed venues that play host to the eighty sessions over the weekend.

The Deep Dives marquee will be a place for reflective one-on-one conversations; where you can dive head first into a world of extraordinary and emotive topics that leave you yearning to discover more. If you love hearing from the authors of this year’s biggest and most compelling books and better still, meeting them in person afterwards, read on for a taste of what to expect.

Barkandji writer, curator and researcher, Zena Cumpston’s work Plants: Past, Present and Future celebrates the deep cultural significance of plants and shows how this heritage could be the key to a healthier, more sustainable future.
10am, Friday 11 August

Heather Rose’s Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here is a deeply personal memoir filled with reflections on love, death, creativity and healing.
11.15am, Friday 11 August

Holly Ringland’s The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding is a deeply beautiful and profoundly moving novel about the far-reaches of sisterly love, the power of wearing your heart on your skin, and the ways life can transform when we find the courage to feel the fullness of both grief and joy.
1:45pm, Friday 11 August

Richard Fidler’s The Book of Roads and Kingdoms is the tale of the mediaeval wanderers who travelled out to the edges of the known world during Islam’s fabled Golden Age.
3pm, Friday 11 August

Anna Funder’s Wifedom shines a spotlight on George Orwell’s wife Eileen O’Shaughnessy. Known as the literary brilliance who shaped Orwell’s work, Funder raises the question, why – and how – was she written out of his story?
9:30am, Saturday 12 August

Gabriel Krauze’s Memoir, Who They Was, is a first-hand account of a young man who lived a life of violent crime in South Kilburn, London – all while completing an English degree at Queen Mary College, London.
10:45am, Saturday 12 August

Kate Morton’s new novel, Homecoming, is an epic story of murder and mystery that spans generations. It asks what we would do for those we love, how we protect the lies we tell, and what it means to come home.
2:30pm, Saturday 12 August

Pip Williams’ The Bookbinder of Jericho is a story about knowledge – who makes it, who can access it, and what is lost when it is withheld – intelligently raising questions of class and gender that remain remarkably relevant today.
9am, Sunday 13 August

Tracey Spicer exposes the next frontier of feminism in her book Man-Made, providing a deeply researched, illuminating and gripping ride into an uncertain future, culminating in a resounding call to action that will shake the tech sector to its foundations.
10:15am, Sunday 13 August

Anke Richter’s Cult Trip takes a deep dive inside the world of coercion and control, explores how and why cults attract, entrap and destroy otherwise ordinary people, and looks at where the line is between tribe and cult, participant and perpetrator, seduction and sexual abuse.
2pm, Sunday 13 August

See you there!

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Sessions accessible via a 1-Day or 3-Day festival pass, available to purchase at www.byronwritersfestival.com/tickets