Concrete Playground

Under the rubric 'Read, Rethink, Respond' this year's Sydney Writers' Festival brings together authors across cultures and continents to cast a light on what's happening right now, and they seem to be a pretty confronting and contentious lot. It's not a competition to see who's the most ink-stained, it's about interesting and well-expressed opinions and what light they cast on what's important culturally and socially and politically. The masses of events are roughly categorised according to a set of five icons, symbolic Sydney landmarks tying the sessions together as events and to the city itself as a discursive site.

Walsh Bay will be full of poets and economists and polemicists and historians and Christopher Hitchens and a guy who knows Woody Allen really well. There'll be talks, launches, panels, readings, workshops and basically any other format that involves words, plus a whole bunch of other people who will totally elbow you to make it into the free sessions and then ask really long questions that end up being statements. (It might be worth bearing in mind that area restaurants have deals going so you can at least be sufficiently well-fed and wined that your satiated look might be confused with wisdom. Just saying.)

See more of our Festival picks at our blog.