Wheeler Centre

[gentle music] Quoting from the Vietnamese American Viet Thanh Nguyen's 2016 novel, The Sympathizer, is the Chinese Cambodian Australian author, lawyer, and teacher Alice Pung.

She joins you today on Big Ideas on ABC Radio National with me, Claire Nichols, and Alice is presenting this 2026 EW Cole Lecture at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne.

Melbourne.Our strength and our superpower is that we might know a little bit more about those who don't understand us than they ever might know about us.

We've had to learn about their worlds, study their texts, walk and live within their parameters.

I did go

to a writer's course at the Wheeler Centre run by author Andrea Goldsmith.

And so that was one of those things where you're met four or five times throughout the year and you were sort of meant to...

I think it was literally called A Year of the Novel.

I don't know.

But it stuck in my head.

And then... okay so when I started to take writing more serious like maybe 10 or so years ago that's what I worked on but the book was um it was an adult book and it was set in two time zones and it was really complex and it wasn't working for me but I went to a pitching session at the Wheeler Centre um in Melbourne and I um I stood in the wrong queue so I was meant to I thought it was really, really packed room in my defense.

But yeah, so I stood in the YA queue by mistake.

But many of you in various states that I didn't even make it to this time around didn't get to come along, so this is a special treat for you.

And like I said, something a little bit different, 'cause I'm, I'm in the, in the guest's chair, I guess you could say, because I'm gonna play you today my chat as part of my book launch at the Wheeler Centre a couple of weeks ago in Melbourne.

Now, the Wheeler Centre is, of course, the home of books and writing in Melbourne.

They do fabulous things.

And my host for that launch is my dear friend and absolutely brilliant broadcaster and presenter and MC, Jess McGuire, who I've known for many years.

I'm going to be hosting tonight's event.

Before we get started, I do want to acknowledge that we are meeting tonight on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people of the Kulin Nation, and we pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their elders, past and present, as the custodians of the world's oldest continuous living culture.

Now, it is such a delight to be here at the Wheeler Centre, where we are gonna talk to the beloved Myf Warhurst about her new book, Middle Rage.

He joins you today on Big Ideas on ABC Radio National and ABC Listen, brought to you by me, Natasha Mitchell.

Music Corey is a guest of the Wheeler Centre and Melbourne's Now or Never Festival.

And asking the questions is Distinguished Professor of Information Sciences at RMIT University, Lisa Given.

The subtitle of Corey's award-winning book, In Shitification, was why everything suddenly got worse and what to do about it.

The stakes really couldn't be much higher.

That was Canadian tech activist Corey Doctorow with RMIT professor Lisa Given.

Thanks to both of them and to the event partners, the Wheeler Centre, the Now or Never Festival and RMIT University.

Corey's new book is called The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI, How to Think About Artificial Intelligence Before It's Too Late.

It makes me cry every time I think about it.

And just like a month later, I was part of the Wheeler Centre's Mother Festival singing at Fed Square for 500 people my song Self about birth trauma and breastfeeding difficulties.

I just, they made my album the soundtrack of the whole Writers Festival.

I just, I still can't believe it.

Aaron can say more about certainly when the time comes.

But it is live comics readings that's been held at the Wheeler Centre as part of the UNESCO City of Leicestershire that Melbourne is.

And Then on the Saturday is what we call in Community Day, and that's like a writers' festival, it's a day of talks, panels primarily, and on-stage interviews with comics creators, editors in comics, agents and so forth.

May go through the program in detail a bit later, but generally speaking, there's four both comics makers, want to be makers, anyone interested in comics more deeply to have a deep dive into the medium and also into the business infrastructure of comics.

Look, the big vision, the longer term vision is to build an institution for comics for Australia along the model of... like the Comics Museum in Brussels or La Cité in Angoulême in France or the Billy Island Museum, Comics Art Museum in Ohio in the United States and similar ones.

There's one in Germany and the Swedish Comic Center in Malmö, which I've done a residency at.

These are places where the media and the comics have a base in the same way that the Wheeler Centre is for literature here, but a comics one.

It could involve a museum because comics doesn't have any place for an archive for all of its work.

The official bookseller was Brunswick Mound.

The Wheeler Centre podcast is produced on the lands of the Wurundjeri and Woiwurrung people of the Kulin Nation.

You can listen to more podcasts or explore videos, news and our full calendar of events at wheelercentre.com.