HERESIES
History’s response to heretics has been consistent – to silence, shame and ultimately, to burn them.
Booker Prize-winning novelist Richard Flanagan has spent his career speaking in ways that make the powerful uncomfortable. In his new book, Heresies, he argues that if a writer is doing their job they inevitably end up saying the unsayable. But Australia in 2026 risks becoming the country of the unsaid as the prohibitions on speaking freely grow from both the left and the right – legal, formal and informal – too often with the aim of entrenching injustice and inequality.
This session is made possible with support from The Monthly.
Richard Flanagan
Richard Flanagan is an Australian writer who has been described by the Washington Post as ‘one of our greatest living novelists’ and as ‘among the most versatile writers in the English language’ by the New York Review of Books. He is the first and only author to have ever won both the Booker and the Baillie Gifford prizes.
Ann Mossop
Ann Mossop is an ideas curator and festival programmer. From 2022–2026 she was the Artistic Director of the Sydney Writer’s Festival, consistently recognised as one of the world’s leading literary events. She was the Director of the Centre for Ideas at UNSW Sydney from 2017-2022, a new program she established designed to contribute to public conversations about important ideas and issues. As Head of Talks and Ideas at the Sydney Opera House from 2010-2017, she established the Opera House’s extensive talks and ideas program and led key projects like the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. She was also the founder of the All About Women festival, which has taken place at Sydney Opera House since 2013. Throughout her career she has been involved with important initiatives to bring the work of writers and thinkers to broader audiences, from the pioneering series of readings at the Harold Park Hotel, Writers in the Park and the highly successful Writers’ Choice program at the University of Sydney to the re-establishment of the Sydney Writers’ Festival as an independent Festival in 1998.
We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation - the custodians of the country on which we meet - and acknowledge their Elders, past and present.
The views and opinions expressed by the Festival participants are not necessarily the views of The Ethics Centre and our partners.