Literary Salon: A World Without Writers

Benjamin Law is the author of The Family Law (2010), Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East (2012)—both nominated for Australian Book Industry Awards—and the Quarterly Essay on Safe Schools, Moral Panic 101 (2017). The Family Law is now also an award-winning SBS TV series, which Benjamin created and co-wrote. Every week, Benjamin co-hosts ABC RN’s weekly national pop culture show Stop Everything, and has appeared on TV shows including Q&A (ABC), The Drum (ABC), The Project (Ten) and Filthy Rich and Homeless (SBS).

Richard Glover’s most recent book is “The Land Before Avocado: Journeys in a lost Australia” It’s been described by Hugh Mackay as “warm, wise and very, very funny”, and by Annabel Crabb as “Hilarious and horrifying, the ultimate intergenerational conversation starter’ . Richard is also author of “Flesh Wounds – a comic romp for anyone whose family was not what they ordered.” He writes regularly for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Washington Post, and presents the comedy show Thank God It’s Friday on ABC local radio.

Rutger Bregman is a historian and author. He has published four books on history, philosophy, and economics. The Dutch edition of Utopia for Realists became a national bestseller and sparked a basic income movement that soon made international headlines. The book will be translated in 22 languages. Bregman has twice been nominated for the prestigious European Press Prize for his journalism work at The Correspondent. His work has been featured in The Washington Post, The Guardian and on the BBC.

Min Jin Lee's Pachinko is a national bestseller, a New York Times Editor's Choice and an American Booksellers Association's Indie Next Great Reads. It is an Amazon Top Ten Books of the month and a selection of the Book of the Month Club. Pachinko is a top read or a most anticipated book for BBC.com, Newsweek.com, Stylist UK, Publishers Weekly, Esquire.com, LitHub, The Millions, Chicago Review of Books, BuzzFeed, Book Riot, BookPage, Elle.com, Daily Mail UK, and Nylon. It has been featured on NPR's Morning Edition, WNYC's The Leonard Lopate Show, Publishers Weekly Radio, and NPR's Book Reviews. Lee's debut novel Free Food for Millionaires was a No. 1 Book Sense Pick, a New York Times Editor's Choice, a Wall Street Journal Juggle Book Club selection, and a national bestseller. It was a Top 10 Novels of the Year for The Times of London, NPR's Fresh Air and USA Today.

Former writer and foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times, and then The Guardian, Levy won the One World award for foreign reporting, and One World Media's Press Journalists of the Year. He has produced documentaries for HBO, BBC 1, BBC 2, C4 and VICE on HBO. In 2010, his film City of Fear, on Pakistan's bloodiest year, was nominated for an award at the Edinburgh International Festival. In 2012, Torture Trail, won the 2013 Amnesty International award and was short-listed for a Grierson and a Rory Peck award. Chinese Murder Mystery, an investigation into the death of Neil Heywood, was long-listed for a BAFTA and nominated for the Monte Carlo Television Awards 2013. He produced the Emmy-winning Season Three, Four and Five of Vice-on-HBO.