SYDNEY WRITERS FESTIVAL CARRIAGEWORKS EDITION | MEDIA RELEASE 12 Feb 2016

Carriageworks and Sydney Writers’ Festival are partnering to present a Sydney Writers’ Festival Carriageworks Edition with two talks by internationally renowned authors, Simon Winchester for his only Sydney appearance to discuss his new biography Pacific Ocean and Andrew O’Hagan author of The Illuminations, long-listed for the 2015 Man Booker Prize.

Lisa Havilah, Director of Carriageworks said, “I am delighted to partner with the Sydney Writers’ Festival for this Carriageworks Edition as the Festival is one of the most popular on the Sydney cultural calendar and I am thrilled to welcome two of its most outstanding international writers to Carriageworks in March.”

Sydney Writers’ Festival Artistic Director Jemma Birrell said, “I’m delighted to be co-presenting these extraordinary writers, Simon Winchester & Andrew O’Hagan at Carriageworks, as part of our mini March Festival. It will give our audiences a taste of the wonderful things to come at the May Festival and reflects our ongoing partnership with Carriageworks”.

People will have a chance to join bestselling author Simon Winchester in his only Sydney appearance to speak about his new biography of the Pacific Ocean, a paean to this magnificent sea of beauty, myth, and imagination. From silicon chips and surfboards, coral reefs and atom bombs to brutal dictators, fading empires and the coming collision of the world’s superpowers, Winchester’s storytelling is second to none.

Simon is the author of The Surgeon of Crowthorne, A Crack in the Edge of the World, Krakatoa and The Map that Changed the World.  He was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to journalism and literature.

In 2007 Andrew O’Hagan gave one of the most memorable talks in the history of Sydney Writers’ Festival. People will have a chance to hear Andrew speaking about his new novel, The Illuminations, long-listed for the 2015 Man Booker Prize. ‘A howl against the war in Afghanistan and the societies that have blindly abetted it, and a multilayered, deeply felt tale of family, loss, memory, art, loyalty, secrecy and forgiveness.’ – The New York Times

Andrew O’Hagan is one of his generation’s most exciting and most serious chroniclers of contemporary Britain. He was voted one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003 and since then has won the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the E. M. Forster Award.