ABC RN Big Ideas and The Elemental Summer
Wherever you are, you’re invited!
ABC RN Big Ideas and The Elemental Summer
When: 6:30–7:30 pm AEST, Tuesday 15 December 2020
Where: Zoom hosted by Avid Reader
Tickets: Free. Please register here
Are we on the brink of another unstable summer?
In anticipation of what the next summer might bring, Griffith Review is publishing The Elemental Summer, a new online initiative featuring writing from a selection of Australia’s most respected thinkers on climate.
Join Radio National Big Ideas presenter Paul Barclay as he explores the coming season with Elemental Summer contributors Joëlle Gergis, James Bradley and Susan Harris Rimmer.
The Elemental Summer will lead coverage of the season’s stories and contribute to a necessarily unpredictable conversation about our extreme new weather.
About the panellists
Joëlle Gergis is an award-winning climate scientist and writer from the Australian National University. Her book Sunburnt Country: The History and Future of Climate Change in Australia is available through MUP.
Joelle’s powerful personal essay, out now in Griffith Review 70: Generosities of Spirit, explores the realities of the climate emergency and the extreme altruism of the scientists who seek to translate it for the world.
James Bradley has twice been named one of The Sydney Morning Herald‘s Best Young Australian Novelists and has won the Fellowship of Australian Writers Literature Award and the Kathleen Mitchell Literary Award, and has been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. His books include Wrack, The Deep Field, The Resurrectionist, Clade and Ghost Species.
Building out from the quintessential Australian summer experience of water – in the surf, catching the waves – his compelling new essay for Griffith Review, published 1 December, rockets back through water’s past to its most distant and mysterious beginnings, while also exploring the role the oceans play and the stories they tell of the changing climate in today’s here and now.
Professor Susan Harris Rimmer is the Director of the Griffith University Policy Innovation Hub. With Professor Sara Davies, she is co-convenor of the Griffith Gender Equality Research Network. She also leads the Climate Justice theme of the Griffith Climate Action Beacon.
Susan’s riveting exploration dives deep into the intersections between human rights and climate justice through her hometown of Coonabarabran in western New South Wales, where long-term residents made the decision to leave after the fires of 2013, 2019–20, and other extreme weather events in between. Published online on 7 December, this essay begs the question: is this an early instance of climate mobility in Australia?
Elemental Summer is supported by McLean Foundation
Now, more than ever, Australia’s writers
need readers for their work.
Single editions of Griffith Review 70: Generosities of Spirit, are available now. Or you can visit our store and purchase a subscription. You will receive the current and next three copies of Griffith Review, and if you buy a subscription before 31 December 2020 you will also receive a free digital subscription to gift to a loved one. Details here.