Susan Choi - Sydney Writers Festival livestream at StHelens Library

Sydney Writers’ Festival is Australia’s largest celebration of books and ideas, bringing the world’s finest authors and esteemed thinkers together for insightful and exhilarating conversations and discussions.

The Sydney Writers’ Festival Live & Local program offers free livestream of Festival sessions to libraries and community centres across regional Australia to share directly with their audiences.

Louisa goes for a walk along the beach with her father, but only she returns.

The new novel from Susan Choi, multi-award-winning writer including the National Book Award and a Lambda Literary Award, is a sweeping, international family drama that was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize. Flashlight, described by The Guardian as a return to the great American novel of the 20th century, beguiled readers for its examination of absence and silence in a small family rocked by the assumed death of Louisa’s father.

Join Susan as she discusses relationships and alienation in her new novel, in conversation with Beejay Silcox.

Susan Choi is the author most recently of

, shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, longlisted for the 2025 National Book Award and named a Best Book of the Year by

,

,

,

,

, the

, and

, among others. Her previous novels are

,

,

,

and

, which received the 2019 National Book Award for fiction.

Beejay Silcox is a book critic. Her work appears in high-profile publications across three continents, and is renowned for its resolute (some might say, foolhardy) honesty. In addition to her literary commentary, Beejay works as a professional reader: she’s an interviewer, prize judge, festival programmer, editor and educator. And she has stories to tell. Beejay eloped to Las Vegas, escaped from quicksand and once had to be rescued – unironically – from a picnic at Hanging Rock.

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