Jessica Alice is the new director of the Byron Writers Festival which runs from 9 – 11 August 2024. The line up looks impressive with Trent Dalton, Bruce Pascoe and Richard Flannagan to name a few. But who is this young cultural leader and what are her predilections?

Jessica Alice

James Bradley’s new novel Ghost Species is a beautiful and deeply affecting exploration of connection and loss in an age of planetary trauma. Set against the backdrop of hastening climate catastrophe, a group of scientists are working to re-engineer the climate by resurrecting extinct species. The protagonist Kate becomes enmeshed in another, more clandestine program to recreate our long-lost relatives, the Neanderthals. But when the first of the children, a girl called Eve, is born, Kate finds herself torn between her growing love for Eve and her obligations to the project, and makes a decision that will alter her and Eve’s lives forever.

In this Conversations from Byron podcast, James speaks with Sophie Cunningham about the writing process and his hopes for the book. James delves into some of the central questions of Ghost Species: deep time, ethics and what it means to be human. They discuss grief in both a personal and global context, from climate grief, to pandemic grief and the very personal grief of losing a parent.

Ghost Species: James Bradley in conversation with Sophie Cunningham

Byron Writers Festival is Australia's favourite regional meeting place of storytelling and ideas. We present world-class gatherings that enrich and transform the lives of our audiences and community. Our annual festival takes place in August on Bundjalung Country.

We showcase writers from around the world, representing all aspects of contemporary literature, especially First Nations writing and ways of knowing, environment, politics, philosophy, art, history and society.

Established in 1995, the festival and our year-round programs attract tens of thousands of audiences annually to develop and promote literature from and in the region.

Ghost Species: James Bradley in conversation with Sophie Cunningham

Byron Writers Festival

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