Acclaimed speculative-fiction authors Grace Chan (Every Version of You) and Tom Rob Smith (Cold People and Child 44) have written very different accounts of what the future may hold. Drawing on some of our present challenges, their imagined worlds raise fascinating questions about technology, climate and human relationships, as well as delivering compelling narratives of future lives and the people who live them. To take us on a journey into how we think and write about what lies ahead, they are joined in conversation by Beejay Silcox.
Grace Chan (Australian)
Grace Chan is a speculative fiction writer. She has been shortlisted for the Aurealis Awards, Norma K. Hemming Award, and Viva la Novella. Her short fiction can be found in Clarkesworld, Going Down Swinging, Aurealis, and many other places. Her debut novel, Every Version of You, explores change, love, and loss through virtual reality and mind-uploading (Affirm Press, 2022). In her other life, she works as a psychiatrist.
Tom Rob Smith (International)
Tom Rob Smith is the author of the acclaimed Child 44 trilogy. Child 44 itself was a global publishing sensation, selling over two million copies. It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Prize and won the CWA Steel Dagger Award and became a movie with Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman. Tom also writes for television and won a Writer's Guild Award for best adapted series and an Emmy and Golden Globe for best limited series with American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, his adaptation of Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favours. His latest novel, Cold People, has just been published.
Beejay Silcox (Australian)
Beejay Silcox is a writer and critic currently based in Canberra. Her reviews and cultural commentary regularly appear in national arts publications, and are increasingly finding an international audience. Beejay has stories to tell. She's been kicked in the head by a mountain gorilla, blessed by a voodoo priest and stuck in quicksand; she eloped to Las Vegas, and drove to Timbuktu in a car held together with a bra-strap.
