The E. W. Cole Lecture: Siang Lu on Failure @WheelerCentre

Uploaded December 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

Watch Siang Lu, fresh from winning the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award, as he offers reflections on persistence, reckoning with success and what it means to embrace failure for the 2025 E. W. Cole Lecture.

Originally presented on Thursday 20 November 2025 by The Wheeler Centre.

Praised by the Miles Franklin Literary Award judging panel as ‘at once a grand farce and a haunting meditation on diaspora, Siang Lu’s Ghost Cities is both strikingly original and a landmark in Australian literature. Not bad for a book that was rejected more than 200 times.

For the 2025 E. W. Cole Lecture, Siang reflects on his novel’s difficult journey into being, spanning countless drafts and rejections from publishers both in Australia and internationally. In a frank and honest appraisal of the writing life, he considers the role that failure plays in the creative process and the hard-earned wisdom he’s gleaned from his extraordinary creative journey.

The annual E. W. Cole Lecture invites Australia's brightest thinkers to deliver talks that spark optimistic, progressive and future-thinking ideas for our society and our world and celebrate the fruitful intersection of intellect and play. A Q&A session follows the lecture, with host Toni Jordan.

🔔 𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐓𝐮𝐛𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭-𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐨𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬
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The Wheeler Centre is where writers, storytellers, thinkers and readers connect through live events, insightful conversations and compelling stories in Melbourne.

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$Hanno Sauer: A World History of Morality Watch philosopher Hanno Sauer offer profound insights into the history of morality in an examination on the concepts of good and evil with host Sally Warhaft. Originally presented on Thursday 20 August by The Wheeler Centre. What is the story of morality? Where do our conceptions of good and evil come from? And in an era of competing ideologies and widening divisions, is a shared understanding of what it means to be good or what it means to be right a thing of the past? In this edition of The Fifth Estate, philosopher Hanno Sauer unravels the evolutionary story explaining the major moral transformations of humanity over the past 500 years. Delving into topics such as punishment, social justice, moral standards, inequality and identity politics, he drew on elements of neuroscience, cognitive science, politics and social psychology to illuminate how we have arrived at the current moral zeitgeist. Sauer shows how our moral disagreements of the past can give us a clearer understanding of our fractured present, and hope for a better, more equitable future. The Wheeler Centre acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which the Centre stands. We also acknowledge and pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their Elders, past and present, as the custodians of the worlds oldest continuous living culture. 🔔 𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐓𝐮𝐛𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭-𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐨𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 https://www.youtube.com/@WheelerCentre 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐞 The Wheeler Centre is where writers, storytellers, thinkers and readers connect through live events, insightful conversations and compelling stories in Melbourne. 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 Live and digital conversations, debates, readings, podcasts and discussions at The Wheeler Centre. 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐮𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 👇 🔗 Website: https://www.wheelercentre.com/ 🔗 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wheelercentre/ 🔗 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wheelercentre/ 🔗Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/wheelercentre.bsky.social 🔗 LISTEN wherever you get your podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/TWCLISTEN$

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