Caro Claire Burke
22 February 2027
In 2024, a thirty-year-old writer sold her debut novel in a twelve-way auction; it hadn’t even hit shelves before Amazon MGM Studios bought the film rights. The writer was Caro Claire Burke and the book was Yesteryear, a shrewd satire of American misinformation that follows a successful tradwife who suddenly wakes up in 1855, where no one on Instagram can hear her scream.
One of the biggest books of 2026, Yesteryear has generated about as much discourse as the tradwife movement itself – discourse that uncannily refracts the novel’s sharp interrogation of gender politics and online performance. Join the remarkable Caro Claire Burke in Brisbane for a conversation about satire, social media spin and the whiplash-inducing performance of womanhood in the 2020s.
Brisbane Writers Festival is held on the lands of the Yuggera and Turrbul people, on the banks of the Maiwar river. We recognise the important and ongoing contributions of Indigenous Australians to art and literature, and pay our respects to elders past and present.