David Mitchell in conversation with Michaela Kalowski

This is an online event and was livestreamed on the Brisbane Writers Festival YouTube page and at 8pm, Friday, 7th of August.

David Mitchell's Utopia Avenue is the story of "the biggest British band you've never heard of" - a Sixties band that never was. It's a kaleidoscopic novel, part history, part fiction - a catalogue of 1960s counterculture.

Join us for a special livestream as David Mitchell and Michaela Kalowski discuss creating a fictitious band at the heart of the story, but surrounding them with a cast of real musicians, from Joplin to Lennon, Cohen, Bowie and Hendrix.

Michaela explores David's back catalogue, exploring themes across his work - fate and fatalism, power and causality, the relationship between predator and prey - as well as the interconnectedness of his novels. They will explore the complexities of plotting through map-making, and how David sees places, time, and people, connecting and affecting one another.