The E. W. Cole Lecture: Siang Lu on Failure in Naarm (Melbourne)

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 will follow the lecture, with host Toni Jordan.