Festival Keynote Talk: Amitav Ghosh – A Writer’s Reimagining of Our Planetary Future

Amitav Ghosh takes the keynote slot at Singapore Writers Festival 2026 with a talk titled A Writer's Reimagining of Our Planetary Future. The question he puts on the table is a blunt one: why do so many powerful, well-informed people appear to have given up on the planet, retreating instead of resisting? Drawing on his essay collection Wild Fictions, he traces the imperial and economic fictions that brought us here, and what our appetite for catastrophe stories does to the way we think about what comes next — particularly for the Global South.

It runs Saturday 14 Nov 2026, 1.30pm to 2.30pm, at Victoria Theatre, supported by the Shaw Foundation. One hour, one speaker, a civic-minded room in the middle of the festival — the sort of session worth choping a slot for if you have read the essays or simply want to hear the argument laid out in person.