Meet the author - Melissa Chan and Badiucao

Fresh from the Sydney Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Emmy-nominated journalist Melissa Chan and Walkley-winning activist artist Badiucao will be in conversation with John Garnaut on You Must Take Part in Revolution, a near-future dystopian graphic novel about technology, authoritarian government, and the lengths that one will go to in the fight for freedom.

It’s 2035. The US and China are at war. America is a proto-fascist state. Taiwan is divided into two. As conflict escalates between nuclear powers, three idealistic youths who first met in Hong Kong develop diverging beliefs about how best to navigate this techno-authoritarian landscape. Andy, Maggie, and Olivia travel different paths toward transformative change, each confronting to what extent they will fight for freedom, and who they will become in doing so. A powerful and important book about global totalitarian futures, and the costs of resistance.

Melissa Chan is an Emmy-nominated Hong Kong and Taiwanese American foreign correspondent based between Los Angeles and Berlin. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Yale University, she co-founded and was editor in chief of the Yale Journal of Human Rights. Melissa has written for The New York Times , The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Time, The Guardian, and more. Melissa is a member of the British American Project, former term member at The Council on Foreign Relations, a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University and a Bosch Fellow in Berlin,

Badiucao is a two-times-Walkley Award-winning Chinese Australian artist, activist, and political provocateur, who lives in exile in Australia. His cartoons are regularly published in the Age. He has exhibited in the US, Australia, and throughout Europe. He has been interviewed by The Washington Post, The Guardian, Time, CNN, NBC, and others. The New York Times and CBS News’s 60 Minutes profiled him. In 2020, Badiucao won the Human Rights Foundation’s Václav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent.

John Garnaut is co-founder of Garnaut Global, a geopolitical advisory firm that works with asset managers and technology companies to unlock the logic of Beijing's decision-making. John has practiced as a financial services lawyer and worked in journalism, including six years as an award-winning China correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald (2007-13).John was Senior Advisor to Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (2016) and Principal Advisor (International) in Prime Minister and Cabinet (2017).

The vote of thanks will be given by Allan Behm, Senior Advisor, International & Security Affairs Program at the Australia Institute, Canberra.

Books will be available for signing from 5.30pm and again after the event.  

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A podcast will be made available after the event.

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