Sarah Wilson - I Eat The Stars

Book Launch
Presented in association with The Canberra Writers Festival 

From New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist Sarah Wilson comes a powerful exploration of how to live with meaning in a world that feels like it’s coming undone.

Catastrophic fires and floods. Record heat. Political instability. AI and nuclear anxiety. Rising inequality and unrest. It’s hard to shake the sense that something is deeply wrong, that the systems we depend on are wobbling, or even collapsing altogether. In I Eat the Stars, Sarah Wilson argues that what we’re experiencing isn’t unique, but part of a pattern every complex civilisation has faced: systemic collapse.

So how do we keep living, loving, choosing, creating, when the ground feels unstable beneath our feet? Should we have children? Plan for the future? Invest, prepare, or opt out? And how do we stay open-hearted without tipping into doom and despair?

In conversation with HerCanberra’s Emma MacDonald, Sarah Wilson invites us into a courageous, compassionate discussion about how to live fully, beautifully and wisely through uncertain times—and why joy, meaning and tenderness still matter now more than ever.

“A beautiful and uplifting book” – Liam Neeson

Sarah Wilson is a multi–New York Times and Amazon best-selling author, journalist, podcaster, social philosopher and thought leader.  Her New York Times bestseller First, We Make the Beast Beautiful was described by Mark Manson as “the best book on living with anxiety that I’ve ever read” and was named Book of the Year on NBC’s Today Show. Her more recent book about the climate crisis, This One Wild & Precious Life, won the 2021 US Gold Nautilus Award. Sarah’s widely viewed TED Talk, How to Live Fully in Societal Collapse, was selected as a global Editor’s Pick and has become a touchstone for audiences grappling with uncertainty, climate anxiety, and the search for meaning in turbulent times.  In a previous life, Sarah was editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, host of MasterChef, the highest-rated show in Australian history, and was a News Corp journalist and opinion columnist. She is also known globally for founding the I Quit Sugar movement, which helped millions of people transform their health. In 2022, Sarah sold the business and donated all proceeds to charity. Sarah now hosts the podcast Wild with Sarah Wilson and writes one of the most-read Substacks in Australia, continuing her curious pursuit of answers to the big questions shaping our lives. Her forthcoming book, I Eat the Stars: How to Live Fully and Beautifully in a Collapsing World (2026; Penguin, worldwide), explores the terrifying truth of what is happening around us through a complex systems lens. To do so, she interviews more than 200 experts from across more than a dozen disciplines, while also providing her own compassionate, grounded thesis for how we might live with courage, clarity, and meaning in what is clearly a very changed world. Liam Neeson describes the book as “a loving and uplifting book”. Sarah is based in Paris, where she lives a minimalist life. She’s also a compulsive hiker.

Emma Macdonald is an award-winning former Press Gallery journalist who has moved into the online world where she is Associate Editor of independent Canberra media company HerCanberra. Emma unashamedly loves her hometown and enjoys writing about the people who make it what it is. These are intrinsically more interesting stories than covering federal politics! Emma is also the Canberra Convenor of Women in Media and the co-founder of international maternal health charity Send Hope Not Flowers. In 2022 she was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia for "Services to Journalism and to Women".

I Eat The Stars will be available to purchase at the event.

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Street One | Reserved | 120 Minutes
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