Tara Moss, Irvine Welsh and Damon Young on writing about bodies

Are personal trainers now the masters of our bodies? How are women's physiques fictionalised? Sydney writers' festival tackles the corporeal

Bodies: we all have them, but how do we engage with them - with our own, with other people's, when writing fictional characters? These are the questions the panel Writing Bodies attempts to answer, looking at Lucy the personal-fitness trainer in Irvine Welsh's The Sex Life of Siamese Twins, the judgments thrust upon women's bodies as detailed in Tara Moss' The Fictional Women, and philosopher Damon Young exploring his own physical relationship with his body in How to Think About Exercise.

With host Rafael Epstein, the panel begins by speaking about the reductionist conflict between mind and body: an idea that people who play sports are stupid, while writers are weak. "I was never impressed by the dichotomy society has stuck up between sport and art," says Welsh. Growing up, he was both. But with Lucy he is exploring the complexity in a relationship with exercise. She no longer exercises for joy, but is instead "gymorexic."