Judith Brett AM discusses her new biography Fearless Beatrice Faust with Logie nominated and Walkley Award-winning writer and presenter Annabel Crabb.

LOST

Jane Caro, Gail Jones and Karleah Olson. Moderator: Steph Vizard

Australia has long been fascinated by our vast spaces and by the potential to become ‘lost’. Our three authors play with this fear in very different ways. Jane Caro’s thriller takes us to remote Barrington Tops where a woman’s scream echoes; Gail Jones’ The Name of the Sister traverses a lonely desert road; and Karleah Olson writes an Australian gothic fiction centered on the disappearance of two young people from coastal WA. Get lost with us.

Historical Amnesia

Debra Dank, Steve Vizard & Clare Wright. Moderator: Ginger Gorman.

It is time to take an unflinching look at questions around identity and history that Australia has long grappled with. Debra Dank presents Terraglossia and examines the linguistic colonisation that European arrival brought with it. Steve Vizard delves into the creation of the myth of Gallipoli in Nation, Memory, Myth. And Clare Wright examines how the course of Australian democracy was changed in Naku Dharuk: The Bark Petitions.

Spend an evening with Helen Garner in conversation with comedian Broden Kelly about The Season, her account of a year spent shadowing her grandson’s under 16s AFL team, the Flemington Colts. 

The book is a love letter to footy, to her last grandchild as he passes from boy to man, and to the joys of youth and team sport

Helen Garner writes novels, stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction. Her works include Monkey Grip, The Children’s Bach, The First Stone, Joe Cinque’s Consolation, The Spare Room, This House of Grief and three volumes of her diaries. She lives in Melbourne.

Bookings required.

Judith Brett, interviewed by Sally Warhaft

Fearless Beatrice Faust celebrates, explains and questions her struggle to change both herself and her world. Drawing on public records and private writings, award-winning biographer Judith Brett creates a compelling and psychologically nuanced portrait of a gifted, argumentative woman who refused to be a victim. She is joined by Sally Warhaft in this discussion. 

Join us for the launch of Gail Jones' new literary fiction novel, The Name of the Sister.

Gail Jones is one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. She is the author of two short-story collections and eleven novels, and her work has been translated into several languages and has received numerous literary awards. Originally from Western Australia, she now lives in Sydney.

Gail Jones’s new novel, set in Sydney and the Mars-red landscapes surrounding the remote mining town of Broken Hill, explores how stories about identity and history multiply in the absence of reliable facts. And then the stories redouble once the Unknown Woman is identified and given a name. In an urgent finale that neither of the major characters could have anticipated, contradictory clues will proliferate about the true name of the sister.

Bookings are essential.