Upcoming Events
It’s 1986, and ‘beautiful, radical ideas’ are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda she meets artists, activists, students—and Kit. He claims to be in a ‘deconstructed’ relationship, and they become lovers. Meanwhile, her work on the Woolf mother falls into disarray.
Theory & Practice is a mesmerising account of desire and jealousy, truth and shame. It makes and unmakes fiction as we read, expanding our notion of what a novel can contain.
Michelle de Kretser, one of Australia’s most celebrated writers, bends fiction, essay and memoir into exhilarating new shapes to uncover what happens when life smashes through the boundaries of art.
Join us for wine, snacks, and great chat at the launch of Clare Wright OAM's latest book, Naku Dharuk The Bark Petitions: How the People of Yirrkala Changed the Course of Australian Democracy. The book will be launched on the night by The Honourable Mr Kim Beazley along with an in-conversation with Prof Jane Lydon with the two discussing Clare's book that has already been described as 'A masterpiece' (Thomas Mayo).
About the Book
In 1963—a year of agitation for civil rights worldwide—the Yolŋu of northeast Arnhem Land created the Yirrkala Bark Petitions: Naku Dharuk. ‘The land grew a tongue’ and the land-rights movement was born.
Naku Dharuk is the story of a founding document in Australian democracy and the trailblazers who made it. It is also a pulsating picture of the ancient and enduring culture of Australia’s first peoples.
And it is a masterful, groundbreaking history.
Award winning writer Melanie Cheng will be in conversation with Michelle Wright to discuss The Burrow—her new exquisite novel with a quiet understated tone that explores the depths of human experience.
Melanie Cheng is a writer and general practitioner. She was born in Adelaide, grew up in Hong Kong and now lives in Melbourne. Her debut collection of short stories, Australia Day, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2016 and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction in 2018. Room for a Stranger, her highly acclaimed first novel, was published in 2019.
One of our most daring and original novelists Michelle de Kretser discusses her new book Theory & Practice.
It’s 1986 in Melbourne, and ‘beautiful, radical ideas’ are in the air. Theory & Practice’s protagonist should be researching the novels of Virginia Woolf, but instead finds herself veering into the radical bohemian scene and the arms of her polyamorous lover, Kit.
Michelle de Kretser’s seventh novel expertly dismantles our preconceptions of what a novel should be, bending memoir, essay and fiction into exhilarating new shapes to uncover what happens when life smashes through the boundaries of art.
At this Melbourne exclusive event, de Kretser is joined by host Sophie Cunningham to discuss Theory & Practice and the creative and intellectual influence of the Woolfmother.
Clare Wright’s Democracy Trilogy is completed with the story of how the people of Yirrkala changed the course of Australian Democracy.
In 1963—a year of agitation for civil rights worldwide—the Yolŋu of northeast Arnhem Land created the Yirrkala Bark Petitions: Naku Dharuk. ‘The land grew a tongue’ and the land-rights movement was born.
Naku Dharuk is the story of a founding document in Australian democracy and the trailblazers who made it. It is also a pulsating picture of the ancient and enduring culture of Australia’s first peoples. And it is a masterful, groundbreaking history.
Clare Wright’s Democracy Trilogy began with The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka and continued with You Daughters of Freedom. It concludes with this compulsively readable account of a momentous episode in our shared story.
Clare Wright will be in conversation with Associate Professor Julie McIntyre.
Stan Grant is a renowned journalist, author, moral philosopher, thinker, film-maker and communicator. He has had a groundbreaking four-decade career as one of Australia’s most awarded journalists. A Wiradjuri, Kamilaroi and Dharrawal man, Stan has blazed a trail for First Nations journalists. In a career of firsts, he was the first Indigenous Political Correspondent, the first Indigenous Foreign Correspondent, he was the first Indigenous person to present a prime-time commercial television news and current affairs program.
With introduction by Professor Clare Wright.
Ticket includes drink on arrival
Michelle de Kretser, one of Australia’s most celebrated novelists, is a writer who artfully pushes the boundaries of form. One of only a select group of writers to be awarded the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award twice, her highly anticipated new book, Theory and Practice, is a mesmerising account of desire and jealousy, truth and shame.
Discover how Michelle makes and unmakes fiction as we read, expanding our notion of what a novel can contain. She shares the secrets of her craft with Felicity Plunkett.
Michelle de Kretser was born in Sri Lanka and lives on unceded Gadigal land in Warrane/Sydney. Her fiction has won multiple awards, including the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Folio Fiction Prize. is her seventh novel.
Felicity Plunkett is a poet and critic living on Wangal land. She has a PhD from the University of Sydney and was Poetry Editor with University of Queensland Press for nine years. Felicity’s books include A Kinder Sea, Vanishing Point and Seastrands, and she edited Thirty Australian Poets.
How the People of Yirrkala Changed the Course of Australian Democracy
In 1963-a year of race riots in the United States and explosive agitation for civil rights worldwide-the Indigenous people of the Northern Territory were yet to be recognised as full adults. Almost to a person, they were classed as wards of the state, unacknowledged as having any ownership over the land on which they had lived for tens of thousands of years.
In 1975 Gough Whitlam poured a handful of sand into the palm of Gurindji Elder Vincent Lingiari to symbolise the granting of deeds to his ancestral country-and the land rights movement was unstoppable. That journey towards legal recognition of native title started in 1963 with the Yirrkala Bark Petitions: Naku Dharuk.
The background was a four-cornered contest for mastery of the land and its resources between the Menzies government, the mining industry, the Methodist Church and the Yolngu people of northeast Arnhem Land, under whose country was discovered a blanket of bauxite.
Throughout the tumultuous year of 1963, leaders of the Yolngu clans worked with white allies on the unprecedented political strategy that culminated in the presentation of four Bark Petitions to Federal Parliament. It was a key moment in the formation of a uniquely Indigenous engagement with Australian politics.
This is the story of a founding document in Australian democracy and the people who made it. It paints a vibrant picture of the profound and ancient culture of Australia’s first peoples, in all its continuing vigour.
Naku Dharuk The Bark Petitions: How the People of Yirrkala Changed the Course of Australian Democracy
In 1963—a year of agitation for civil rights worldwide—the Yolŋu of northeast Arnhem Land created the Yirrkala Bark Petitions: Naku Dharuk. ‘The land grew a tongue’ and the land-rights movement was born.
Naku Dharuk is the story of a founding document in Australian democracy and the trailblazers who made it. It is also a pulsating picture of the ancient and enduring culture of Australia’s first peoples.
And it is a masterful, groundbreaking history.
Clare Wright’s Democracy Trilogy began with The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka and continued with You Daughters of Freedom. It concludes with this compulsively readable account of a momentous episode in our shared story.
Join Clare Wright and Thomas Mayo as they discuss Naku Dharuk The Bark Petitions.
ABOUT THE BOOK
In 1963—a year of agitation for civil rights worldwide—the Yolŋu of northeast Arnhem Land created the Yirrkala Bark Petitions: Naku Dharuk. ‘The land grew a tongue’ and the land-rights movement was born.
Naku Dharuk is the story of a founding document in Australian democracy and the trailblazers who made it. It is also a pulsating picture of the ancient and enduring culture of Australia’s first peoples.
And it is a masterful, groundbreaking history.
Clare Wright’s Democracy Trilogy began with The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka and continued with You Daughters of Freedom. It concludes with this compulsively readable account of a momentous episode in our shared story.
