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Woollahra Writers’ Festival
Join some of Australia’s most exciting writers and thinkers Saturday 29 March and Sunday 30 March in conversation about a diverse range of topics, including literature, art and theatre, crime and espionage and taking on the patriarchy, all in the glorious surroundings of the Olsen Gallery at 63 Jersey Road Woollahra. To see our participant bios, click here.
Bookings essential.
Saturday Program
10am:
LITERARY LIVES
Susan Wyndham is the co-editor of Hazzard and Harrower: The Letters, a curated collection of letters between two of Australia’s leading writers, Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Harrower, and is also writing a biography of Elizabeth Harrower. In conversation with Nicole Abadee, she talks about what their 40-year correspondence reveals about them, and about the pressing social, political and cultural issues of their times, as well as how to go about writing a literary biography.
11am:
CHALLENGING THE PATRIARCHY
Anna Funder (Wifedom) and Suzie Miller (Prima Facie) are two of Australia’s most exciting and internationally successful writers. In their most recent work, each takes on the patriarchy – Anna by revealing George Orwell’s failings as a husband and putting his brilliant wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, back in the picture, and Suzie by exposing a criminal justice system (shaped by men) manifestly unfair to female sexual assault victims. In conversation with the ABC’s Kate Evans from the much-loved Radio National book show, The Bookshelf.
12pm:
LIARS
Join TV and radio host James O’Loghlin in conversation with Suzanne Leal about James’s latest book, Liars, a murder mystery set in a sleepy coastal town where all is not as it seems. Both are former criminal lawyers turned writers, so expect a lively conversation about practising in crime and writing – and where the two may intersect.
1pm:
Lunch
2pm:
ART: A LIFE’S WORK
What’s it like to be the child of a renowned artist? How do you carve out your own space in the art world? Join Richard Morecroft in discussion with Tim Olsen about his memoir, Son of the Brush, and Christabel Blackman about her book, Charles and Barbara Blackman: A Decade of Art and Love.
3pm:
SIGNS OF DAMAGE
Join Diana Reid (a Woollahra local), whose bestselling debut novel Love and Virtue won multiple awards (and praise from Helen Garner), to discuss her latest, Signs of Damage, with Suzanne Leal. Expect trauma, intrigue and (as always with Diana’s work) moral ambiguity.