Avsnitt

  • Tony Birch is the acclaimed author of four novels, including The White Girl and Ghost River, as well as three short story collections and two books of poetry.
    Most recently his short story collection Dark as Last Night won the New South Wales Premier's Christina Stead Prize for fiction, the Queensland Literary Award Steele Rudd prize and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's literary prize. He has previously been awarded the Patrick White Literary Award for his contribution to Australian literature.

    Professor Tony Birch has recently been appointed the third Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at the University of Melbourne. Tony will be the third to take up the mantle previously held by two other literary greats, Richard Flanagan and Alexis Wright.

    Women & Children follows the life of Joe Cluny. It is 1965 and he is living in a working-class suburb with his mum, Marion, and sister, Ruby, spending his days trying to avoid trouble with the nuns at the local Catholic primary school. One evening his Aunty Oona appears on the doorstep, distressed and needing somewhere to stay. As his mum and aunty work out what to do, Joe comes to understand the secrets that the women in his family carry, including on their bodies. Yet their pleas for assistance are met with silence and complicity from all sides.
    Women & Children is a novel about the love and courage between two sisters, and a sudden loss of childhood innocence.

  • Melissa is the best-selling author of The Birdman's Wife, which won many awards, including the Qld Premiers/University of Queensland Fiction Award and the Neilsen Bookscan Award.
    Her new novel is The Naturalist of Amsterdam.

    At the turn of the 18th century, Amsterdam is at the centre of an intellectual revolution, with artists and scientists racing to record the wonders of the natural world. Of all the brilliant naturalists in Europe, Maria Sibylla Merian is one of its brightest stars.
    For as long as she can remember, Dorothea Graff’s life has been lived in service to her mother, Maria: from collecting insects to colouring illustrations for Maria’s world-famous publications. While Dorothea longs for a life that is truly her own, she constantly finds herself drawn back into her mother’s world – and shadow.
    From the jungles of South America to the bustling artists’ studios of Amsterdam, Melissa Ashley charts an incredible period of discovery. With stunning lyricism and immaculate research, The Naturalist of Amsterdam gives voice to the long-ignored women who shaped our understanding of the natural world – both the artists and those who made their work possible.

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  • Sunbirds is set in Java during the Second World War - at the time of Japan’s inexorable move southwards - it depicts the intricate web of identities and loyalties created by war and imperialism, the heartbreaking compromises that so often ensue. Mirandi’s previous novel, Stone Sky Gold Mountain, won the 2020 Queensland Fiction Book Award and the inaugural ARA History Novel Prize. It was shortlisted for the 2021 Stella Prize and longlisted for the 2021 Miles Franklin Literary Award.

  • When David Marr set out to research the life of his great-grandmother the last thing he expected to find was a photograph of her father, dressed in the uniform of the Native Police.
    As he writes: ‘I was appalled and curious. I have been writing about the politics of race all my career. I know what side I’m on. Yet that afternoon I found, in the lower branches of my family tree, Sub-Inspector Reginald Uhr, a professional killer of Aborigines… and his brother D’arcy… also in the massacre business.’
    That curiosity, and the sense of being appalled, led him to research the activities of the Native Police, and, from there, to the writing of his new book, Killing For Country.
    David is the author of a remarkable slew of books, which include his wonderful biography, Patrick White, a Life; Dark Victory (with Marian Wilkinson), and no less than six Quarterly Essays. He has written for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Saturday Paper and The Monthly, and was a reporter for Four Corners. He is the winner of three Walkley Awards and two honorary Doctorates. He is one of this country’s most esteemed journalists and authors. We are more than simply thrilled he’s coming to Maleny for a conversation about his new book.

  • A quote from Bookseller + Publisher: 'When researching a new book on George Orwell, powerhouse writer Anna Funder noticed an interesting omission—Eileen Orwell, George’s first wife, was curiously absent. The basis of Wifedom is six newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Norah. It incorporates other letters and facts from the Orwells’ lives and Funder’s exquisite imagining of Eileen’s days. By reading between the lines, piecing together letters, clues and mentions in other people’s diaries, and analysing George’s books and biographies, Funder conjures Eileen as intelligent, funny, dry and self-effacing. Through this process, she provides insight into Orwell that other biographers staunchly avoid mentioning: his womanising, his weakness, his cruelty, and his selfishness. Wifedom also includes the author’s reflections and questions about creative expression and the nature of art. What do you do when your favourite author was a misogynist? What does that mean for you as a reader, writer and wife? What are the conditions required to create art? Are you the wife or the writer? Can you ever be both? In its innovation and coherence, it is reminiscent of Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts or Julian Barnes’s The Noise of Time. This intriguing work is a mix of styles and genres, blending academic research, literary reading and philosophical reflection into a riveting biography that not only rediscovers Eileen and paints a picture of a volatile period of history but also poses questions about what we value in art.'

  • Angela O’Keeffe’s new novel  The Sitter begins with ‘the author’ in an apartment in Paris, looking out towards the burnt shell of the Notre Dame Cathedral. She is, ostensibly, researching the life of Marie-Hortense Fiquet, but Hortense, dead these hundred years, seems to have, in some way, taken over the process of writing. Hortense was, of course, better known as the wife of Cézanne. He painted 29 portraits of her, in none of which she smiles.

    This is a beautiful small novel, as tightly constructed as any of the portraits.

    ‘The Sitter is intricately crafted in this way – recurrences, transfigurations and adaptations of details are threaded across the work, their resonance and meanings shifting and changing along the way… For all of its interest in imagination and art, and in looking and being seen, The Sitter is at its heart a novel about grief and love – and their frequent intertwining – as well as the sacrifices that women are compelled to make for love, and the ways in which women might resist, and reclaim themselves – however long after the fact. ‘ Guardian Australia

  • Kim Mahood grew up in the 1950s and 60s on Mongrel Downs, a cattle station on the edge of the Tanami Desert. Much has changed in those parts in recent years: the land has been handed back to the traditional owners; the mining companies have arrived; Aboriginal art has flourished. Kim, now a writer and artist, still returns every year. Her new book, Wandering with Intent, is a collection of essays she describes as ‘the writer’s equivalent of hunting and gathering… a product of wandering among the contradictions of the cross-cultural world I have chosen to inhabit…’ It involves what she refers to as ground-truthing:
    ‘My version of that,’ she writes, ‘begins with the physical attributes of place, and moves onto what has happened there. It puts people into place, which brings into play science, stories, husbandry, history, metaphor, and myth. This form of mapping has been called various things — co-mapping, cross-cultural mapping, counter-mapping, radical cartography. The wordsmith in me likes the flamboyant suggestiveness of radical cartography, but my bullshit detector finds it pretentious. There’s nothing radical about what I do. The only surprising thing about it is that it hasn’t been done before.’
    Kim is non-Indigenous herself, but grew up surrounded by First Nations people. A multi-award winning author, she writes with a refreshing honesty about important political, social and cultural issues, bringing a strong sense of irony and humour into difficult places, her bullshit detector always close by.

  • Louise speaks about her biography of Butjala artist Fiona Foley, a 'beautifully composed, intimate first-person account of the artistic practice of Badtjala artist, Fiona Foley. Each chapter meanders and unfolds, taking us on a vivid journey to place -K'gari or Fraser Island - combined with encounters and conversations with the artist, her family and affiliates. Carefully configured and tenderly composed, each chapter has its own rhythm and title extrapolating on how 'art' and 'life' intersect.’
    Natalie King OAM
    Shortlisted for the Magarey Medal for Biography, awarded for an outstanding biographical work.

    Louise Martin-Chew has worked as a freelance writer, specialising in the visual arts and design, since 1992. She has contributed extensively to national art magazines, newspapers and catalogues and is the author of books on several Australian women artists, notably, Judy Watson, Linde Ivimey and Margot McKinney.

  • Alexander McCall Smith, often referred to as Sandy, is one of the world’s most-loved authors. For many years he was a professor of Medical Law and worked in universities in the UK and abroad before turning his hand to writing fiction. Since then he has written more than 100 books including specialist academic titles, short story collections, and a number of immensely popular children’s books.
    His novels have sold tens of millions of copies and been translated into 46 languages. Some of his best-known are, of course, his The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, but also the popular 44 Scotland Street novels, first published as a serial novel in the Scotsman newspaper and now the longest-running serial novel in the world. He is also the author of the Corduroy Mansions series, which started life as an engaging cross-media serial written for the Telegraph online. More recently he launched the Ulf Varg series of Scandi blanc novels set in Sweden.

  • When you think of compassion, what comes to mind? Kindness, understanding, tenderness, empathy, maybe warmth? Compassion can be all those things – but it is much more.
    Drawing on his many years of experience as a clinical psychologist and researcher, Dr James Kirby brings together hard science and real-life examples to offer a guide to a more compassionate life and society.
    Kirby debunks the myth that compassion is simply a feeling and shows us how it is a motivational force that can shape our behaviour and relationships with each other and the world. He considers how it might help with self-criticism, parenting and grief, and he explores what part artificial intelligence might play in a compassionate future.
    In this engaging and timely book, Kirby traverses philosophy, psychology and pop culture to show how we can choose compassion to make our lives healthier, happier and more meaningful.

  • Chris is a Gurang Gurang/Taribelang man and former Queenslander of the Year. His memoir tells the remarkable story of how a young boy from Bundaberg grew up to become Principal of the Cherbourg School, the founder of the Stronger Smarter Insitute and, now, to hold a senior position in the Queensland Government, where he is working to forge a path to Treaty.

    We’re more than simply delighted to have Chris come to Maleny to talk about his book, but also, in this year - when a referendum on a Voice to Parliament will be held - to talk about what are often considered the three pillars of effective reconciliation: Treaty, Truth-telling and the Voice.

  • Joanna is the author of the fast-paced and witty thriller How to Kill a Client.
    Gavin Jones is dead. As an in-house lawyer who controlled millions of dollars in fees per year, he wlelded power with manipulative contempt.
    The partners relied on his favour to fund their lavish lifestyles and, if sycophantic admiration was what it took to secure work from Gavin, well, that's what they delivered.
    But no-one liked him. The list of those who suffered from his cruelty (particularly the women) was long enough to include just about everyone who had contact with him. But who actually killed him? And why?
    A remarkable debut novel!

  • Heather Rose is the award-winning author of Bruny and The Museum of Modern Love.

    Her new memoir, nothing bad ever happens here is deeply personal collection filled with reflections on love, death, creativity, and healing.

    Growing up on the remote island of Tasmania, Heather Rose falls in love with nature, but a tragedy that occurs when she is twelve sets her on a course to explore life’s mysteries. Here is a wild barefoot girl born for adventure, a curious seeker initiated in ancient rituals, a fledgling writer who becomes one of Australia’s most highly awarded authors, a businesswoman and a mother whose body may falter at any moment. Heartbreaking and beautiful, this is a love story brimming with courage and joy against all odds.

    Heather is the author of eight novels, spanning literary fiction, magical realism, crime fiction, political fiction and fantasy. Her novels have won numerous prizes including the Stella Prize, the Christina Stead Prize, the Margaret Scott Prize and the ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year. Her work has been published internationally and translated into numerous languages. She is a passionate teacher of writing and a mentor for developing novelists. She is also one half of the children’s author Angelica Banks.

    She lives by the sea in Tasmania.

  • Peter Hudson is a landscape and portrait painter living and working in Maleny. Since the late 1990s he has explored aspects of the natural world, astronomy, mythology, and history to investigate ‘the deep mystery of existence and us being here’. In 1998, he made the first of many trips to the Aboriginal communities of Daguragu and Kalkarinji in Gurindji country in the Northern Territory. The Gurindji people, their land, and the story of the Wave Hill walk-off have been major influences on his work. Hudson exhibits regularly, has won a number of regional art prizes, and is represented in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory and Parliament House, Brisbane, among others.

    His recent exhibition at the USC, The mystery of being here, is the most significant solo presentation of his work so far and responds to Hudson’s overarching interest in our relationship to the world around us. The exhibition was accompanied by a beautifully designed monograph with contributions by Christine Toussainte Morrow, Carol Schwarzman, Jeff McMullen, Charlie Ward and Kev Carmody.

  • We’re failing this continent. We have been for some time. The latest State of the Environment Report only confirms what we’ve all known for years. In Northern NSW, west of the Divide, it used to be brigalow scrub, growing on what turned out to be the richest soil in the country - not a coincidence as it happens - but it’s almost all gone, and the job of protecting what’s left falls to environmental officers. Late one afternoon in 2014, out near Croppa Creek, things come to a head. An 80 year old farmer, Ian Turnbull, shoots Glen Turner, an environmental officer, in the back. He hounds the wounded man until he’s dead, despite the pleas of his companion.
    This is the point at which Kate Holden starts her remarkable book The Winter Road. But don’t be confused. Holden's not interested in writing a true crime story. She wants to understand the forces at play here: the way we view land, who owns it, what it’s for, what our responsibility to it entails. And to comprehend those things she discovers she needs to delve into our philosophical and cultural roots, to drill down into our assumptions.
    She says she’s not a journalist, but the book won a Walkley Award. She says she’s not a historian, but the book won the NSW Premiers non-fiction award this year and is short-listed for the regional and community history award. This is an important book, written by one of our finest writers.
    ‘A gripping account of our land and ourselves,’ Tara June Winch
    Holden brilliantly telescopes centuries of history and law into fatal conversations at a farm gate. As one man stalks another on a winter road, the whole psyche of modern Australian settlement comes under trial. An enthralling and disturbing tale told with deep insight and compassion.’ Tom Griffiths

  • Katie’s first novel, The Mistake, was exceedingly well-received, with cover notes by such luminaries as Liane Moriarty - I absolutely loved this novel… fresh, funny and heartfelt… I didn’t want it to end.
    Now she returns with The Accident, revealing the inner lives of Grace, Zoe and Imogen, whose worlds are linked through shared but not always obvious connections. The Accident explores the ways in which our formative years shape our future, examining the influence of unrequited love and the healing power of friendship.

  • Outspoken is delighted to bring Dr Norman Swan to Maleny for a conversation about his new book,
    So You Want to Live Younger Longer?
    Trained in paediatrics, Dr Swan was one of the first medically qualified journalists in Australia, and has had a broadcast career spanning more than 30 years. He currently hosts Radio National's The Health Report while also reporting on 7.30 and several other ABC programs. In addition to being an active journalist and health broadcaster, Dr Swan has a deep strategic knowledge of the Australian healthcare system and is committed to evidence-based approaches to help young people, which is why he sits on the board of the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth.
    Many of us dream of staying as young as possible as long as possible, whether we're in our 40s, 70s or 80s, and there's a growing conga line of products and people offering to help with that. The dilemma is, which of the pills, mental and physical exercise programs, diets and superfoods actually work? Some of them do help to keep us young, healthy and living longer, others may work when the researchers get the portions right. Some are a downright waste of money. So how do we know what and who to trust? These are the questions Dr Norman Swan tackles - with his usual wit and insight - in So You Want to Live Younger Longer?
    Dr Swan brings together what's known, not known, hopeful but not harmful and harmful and not hopeful, summarised with quick takeaway messages backed up by the science and evidence.

  • Fiona Robertson is a writer and doctor (yes, two doctors for the price of one!). Her short fiction has been published in literary magazines and anthologies in Australia and the UK, and has been shortlisted for international competitions. Her collection of stories, If You’re Happy, won the Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer at the 2020 Queensland Literary Awards. Fiona lives in Brisbane with her husband and children.

    ‘Mapping a terrain of loneliness, compromise, ageing and tension, these short, sharp pieces create pockets of surprise and solace in unexpected places…’
    Cate Kennedy
    ‘Robertson deftly delivers the complexity of contemporary life in clear-eyed, uncomplicated prose…’
    Nick Earls

  • Kári Gíslason was born in Iceland. He’s the author of four books, two non-fiction and two novels. The Promise of Iceland tells the story of return journeys he’s made to his birthplace, while Saga Land: The island of stories at the edge of the world, co-written with Richard Fidler, is an account of visits they made together to the places where the Icelandic sagas actually took place. It won the Indie Book Award for Non-Fiction in 2018.

    His novels include The Ash Burner and the book he will be discussing tonight, The Sorrow Stone, an epic and compelling novel that reimagines the fate of one of Iceland's famous women of history.

    Kári lectures in Creative Writing at QUT

  • The Honourable Kevin Rudd AC. Mr Rudd was first elected as Prime Minister in 2007. Early initiatives of his government were the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, A Parliamentary Apology to the Stolen Generations, and the 2020 Summit. During the term of his government Labor also managed to keep Australia out of recession, despite the Global Financial Crisis, as well as commencing the roll-out of the National Broadband Network and the introduction of nationwide early childhood education, amongst many other programs.

    Since leaving office Mr Rudd has written two volumes of his autobiography but has also stayed active in politics. He is senior fellow of the JFK School of Government at Harvard where he leads research into US-China relations. In addition he is the chair of numerous boards such as the International Peace Initiative. He is the current president of the Asia Society.

    Now, when, last year, we first invited Mr Rudd to Outspoken it was to speak about his timely pamphlet, The Case for Courage, a call, no, an exhortation, for resistance to the egregious and ubiquitous power of News Corp, but also a commensurate call for a revitalisation of Australia on many different fronts; a shout-out to the Labor party to not just propose policies for a better, fairer Australia but also to tear down the myths of the Liberal party as the natural party of government, to stop shying away from giving them the criticism they deserve for the corruption and destruction of the norms of government that have occurred on their watch.

    Well, several months passed, and now he’s here to talk about The Avoidable War, an extraordinary work which really should be required reading for every politician in the western world, regardless of affiliation. Lots of books get called important. This one really is, because of its depth of geopolitical understanding, but also because of the case it puts for avoiding war.