2020 Archive
TALKS BY WOMEN WRITERS
In association with the Women's Club, the Rose Scott Women Writers' Festival presents a series of talks by women writers throughout the year.
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Julia Baird in conversation with Michaela KalowskiJulia Baird’s new book Phosphorescence is the text for our current dark times. Written before the current coronavirus crisis, it is a beautiful, intimate and inspiring investigation into how we can find and nurture within ourselves that essential quality of internal happiness, our own inner, living light to ward off the darkness.
Julia Baird's book on how to cope with tough times could not have been more prescient… Even without a global health pandemic to ground it, it is a stunning book. The Guardian PARTICIPANTS
Julia Baird is a globally renowned author and award-winning journalist. She hosts The Drum on ABC TV and writes columns for The New York Times and The Sydney Morning Herald. Julia's biography of Queen Victoria was published in several countries to critical acclaim and was one of The New York Times' top ten books of 2016. Michaela Kalowski is an interviewer, facilitator and presenter. She regularly facilitates panels and conducts interviews at Sydney Writers’ Festival, Sydney Film Festival, Sydney Jewish Writers Festival, UNSW, for local libraries and community organisations. Recent interviews include Margaret Atwood, Trent Dalton and Tim Flannery. Date: Thursday 7 May 2020 Time: 5:00 pm – 6.00 pm Location: Zoom video conferencing app. To set up zoom download from zoom.us/download. EVENT CLOSED |
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Anna Goldsworthy in conversation with Nicole AbadeeAnna Goldsworthy’s accomplished first novel Melting Moments tells the story of Ruby Jenkins and of her family. The lives of three generations of Australian women are subtly, tenderly yet sharply and humorously drawn in this moving fiction debut by an award-winning writer.
Melting Moments is a quiet masterpiece. An intimate portrait and celebration of the interior life of a woman who is a dutiful daughter, wife and mother, it is certain to become an Australian classic. ALEX MILLER A generous and vivid picture of the microscopic details of so many women’s lives … a feminist document of a particularly penetrating kind. CARMEL BIRD PARTICIPANTS
Multi-talented Anna Goldsworthy is an award-winning and writer and pianist. Anna was Newcomer of the Year at the 2010 Australian Book Industry Awards for her debut memoir, Piano Lessons. Her writing has appeared in The Monthly, The Age, The Australian, the Adelaide Review and The Best Australian Essays. Anna is also a Senior Lecturer at the Elder Conservatorium of Music, University of Adelaide, and Kenneth Moore Memorial Scholar at Janet Clarke Hall, University of Melbourne. Nicole Abadee writes about books for Good Weekend and the Australian book review. She is a moderator at writers’ festivals including at Sydney, Byron Bay and Adelaide Festivals, as well as at literary events and book launches where she has interviewed many well-known Australian and international writers. Nicole is a literary consultant and recently successfully launched her interview podcast Books, Books, Books which is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund. Date: Tuesday 9 June 2020 Time: 5:00pm – 6.00pm (AEST) Location: Zoom video conferencing app. EVENT CLOSED |
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Tegan Bennett Daylight in conversation with Ashley HayTegan Bennett Daylight has led a life in books – as a writer, a teacher and a critic, but first and foremost as a reader. In this deeply insightful and intimate work, she describes how reading and life are interwined - her reading has nourished her life, and life has informed her reading. In both, it’s the details that matter.
Each chapter is a revelation, and a celebration of how books offer not an escape from ‘real life’ but a richer engagement with the business of living. The result is a work that will truly deepen your relationship with books, and with other readers. The delight is in the details. Like all great art, The Details is about many things at once: among them birth and death, laughter and misery, mothers and children, the body and the spirit – and informing and transforming all this of course, it is about reading and the creation of a sustaining inner life…If you love reading, you’ll cherish this book for showing you why. CHARLOTTE WOOD An intimate and wise celebration of the joy and solace we find in books. BOOKS & PUBLISHING PARTICIPANTS
Tegan Bennett Daylight is a writer, teacher and critic who works as a lecturer in English and Creative Writing. She is the author of three novels: Bombora, What Falls Away and Safety, and a collection of short stories, Six Bedrooms, as well as several books for children and teenagers. The Details is her latest book. Ashley Hay is a Brisbane-based novelist and essayist. She has published three novels and four books of narrative non-fiction. Her latest novel is A Hundred Small Lessonsas well as short stories and journalism She has been editor of Griffith Review since 2018.Her awards include the Foundation of Australian Literary Studies’ Colin Roderick Prize, the Peoples’ Choice from the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, and the Bragg/UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing. Date: Tuesday 14 July 2020 Time: 6.00pm - 7.00pm (AEST) Location: Zoom video conferencing app. To set up zoom download from zoom.us/download. EVENT CLOSED |
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Kate Kirkpatrick in conversation in conversation with Catherine du Peloux MenagéBecoming Beauvoir: Kate Kirkpatrick in conversation about her new biography of Simone de Beauvoir with Catherine du Peloux Menagé
Simone de Beauvoir was the symbol of liberated womanhood whose unconventional relationships inspired and scandalised her generation. A philosopher, writer, and feminist icon, she won prestigious literary prizes and transformed the way we think about gender with The Second Sex. Her liaison with Jean-Paul Sartre has been billed as one of the most legendary love affairs of the twentieth century. But for Beauvoir it came at a cost: for decades she was dismissed as an unoriginal thinker who 'applied' Sartre's ideas. In recent years new material has come to light revealing the ingenuity of Beauvoir's own philosophy and the importance of other lovers in her life. This ground-breaking biography draws on never-before-published diaries and letters to tell the fascinating story of how Simone de Beauvoir became herself. Rather than focusing only on her relationships and in particular her lifelong association with Sartre, Kirkpatrick talks about Beauvoir the original thinker and philosopher not just the shadow of Sartre. ‘Becoming Beauvoir is a beautiful tribute to a remarkable woman… It refuses simple characterisations and reveals de Beauvoir in all her brilliance and complexity.’ 'A timely and fascinating book' ‘Beauvoir is well overdue for the philosophical credit she deserves, and this book is an important step in correcting the narrative.’ PARTICIPANTS
Dr Kate Kirkpatrick is Fellow in Philosophy and Christian Ethics at Regents Park College at the University of Oxford. She was previously Lecturer in Religion, Philosophy and Culture at King’s College London. Her research focuses on philosophy, religion, and culture in twentieth-century French phenomenology, existentialism, and feminism—especially in the works of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. She is interested in literature as a medium through which ethical and moral questions are explored. Dr Kirkpatrick’s publications include two works on Jean-Paul Sartre and a book on the mystical sources of existentialist thought. Becoming Beauvoir: A Life is her latest book. Catherine du Peloux Menagé has a background in educational publishing in the UK and Australia. She was co-founder of the St Albans Writers’ Festival in 2015 and was its Artistic Director from 2015-2018. She has facilitated sessions at that Festival as well as at the Sydney Writers’ Festival and at libraries around Sydney. She has been a member of the RSWWF Committee since 2018 and is currently Director of the Festival. She is also Artistic Director of BAD Sydney Crime Writers Festival. Date: Tuesday 18 August 2020
Time: 6.00pm - 7.00pm (AEST) Location: Zoom video conferencing app. To set up zoom download from zoom.us/download. EVENT CLOSED |
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We gratefully thank our bookseller partner, Better Read than Dead.
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We gratefully acknowledge our 2020 sponsor, Women on Boards.
