Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Tuesday 16 November
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Location
wheelercentre.com
The State of the (Writing) Nation is Writers Victoria’s annual address from a prominent Australian writer. It's a chance to reflect on what's happening and where we're heading in Australian literature and publishing. Award-winning novelist, memoirist and editor Alice Pung will give the 2021 address.
William Hazlitt wrote that ‘the smallest pain in our little finger causes us more concern than the destruction of our fellow human beings’. In her address, Pung will consider what kind of writing matters in the face of our small hurts and large griefs, and take an unflinching look at the excessive weight we place on literature to ameliorate our feelings. If you’re only half-grudgingly woke, is it better to just stay asleep? Pung will explore the pitfalls of this self-motivated obsession with using literature to educate, and examine whose expense it comes at.
Shu-Ling Chua, author of Echoes, will also deliver a short reading. Hosted by Writers Victoria patron Christos Tsiolkas.
Presented in partnership with Writers Victoria. All proceeds from this event will support writers who experience financial barriers to access professional development and networking opportunities
The online bookseller for this event is Amplify Bookstore
Featuring
Alice Pung
Alice Pung OAM is the author of the bestselling memoirs Unpolished Gem and Her Father’s Daughter, and the essay collection Close to Home, as well as the editor of the anthologies Growing Up Asian in Australia and My First Lesson ...
Shu-Ling Chua
Shu-Ling Chua is a Melbourne-based (formerly Canberra-based) essayist, critic and poet, whose work has appeared in Peril magazine, Lindsay, Meanjin, and Asian American Writers’ Workshop, among others. Her debut essay collection, Echoes, was published in 2020.
Shu-Ling was shortlisted in the 2018 Woollahra Digital Literary Award, highly commended in the 2017 Feminartsy Memoir Prize and selected for the 2015 HARDCOPY manuscript development program. She has completed writing residencies at the Wheeler Centre and KSP Writers’ Centre.
Christos Tsiolkas
Christos Tsiolkas is the author of eight novels – Loaded, The Jesus Man, Dead Europe, The Slap, Barracuda, Damascus, 7 ½, The In-Between - and the short story collection, Merciless Gods. Many of his works have been ...