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EVENTS
Bringing literary events to readers and writers across Victoria
Forthcoming events
AUGUST
Books at Castlemaine Art Museum- Meet Judy Cotton
Venue: Castlemaine Art Museum, Lyttleton St Castlemaine, 3450
Date: August 13, 2022
Time: 2pm for a 2 30pm start and 4 00pm finish
Cost: $10
About the author:
Judy Cotton is an internationally recognised visual artist based in Connecticut, USA. Her work is held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, the National Gallery of Australia and numerous private collections.
From 1974 to 1993, Cotton was the New York contributing editor for Vogue Australia and we are delighted that she will join us at the Castlemaine Art Museum to discuss her memoir, Swimming Home.
About the book:
In this stunning memoir, full of black humour and razor-sharp observations, visual artist Judy Cotton captures the intricacies of family relationships and the push–pull of home.
Her mother, Eve, was a brilliant but exacting woman, a gifted pianist whose perfectionism cut her career short. After marrying, she established a successful stud farm for sheep in the Blue Mountains while supporting her husband’s political career. Judy’s charismatic father, Bob, was a federal minister and ambassador to the United States, with traditional ideas about who Judy should become.
Sent to boarding school from the age of four, Judy yearned for her parents but found them increasingly controlling. Her desire for freedom eventually took her overseas, to Korea and Japan in the late 1960s, and later to New York, where she finally discovered belonging in the art scene. But the undertow of home was impossible to escape.
In dazzling prose and with an artist’s eye for landscape, Swimming Home is a powerful meditation on loss and longing, freedom and connection.
Please note that Judy will be signing books after the conversation.
Books at Buda - Meet Nanette Carter and Robyn Oswald-Jacobs
Venue: The Garden Room, Buda House, Hunter Street Castlemaine, 3450
Date: August 27, 2022
Time: 2pm for a 2 30pm start and 4 00pm finish
Cost: $20 - includes entry to Buda House, afternoon tea and a 10% discount on the book.
About the authors:
Nanette Carter completed a master’s degree in art history focusing on the development of modern design in Melbourne in the 1930s. She subsequently researched and wrote on post-war interiors by designer and artist Clement Meadmore. Her 2015 PhD on the emergence of DIY culture in the post-war period in Australia was jointly supervised by the School of Historical Studies and the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne.
Independent scholar Robyn Oswald-Jacobs completed a diploma in textile design at RMIT before undertaking a research master’s degree on textile designer Frances Burke. In part as a result of this research the Textile Resource Collection: Australian Fashion and Textile Design was established by the Department of Fashion and Textile Design at RMIT. Managed by Oswald-Jacobs, the centre collected, exhibited, and published archival material, later forming the foundation of the RMIT Design Archives
About the book:
Frances Burke was Australia's most influential and celebrated textile designer of the 20th century. From the late 1930s to 1970, her designs achieved a prominence unparalleled in Australia before or since.
Join the authors of the book celebrating the life and work of Frances Burke at Buda House.
Afternoon tea will be provided
Please note that the authors will be signing books and chatting to guests after the event.
SEPTEMBER
Spring into Books
A Northern Books literacy event for parents, teachers and librarians
We are delighted to have a literacy-based Professional Development event for your term 3 calendar!
Please join us at BUDA HOUSE in Castlemaine for afternoon tea, a glass of bubbles, door prizes and an opportunity to hear about new and beautiful books and from three of Australia's award-winning authors for children.
4 30pm - 5 00pm Registration and Refreshments
5 00pm - 5 20pm Presentation of new books by Northern Books with an emphasis on diversity and inclusion.
5 20pm - 5 40pm Meet the author Zana Fraillon
5 40pm - 6 00pm Meet the author Jess McGeachin
6 00pm - 6 20pm Meet the author Sally Rippin
6 20pm - 7 00pm Book Browsing and signing
Delegates will receive a showbag, a certificate of participation and all books will be available to purchase at 15% discount.
Date: Thursday September 1, 2022
Time: 4 30pm - 7 00pm
Venue: Buda House, 42 Hunter St, Castlemaine
Cost: $25.00
Bookings are essential
If your school prefers an invoice please contact us here
Books at the Brewery - Joëlle Gergis
Venue: The Taproom, Shedshaker Brewery, Castlemaine
Date: September 6, 2022
Time: 6 00pm for a 6 30pm start and 8 00pm finish
Cost: $10
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About the book:
A personal call to action from an Australian IPCC author
Acknowledging that the world as we know it is coming apart is an act of courage.
If I live to look back at this troubled time, I want to say that I did all that I could, that I was on the right side of history. The question is, do you want to be part of the legacy that restores our faith
in humanity?
When climate scientist Joëlle Gergis set to work on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report, the research she encountered kept her up at night. Through countless hours spent with the world’s top scientists to piece together the latest global assessment of climate change, she realised that the impacts were occurring faster than anyone had predicted.
In Humanity’s Moment, Joëlle takes us through the science in the IPCC report with unflinching honesty, explaining what it means for our future, while sharing her personal reflections on bearing witness to the heartbreak of the climate emergency unfolding in real time. But this is not a lament for a lost world. It is an inspiring reminder that human history is an endless tug-of-war for social justice. We are each a part of an eternal evolutionary force that can transform our world.
Joëlle shows us that the solutions we need to live sustainably already exist – we just need the social movement and political will to create a better world. This book is a climate scientist’s guide to rekindling hope, and a call to action to restore our relationship with ourselves, each other and our planet.
About the author:
Dr Joëlle Gergis is an award-winning climate scientist and writer at the Australian National University. She served as a lead author for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and is the author of Sunburnt Country: The History and Future of Climate Change in Australia.
Meet the Author: Debra Dank, author of We Come With This Place
A Northern Books Online event
Date: September 20 2022
Time: 7 00pm
This is a ZOOM event and a link will be sent to all registered participants at 1pm on the day of the event.
Cost: $25 which includes a copy of the book. Please note that if you live outside of the Castlemaine region, you will need to opt for the ticket price that includes postage.
'Debra Dank’s warm and poetic memoir-of-sorts invites you to another place and time...We Come With This Place is an act of generosity, one which should not be taken for granted' The Guardian
I was lucky enough to meet Deb Dank when we were both supporting the work of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. We both still do.
Graham and I were even luckier to have spent time on Country with Deb and her husband, Rick, so I'm incredibly excited to have Deb as a guest author via Zoom on September 20th.
We Come with This Place is a A deeply personal, profound tribute to family and the Gudanji Country to which Debra Dank belongs.
Please join us if you can. We have much to learn and Deb is a beautiful, gentle, intelligent, articulate teacher and storyteller.
About the book:
We Come with This Place is a remarkable book, as rich, varied and surprising as the vast landscape in which it is set. Debra Dank has created an extraordinary mosaic of vivid episodes that move about in time and place to tell an unforgettable story of country and people.
There is great pain in these pages, and anger at injustice, but also great love, in marriage and in family, and for the land. Dank faces head on the ingrained racism, born of brutal practice and harsh legislation, that lies always under the skin of Australia, the racism that calls a little Aboriginal girl names and beats and rapes and disenfranchises the generations before hers. She describes sudden terrible violence, between races and sometimes at home. But overwhelmingly this is a book about strong, beloved parents and grandparents, guiding and teaching their children and grandchildren what country means, about joyful gatherings and the pleasures of eating food provided by the place that nourishes them, both spiritually and physically.
Dank calibrates human emotions with honesty and insight, and there is plenty of dry, down-to-earth humour. You can feel and smell and see the puffs of dust under moving feet, the ever-present burning heat, the bright exuberance of a night-time campfire, the emerald flash of a flock of budgerigars, the journeying wind, the harshness of a station shanty, the welcome scent of fresh water.
We Come with This Place is deeply personal, a profound tribute to family and the Gudanji Country to which Debra Dank belongs, but it is much more than that. Here is Australia as it has been for countless generations, land and people in effortless balance, and Australia as it became, but also Australia as it could and should be.
About the author:
Debra Dank is a Gudanji/Wakaja woman, married to Rick, with three adult children and two grandchildren. An educator, she has worked in teaching and learning for many years – a gift given through the hard work of her parents. She continues to experience the privilege of living with Country and with family. Debra completed her PhD in Narrative Theory and Semiotics at Deakin University in 2021. She is now based in Buderim, QLD.
OCTOBER
High Tea at the Convent with Craig Silvey
Venue: The Convent, Daylesford, 7 Daly Street Daylesford 3460
Date: October 15, 2022
Time: 1 00pm for a 1 30pm start
Cost: $99.00
Your ticket includes High Tea and a $20 voucher to spend on a Craig Silvey book of your choice at the bookstore on the day.
About the author:
Craig Silvey is one of Australia's most highly regarded novelists. His debut novel Rhubarb, was published in 2004 to great critical acclaim. His bestselling novel, Jasper Jones, was released in 2009, is considered a modern Australian classic and was released as a film in 2017. Craig's third novel Honeybee was published in 2019 and won Best Fiction for the Indie Book Awards 2021 and Dymock's Book of the Year 2020.
Craig’s latest book, Runt, is a book for children with themes that will resonate with adults too.
Join us for High Tea and a fabulous conversation around Craig's extraordinary career and contribution to the Australian literary landscape.