Please note:
- Due to the Library’s extensive renovations, these events will be held in the Michael Crouch room, on Level 1, instead of in the Dixson Room. Level 1 is accessible by lift or stairs at both ends of the building.
- The cafe has been temporarily relocated to the Dixson Room – it will be open for coffee etc but limited food will be available.
Workshop
Roanna Gonsalves: Beautiful Sentences
Time: 10:15 am to 12:00 pm
Place: Michael Crouch Room, State Library of NSW
Cost: Members $40, non-members $55
This hands-on workshop will unpack some ways in which to create writing that sings, by focussing on the building blocks of beautiful prose: sentences and paragraphs. Come prepared to play with words on the page.
Roanna Gonsalves is a writer with an interdisciplinary practice. She is the author of The Permanent Resident (UWAP). The book won the NSW Premier’s Literary Award Multicultural Prize 2018 and was longlisted for the Dobbie Literary Award 2018. Roanna’s series of radio documentaries, On the tip of a billion tongues, commissioned and broadcast by Earshot, ABC RN, is an acerbic socio-political portrayal of contemporary India through its multilingual writers. Roanna was born and raised in Mumbai, India, and attended St. Xavier’s College. Her social-satirical radio essay Doosra: The life and times of an Indian student in Australia was commissioned and broadcast by ABC RN.
Roanna is a recipient of the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence 2022, the Prime Minister’s Australia Asia Endeavour Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Award. She is co-founder co-editor of Southern Crossings. She has been an invited Keynote Speaker, Chair and panelist at numerous literary events including at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Jaipur Literature Festival, the Goa Literature Festival and many others. She has been teaching, supervising and mentoring emerging prose writers and screenwriters within communities, schools, literary organizations and institutions such as New York University Sydney, UNSW, Western Sydney University, Macquarie University and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS). She is a recipient of grants through the Australia Council for the Arts, is a recipient of fellowships and residencies at Varuna and Bundanon, was the UNSW – Copyright Agency Writer-in-Residence 2018 and received The Bridge Awards’ inaugural Varuna – Cove Park Writing Residency 2019 (Scotland). Her research interests are in the sociology of literature, social media, creativity studies, and postcolonial literatures.
Literary Event
Time: 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm
Place: Michael Crouch Room, State Library of NSW
Cost: Members $25, non-members $40
Member Spotlight – Pip Griffin: Trailblazing Women of Hawke’s Bay
In March, Pip was a guest at a very exciting opening of an exhibition in Napier, New Zealand. It featured an installation based on her verse novel about her great aunt, Margaret Caro: the extraordinary life of a pioneering dentist, New Zealand, 1848-1938. In this presentation, Pip will talk about the opening ceremony, meeting the curator and some of Margaret’s descendants for the first time and show slides of the very colourful event.
Pip is an award-winning poet who lives in Leichhardt, NSW. Her work has been published in Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand journals and anthologies. Her latest poetry collection (her eighth) is Opus: a life with music (Ginninderra Press, 2023).
Guest Speaker – Diane Armstrong: The Paradox of Turning Fact into Fiction
As soon as I heard the true story about the audacious young woman in Ottoman Palestine who formed a spy ring in 1915 to spy on the Turks, I just knew I had to write a novel based on her story. Shoshana risked her life to deliver intelligence to the British during World War I. We know what we live for, but what are we willing to die for?
Diane Armstrong is a child Holocaust survivor who arrived in Australia in 1948.
She is an award-winning journalist whose articles have been published in national and international newspapers and magazines. Her prizes include the Pluma de Plata, awarded by the government of Mexico for the best article written about Mexico worldwide, and the George Munster Award for Independent Journalism.
Her career as a bestselling author began with her family memoir, MOSAIC.
Mosaic, which has been internationally acclaimed, was shortlisted for the National Biography Award and the Victorian Premier’s Non-Fiction award. It was followed by The Voyage of Their Life, a true account of her nightmare voyage to Australia on a postwar hellship. This was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s award for non-fiction.
Her first novel, Winter Journey, marked her debut as a writer of historical fiction. It was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Literary Award. It was followed by Nocturne which won the Society of Women Writers’ biennial Fiction award and was shortlisted for a national literary award in Poland.
Empire Day was set in in postwar Sydney, and explored the relationship between the newly arrived European migrants and their Australian neighbours.
This was followed by The Collaborator and Dancing with the Enemy, both of which explored the fine line between collusion and heroism in time of war.
Heroism is also the theme of her latest novel, The Wild Date Palm, which will be the subject of her talk today.
Book and pay:
Members, you can book for yourself and a friend at member pricing, if purchased at the same time.
Workshop: Members $40, non-members $55
If you have a Workshop Voucher, please email Julie Thorndyke, Workshop Coordinator, to advise your intention to attend.
Literary event: Members $25, non-members $40
Discount for full program (Workshop and Literary Event) when booked together:
Members $60, non-members $85
By Credit card: https://www.trybooking.com/CYAJF
or by Direct debit:
The Society of Women Writers NSW Inc
BSB: 062 018
Account: 00950433
Code: VM
Email Amanda and include
your name, receipt number and date of event
Zoom ($10) will be available for this function – please click here to book: https://www.trybooking.com/DADCK