Workshop – Jessica Kirkness: Writing the Real: Memory, Ethics, and Detail in Memoir and Auto/biography
Time: 10:15 am to 12:00 pm
Place: Dixson Room, State Library of NSW
Cost: Members $40, non-members $55
Writing about real people and events can be daunting, especially if those people are loved ones. This workshop explores the murky ethical questions at the heart of memoir and auto/biographical writing, providing strategies to help you write honestly and vividly about lived experience.
Jessica is the author of The House With All The Lights On, a memoir about growing up with two deaf grandparents. She has a PhD in the fields of Life Writing and Disability Studies, and teaches nonfiction writing at Macquarie University. Her writing has been shortlisted for various prizes such as The Richell Prize for Emerging Writers, The Peter Blazey Fellowship, and the Writing NSW Varuna Fellowship. Jessica’s work has been published in Meanjin, The Guardian, Women’s Agenda, and The Conversation.
Literary Event
Time: 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm
Place: Dixson Room, State Library of NSW
Cost: Members $25, non-members $40
Member Spotlight – TBA
Guest Speaker – Grace Karskens: Searching for the real secret river: the Dyarubbin project
In 2017 I stumbled across an extraordinary manuscript in the Mitchell Library: a handwritten list, created in 1829, of 178 Aboriginal place names for Dyarubbin and Ganangdayi, the Hawkesbury and Macdonald Rivers in New South Wales. I had been researching this region for over ten years and never dreamed such a document existed. This list became the heart of a collaborative project, The Real Secret River: Dyarubbin with Darug researchers, educators and artists, as well as linguists, geologists and archaeologists. Together we successfully relocated over 90 of these names and produced a digital Story Map, as well as a series of public-facing essays and stories, two major exhibitions and dual naming projects. In this talk I will explore this collaborative, cross-disciplinary approach to history and geography, and its possibilities for Aboriginal cultural renewal, for public landscapes and for wider public awareness and understanding of Aboriginal culture and history.
Grace is Emeritus Professor of history at the University of New South Wales Sydney and a leading historian of Australian colonial and cross-cultural history. Her books include The Colony: A history of early Sydney (2009) and People of the River: Lost Worlds of Early Australia (2020), which won the 2021 Prime Minister’s award for Australian History.
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
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.trbooking.com/COAPA
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/CVKUA