The Book Cow Author Event: In conversation with Irma Gold
The Book Cow Kingston is celebrating Irma Gold's latest book, Shift with an in-conversation featuring special guest Karen Hardy.
Wednesday 2 July 6:00-7:00pm
The Book Cow Kingston 47 Jardine Street, Kingston, ACT 2604
Free Event: Registration is required
Arlie is a moderately successful thirty-something photographer who can’t seem to get his shit together. He can’t hold onto a girlfriend, or much else, and his relationship with his parents is complicated. His agoraphobic mother, Dellie, has long drawn silence over her South African upbringing. The more she refuses to illuminate, the more Arlie wants to know.
After another break-up, Arlie needs to get away, and there’s only one place he’s drawn to. In Kliptown, he meets choirmaster Rufaro, singer Glory and her younger brother Samson. Amidst the poverty, violence and beauty of this neglected South African township, Arlie begins exploring ideas for an exhibition, and courting the possibility of happiness. But then his father unexpectedly turns up, and a catastrophic event changes everything.
Gusty and gripping, tender and deeply compassionate, Shift is a compulsively readable story about the messy process of art-making, and the mess of love and family. It is an unflinching, insightful and immersive novel that takes the reader inside the inner life of one township, beyond the hyperbole of newspaper headlines, to offer bold, big-hearted hope.
Irma Gold is an author, freelance editor and podcaster. Her works include a novel, The Breaking, a short fiction collection, Two Steps Forward, and five children’s books. Her short fiction has been widely published in literary journals, and her next children’s book, Come Home, Bigibila, co-written with Kamilaroi man Corey Tutt, is forthcoming with Allen & Unwin. Shift is Irma’s second novel published by MidnightSun. She is also the founder and co-host of the writing podcast Secrets from the Green Room. She lives in Naarm/Melbourne.