BOOK LAUNCH + IN CONVERSATION
3-4pm Sunday 4 July
Muse, East Hotel, Kingston Canberra ACT
Larissa Behrendt - After Story
Meet Larissa Behrendt in conversation with Michael Lavarch for the launch of After Story. Tickets: $10
“A literary tour that speaks to the imagination, After Story connects the cannon of English literature to the lives of a mother and daughter whose own stories have remained untold. Larissa Behrendt weaves an exquisite tapestry that talks to our common humanity and lives within the stories we collect, treasure and share.’”
When Indigenous lawyer Jasmine decides to take her mother Della on a tour of England's most revered literary sites, Jasmine hopes it will bring them closer together and help them reconcile the past.
Twenty-five years earlier the disappearance of Jasmine's older sister devastated their tight-knit community. This tragedy returns to haunt Jasmine and Della when another child mysteriously goes missing on Hampstead Heath. As Jasmine immerses herself in the world of her literary idols – including Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters and Virginia Woolf – Della is inspired to rediscover the wisdom of her own culture and storytelling. But sometimes the stories that are not told can become too great to bear.
Ambitious and engrossing, After Story celebrates the extraordinary power of words and the quiet spaces between. We can be ready to listen, but are we ready to hear?
Larissa Behrendt is Professor of Indigenous Research and Director of Research at the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology, Sydney. She is a regular columnist for The Guardian and has published numerous textbooks on Indigenous legal issues. She is the author of two previous novels: Home, which won the 2002 David Unaipon Award and the 2005 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (South-East Asia and South Pacific); and Legacy, which won the 2010 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing. She is the Ambassador of the Gawura Aboriginal Campus at St Andrew’s Cathedral School in Sydney and a board member of the Sydney Story Factory, a literacy program in Redfern. She was awarded the 2009 NAIDOC Person of the Year award and 2011 NSW Australian of the Year.
Michael Lavarch is a former politician who became the Attorney General in the Keating government. He has been in private legal practice, the Secretary General of the Law Council of Australia, Executive Dean of the Queensland University of Technology Law School and a Commissioner of the Australian Skills Quality Authority.
Venue
Muse, East Hotel
69 Canberra Ave, Kingston ACT
T: (02) 6178 0024