IN CONVERSATION
Inga Simpson - Willowman
6-7pm Thursday 3 November
Muse, East Hotel, Kingston Canberra ACT
Meet author Inga Simpson in conversation with Robyn Cadwallader
Tickets: $10 (entry only) / $40 entry + a discounted copy of the book (RRP$32.99)
A friendly suggestion for the safety and well-being of yourself and other patrons that although face masks are not required, they are strongly encouraged while attending the event.
Inga Simpson began her career as a professional writer for government before gaining a PhD in creative writing. Since then, she has published four novels: Mr Wigg; Nest, which was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Stella Prize and shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal; Where the Trees Were; the environmental thriller, The Last Woman in the World, shortlisted for the 2022 Fiction Indie Book Award, and now, Willowman.
Inga was awarded the final Eric Rolls Prize for her nature writing and has obtained a second PhD, exploring the history of Australian nature writers. Inga's account of her love of Australian nature and life with trees, Understory, was published in 2017. Her first book for children, The Book of Australian Trees, illustrated by Alicia Rogerson, was published in 2021.
Cricket has a willow heart. Batmakers around the world have tried everything, crafting bats from birch, maple, ash, even poplars... After two hundred years, cricket bat making is still beholden to a single species: Salix alba caerulea or white willow.
Reader Cricket Bats, one of the last traditional batmakers back in England, has a contemporary home in the Antipodes, with Allan Reader keeping the family business alive in a small workshop in Melbourne.
When Todd Harrow, a gifted young batter, catches Allan's eye, a spark is lit and Allan decides to make a Reader bat for him, selecting the best piece of willow he's harvested in years to do so.
As Harrow charts a meteoric rise to the highest echelons of the sport, leaving his equally talented sister's dreams in his wake, Allan's magical bat takes centre stage as well, awakening something in him. But can Allan's fledgling renaissance – hanging as it does on the magic of that bat – carry on after Harrow is stricken by injury and a strained personal life?
Robyn Cadwallader lives among birdlife and vineyards in the country outside Canberra. She has published a poetry collection, i painted unafraid and a non-fiction book about virginity and female agency in the Middle Ages. In response the government’s punitive treatment of asylum seekers, she edited a collection of essays on asylum seeker policy, We Are Better Than This.
Her first novel, The Anchoress was published in Australia and internationally, and her second novel, Book of Colours, won the 2019 ACT Book of the Year Award. Her third novel, The Fire and the Rose, will be released in May 2023.
Venue
Muse, East Hotel
69 Canberra Ave, Kingston ACT
T: (02) 6178 0024