IN CONVERSATION AT MUSE
Sporting Words - Karen Viggers & Inga Simpson
3—4pm Sunday, Sunday, May 26, 2024
Muse, East Hotel, Kingston Canberra ACT
Tickets: $10 (entry only) // $40 (includes a discounted copy of Sidelines RRP $32.99)
Sport plays a huge part in Australian life and lore. Novelists Karen Viggers and Inga Simpson have taken on the topic in recent works. Join them as they compare notes and see how sporting words can be spellbinding off the field and on the page.
Allen & Unwin, 2023
“Sidelines’ is a riveting novel. It takes our jittery, intensely competitive era and unpicks our self-deceptions until they bleed.”
“I bloody loved this – a gorgeous, heartbreaking examination of so much more than cricket.”
Karen Viggers’ novels The Stranding, The Lightkeeper's Wife, The Grass Castle and The Orchardist's Daughter, explore themes including dying with dignity, displacement of First Peoples, wildlife conservation, clear-felling of native forests, and our relationship to the Australian landscape.
She is co-host of the Secrets From the Green Room podcast, in which she interviews writers and other bookish people about books, writing and green rooms. Her books have been translated into several languages and have enjoyed great success, in particular in France.
Inga Simpson began her career as a professional writer for government before gaining a PhD in creative writing. Her first novel, Mr Wigg came out of the Queensland Writers Centre Manuscript Development Program and Nest, Inga's second novel, was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Stella Prize and shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal. Inga's third novel, the acclaimed Where the Trees Were, was published in 2016.
Inga won the final Eric Rolls Prize for her nature writing and her 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. While finishing the first draft of The Last Woman in the World, Inga was evacuated twice as bushfires engulfed surrounding settlements. She lives near the coast among trees.
Venue
Muse, East Hotel
69 Canberra Ave, Kingston ACT
T: (02) 6178 0024