Love & Desire - Conference

Day One—Saturday, 23 September

 9.00–9.50am

Registration

9.50–10.00am

Welcome and Opening Remarks
Sir James Gobbo AC Download (32.07Mb)
Chair
National Library of Australia Council

10.00–11.00am

Session 1
Kenneth Binns Lecture
LOVE AND LITERATURE
How important is the evocation of love, desire and intimacy to our understanding of what it is to be human?
David Malouf
Chair: Margy Burn

11.00–11.30am

Morning Tea

11.30am–12.30pm

Session 2
THE BODY IN WRITING
How is the body perceived by writers and readers? How do writers bring physical pleasure and pain to life on the page?
Milkbrain: The Cognitive Body—Fiona Giles Download (9.28Mb)
What Comes to Hand—Lucy Dougan Download (7.94Mb)
Pleasure, Pain and Private Eyes: Writing the Body in Detective Fiction—Leigh Redhead Download (8.37Mb)
Chair: Ian Britain

12.30–2.00pm

Lunch

2.00pm–3.00pm

Session 3
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
In one way or another, family and friends are central to our understanding of ourselves. Three writers discuss how they have represented family life.
The Love that Dare Not Shut Up—Michael McGirr Download (9.09Mb)
Unrequited: Readings about Love and Friendship—Hsu-Ming Teo Download (7.78Mb)
A Broken Glass and Falling Water—Deborah Robertson Download (8.39Mb)
Chair: Helen Kon

3.00–3.30pm

Afternoon Tea

3.30–4.30pm

Session 4
THE INTIMATE GESTURE
Often restrained, sometimes disguised, the intimate gesture is at the heart of a great deal of writing.Writers reveal their own intimate touchstones when creating their prose.
Ghosts in the Machine—Brian Castro Download (8.70Mb)
A Gift of Feathers—Brenda Walker Download (8.27Mb)
The Turning Point—David Brooks Download (10.21Mb)
Chair: Nicola Walker

6.30pm

Conference Dinner
Speaker: Nick Earls
Chair: Marie-Louise Ayres
Venue: Ottoman Cuisine, Barton


 

Day Two—Sunday, 24 September

10.00–11.00am

Session 5
IMAGES OF DESIRE
How do we capture images of desire? What intimacies are negotiated by photographer, subject and viewer and filtered through the camera’s lens?
A Shared Space: Photography and Intimacy—Helen Ennis Download (8.61Mb)
Images and Longing: The Insufficiency of Language—Gail Jones Download (9.28Mb)
Writing Desire, Writing Shame—Francesca Rendle-Short Download (6.41Mb)
Chair: Robyn Holmes

11.00–11.30am

Morning Tea

11.30am–12.30pm

Session 6
LOVE AND OBSESSION
When does love become obsession? Does writing require the writer to become obsessed? How do writers convey sexuality and the compulsive attraction that is ‘falling in love’?
Does Poetry Do Sex and Violence Better Than Prose?—Dorothy Porter Download (6.50Mb)
Obsessive, Compulsive, Instinctive and Strange: Why Writing a Novel is Like Falling in Love—Charlotte Wood Download (8.49Mb)
Uses and Abuses: The Utility of Love—Peter Rose Download (9.14Mb)
Chair: Adrian Caesar

12.30–2.00pm

Lunch

2.00–3.00pm

Session 7
INTIMATE HISTORIES
Fiction explores the intimate histories of individuals. How do writers evoke the quality of intimacy that touches the smaller and larger aspects of human interaction?
Eros in Dreamland—Beverley Farmer Download (9.29Mb)
Writing about Sex—Rosie Scott Download (7.42Mb)
‘I Think I should Replace the Strawberries with Forget-Me-Nots’ (IrèneNémirovsky)—Marion Halligan Download (8.15Mb)
Chair: Ian Templeman

3.00–3.30pm

Afternoon Tea

3.30–4.30pm

Session 8
WRITING DESIRE
Fiction contains many images of what people wish for. How important is desire as a motivating force in the writer’s work?
Self Portraits— Carmel Bird Download (20.85Mb)
Chair: Paul Hetherington

4.30–4.35pm

Closing Remarks
Warwick Cathro
Assistant Director-General
Innovation
National Library of Australia