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NLA News - homeJuly 2005 Volume XV Number 10

CALENDAR

OF EVENTS

Author! Author!
An afternoon with Peter Goldsworthy

Date: Sunday 17 July
Time: 2 pm
venue: Conference Room
Friends $12, non-members $17

click to enlarge

Peter Goldworthy

Dr Mark McKenna
The Hills Hoist Crown?
The Monarchy in
Australia

Date: Wednesday 20 July
Time: 12:30pm
venue: Ferguson Room
Entry by donation

 

For bookings, details of membership and subscriptions, contact:
Friends of the NLA
National Library of Australia
CANBERRA  ACT  2600
Tel: (02) 6262 1698
Fax: (02) 6273 4493
Email: friends@nla.gov.au
Web site: www.nla.gov.au/friends

JULY FRIENDS

On a mid-winter Sunday afternoon, the Friends will host an author who has written more powerfully about the power of hormones and the fear of death than perhaps any other Australian writer. He has won numerous awards, has had poetry set to music by leading Australian composers, sold more than a quarter-of-a-million copies of his novels in Australia and has had many of them translated into Asian and European languages. On top of this, he runs a medical practice in Adelaide and is currently the Chair of the Literature Board of the Australia Council. He is Peter Goldsworthy.

Peter’s most recent novel, Three Dog Night, published in 2004, is about Martin Blackman, who returns to Adelaide with his wife and fellow psychiatrist Lucy. Shortly after reuniting with his old friend Felix (a once brilliant surgeon, now barred from his profession), Martin’s happiness dwindles as two of Peter Goldsworthy’s recurrent themes emerge: the love triangle and the question of how we die.

As dark as this might sound, Peter is a great performer and is well known for wickedly humorous readings of his work. So we are in for a treat! If you would like to join us at the National Library on Sunday 7 July to hear Peter talk about his work, give some readings and converse with the audience, book with Hayley at the Friends Office on 02 6262 1698 (members $12; non-members $17). Refreshments will be provided and Peter will be available to sign copies of his work.

Also in July, we will hear a very different talk, as part of the Friends Canberra Series. Dr Mark McKenna, Australian Research Council Fellow in History at the ANU will present The Hills Hoist Crown? The Monarchy in Australia. Mark has written widely on republicanism and reconciliation for more than a decade. His first book, The Captive Republic: A History of Republicanism in Australia, was co-winner of the Australian Historical Studies Association’s W.K. Hancock Prize in 1998. He is also the author of This Country—A Reconciled Republic and Looking for Black Fellows Point (which won the NSW Premiers Book of the Year Prize in 2002 for non-fiction). Mark will speak at the National Library at 2:30 pm on Wednesday 20 July (entry by donation).

The Friends are also planning their next excursion. This time it’s a 3-day trip to Western Australia in mid-October. The proposed trip will include a visit to New Norcia, Albany and the Margaret River regions, a chance to meet the Friends of the Battye Library, a visit to the Gravity Discovery Centre and an opportunity to see the exquisite Western Australian wildflowers in spring. For more details, contact the Friends Office, on 6262 1551.

JILLIAN EDWARDS
Acting Executive Officer
Friends of the National Library of Australia

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