Graft: Maggie Mackellar in conversation with Meg Bignell

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A gorgeously written reflection, set in Tasmania, on motherhood, farming, nature and home.

“In my mind I walk over the land. I run my hands through the grass as if it were the hair on my head. I dig my fingers into the dirt as if the soil were the crust of my skin.”

In Graft, Maggie MacKellar describes a year on a Merino wool farm on the east coast of Tasmania, and all of life – and death – that surrounds her through the cycle of lambing seasons. She gives us the land she knows and loves, the lambs she cares for, the ewes she tries to save, the birds around her, and the dogs and horses she adores.

This book is a stunning thanksgiving for a place and a moment in motherhood; and a timely reminder of the inescapable elemental laws of nature.

Maggie MacKellar was born in 1973. She has published two books on the history of settlement in Australia and Canada and two memoirs, When It Rains and How To Get There. She now lives on the east coast of Tasmania with her partner and two children.

Meg Bignell was a nurse and a weather presenter on the telly before she surrendered to a persistent desire to write. Since then she has been writing almost every day – bits and pieces here and there, either to earn a crust, to get something off her chest or to entertain herself. She has written three short films, and three novels, including The Angry Women’s Choir. Incidentally she sings a bit too, and occasionally writes and performs cabaret! But mostly, she’s very busy being a mother to three and a wife (to one). She lives with her family on a dairy farm on Tasmania’s East Coast.

Join these two Tassie east coast women, both writers and mothers, at the Afterword Cafe.