In conversation

Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life

Brigitta Olubas in conversation with Geordie Williamson. 

At last – the authorised biography of Shirley Hazzard, arguably one of the greatest writers in the English language, author of The Great Fire, The Transit of Venus and Greene on Capri, winner of the National Book Award, the Miles Franklin Award and shortlisted for The Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Brigitta Olubas tells the story of a girl from the suburbs of Sydney, Australia who fell early under the spell of words and sought out books as her companions. In the process she transformed and indeed created her life. She became a woman of the world who felt injustice keenly and a deep and original thinker, who wrote some of the most beautiful novels – Transit of Venus and The Great Fire among them – and always with an eye to the ways we reveal ourselves to another.

Brigitta Olubas is professor of English in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales, Australia. She published the first scholarly monograph on Hazzard’s writing and edited Shirley Hazzard’s essays, We Need Silence To Find Out What We Think and Shirley Hazzard’s Collected Stories.

Geordie Williamson has been chief literary critic of The Australian since 2008 and is publisher-at-large at Pan Macmillan Australia. His book about neglected Australian authors, The Burning Library, was published in 2012, and we’re very excited to know he’s got another in the pipeline.

Join them at the Afterword Cafe.

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