The Author is Not Dead. She is Coming to a Microphone, near You.

Hannie Rayson delivers the inaugural Harold White lecture, reflecting on the public role of the writer and the reality of having to blog, post, be liked and followed, while really being ‘the head-marketer for the brand called You.’

Hannie Rayson is a playwright and screenwriter, and has recently released her memoir Hello, Beautiful! Scenes from a life.  She made history when Life After George became the first play to be shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. Her best known play, Hotel Sorrento, was made into a feature film and has become an Australian classic.

Enjoy bluegrass and old time tunes selected from our Oral History and Folklore Collection by 2015 National Folk Fellow Miriam Jones, and performed by her band Catgut.

Much-loved Australian artist Michael Leunig discusses his new collection, The Wayward Leunig: Cartoons That Wandered Off. The companion volume to his best-selling The Essential Leunig, The Wayward Leunig showcases 400 cartoons selected from five decades of work. This new collection is as wide-ranging, potent, hilarious, insightful, relevant, original and beautiful as the first.

In association with Penguin Random House.

Little attention is being paid to the works of Xavier Herbert, one of Australia’s outstanding novelists. So why are they so rarely recommended in school text lists? His best-known novels, Capricornia (1938) and Poor Fellow My Country (1975) were judged as highly significant, winning major awards. So, are his novels forgotten or repressed?

On the 40th anniversary of Poor Fellow My Country winning the Miles Franklin Prize for Australian Literature, this keynote lecture and panel discussion provides a timely reflection. Herbert wanted to write the great Australian novel, but there was little glitter in his portrayals of greed, racism and rapaciousness towards Aboriginal women and the land. As a literary figure, he was a great self-stylist, assuming the persona of the bushman crusader. Eager to explore new ways of imagining a more mature Australia, his legacy is overdue for examination.

Speakers:

Dr Jeanine Leane, ANU

Professor Ann McGrath, ACIH, ANU

Dr Liz Conor, LaTrobe University

Professor Jane Lydon, Wesfarmers Chair, UWA

Professor Russell McDougall, University of New England

Heide Museum of Modern Art curators Lesley Harding and Kendrah Morgan discuss Modern Love, an intimate biography of the unconventional marriage of Heide founders John and Sunday Reed. The book also explores the Reeds' relationships with some of Australia's most celebrated artists and writers, including Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd. Modern Love reveals the full story of the lives and art of Heide.

Madeleine Say, Pictures Collection Manager, State Library Victoria, discusses Strutt's iconic work, Black Thursday, which depicts the devastating fires that swept Victoria on 6 February 1851.

Hear the stories behind some of the portraits in the exhibition. Nat Williams, James and Bettison Treasures Curator, reveals diverse tales about Ortelius, Shakespeare and Giolo, William Dampier's kidnapped 'painted prince', Betsy Broughton, child survivor of an early Maori massacre, and Arthur Orton, the Wagga Wagga butcher who tried to claim the Tichborne family title.

Longtime friends Marion and Carmel catch up to discuss life, literature, Carmel’s new collection of short stories, My Hearts are Your Hearts, and her new memoir, Fair Game. Find out what they are reading and writing, gossip about the world of writing, family life, and maybe even the state of the universe.

English artist William Strutt came to Australia in 1850 and remained until 1862. Colonial Australia was a country so often imagined without a history, and Strutt had the ambitions to produce history painting. In seeking to reflect the development of a historical consciousness in Australia, he failed to find much of an audience, but was arguably ahead of his time.

It took quite an act of the imagination to think of Australia as having a history worth painting. Hear about the world that artist William Strutt was living in: the changing face of Melbourne and Victoria, the heroes and villains he depicted and the unique relationships he developed with contemporary artists and patrons. Exhibition curator Matthew Jones with Elisabeth Findlay, Sasha Grishin, Chris McAuliffe and Richard White discuss Strutt's time in Australia, and his legacy.

Hear from David Astle as he plunges into the realm of riddles. In his latest book, Riddledom: 101 Riddles and Their Stories, he uncovers stories, wordplay and linguistic deceptions from Pompeiian walls to Dothraki warriors, clay tablets to icy pole sticks.