Lish Fejer chats with Annabel Crabb about her new book Special Guest over afternoon tea. Co-written with Wendy Sharpe, this is a cookbook for anyone who loves hosting guests at home.

Special Guest is a gentle guide to turning easy basic fare into something of a celebration. 

If you are someone who prepares for guests by sweeping bills, laundry and newspapers behind sofa cushions, take heart! It's possible to be an imperfect host, but happily so. The essential ingredient is not, paradoxically, the food, nor the perfect house to host in, but the sentiment you convey when you open the door. Do your eyes say: 'I like you and I enjoy your company,' or does a weepy cloud of visceral horror descend as pine nuts burn quietly in the kitchen? 

For when you want to say to your friends with their spouses and ten small children, 'Why don't you stay for lunch?' without hating yourself afterwards. Learn the lesson of 'one splendid thing done well' without regard to the hundred other things, and call the day a success.

Annabel Crabb is one of Australia's best-loved TV and media personalities and a joyfully imperfect host. Wendy Sharpe is Annabel's oldest friend, a recipe consultant on Kitchen Cabinet and co-conspirator in mad-capped cookery projects.

In association with Murdoch Books. 

Image: Annabel Crabb, image courtesy Rob Palmer

Markus Zusak, internationally best-selling author of The Book Thief, makes his long-awaited return with a profoundly heartfelt and inventive novel about a family held together by stories, and a young life caught in the current: a boy in search of greatness as a cure for a painful past.

Join us for a special evening at the National Library as Markus is joined by respected journalist and presenter Caroline Baum to discuss his much-anticipated new novel Bridge of Clay.

Image: Markus Zusak, courtesy Hugh Stewart

Dr Anne Summers AO has had an extraordinary career as a journalist, author, policy maker, bureaucrat, editor, publisher, board member and above all change agent. In conversation with Genevieve Jacobs, she will speak about her life and her new memoir Unfettered and Alive.

This is the compelling story of Anne Summers' extraordinary life. Her story has her travelling around the world as she moves from job to job, in newspapers and magazines, advising prime ministers, leading feminist debates, writing memorable and influential books. Anne has not been afraid to walk away from success and to satisfy her constant restlessness by charging down new and risky paths. Whatever position she has held, she has expanded what's possible and helped us see things differently-often at high personal cost.

Anne shares revealing stories about the famous and powerful people she has worked with or reported on and is refreshingly frank about her own anxieties and mistakes. She shares a heart-breaking story of family violence and tells of her ultimate reconciliation with the father who had rejected her. Unfettered and Alive is a provocative and inspiring memoir from someone who broke through so many boundaries to show what women can do.

Dr Susannah Helman gives a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the development of the exhibition, Cook and the Pacific.

Award-winning author Liam Pieper reflects on his research and writing revisionist historical novel Bittereinder, which explores the fate of Indigenous Australian soldiers who fought for the British in the Boer War.

Liam Pieper is the 2018 Creative Arts Fellow for Australian Writing, supported by the Ray Mathew and Eva Kollsman Trust.

 

Image: Burning Farm Houses (detail),  c. 1902, nla.cat-vn3408903

Perhaps the best-known Australian colonial castaway is Eliza Fraser who was shipwrecked in 1836 on K’gari-Fraser Island, where she spent time with local Indigenous peoples.

Many early accounts present Fraser as the civilised captive of cruel and primitive savages. Less known are the many instances of castaways whose survival depended on the sustained assistance of Indigenous peoples, who treated them with care and kindness.

This presentation interweaves some extraordinary stories with artworks to provide fresh perspectives on these shared encounters.

Associate Professor Lisa Chandler is a curator, and Art and Design academic from the University of the Sunshine Coast.

Professor Chandler’s Fellowship for Curatorial Research is supported by the Patrons and Supporters of the Library’s Treasures Gallery Access Program.

1968. A year of protests, war, Hendrix and a missing Prime Minister. Curator Dr Guy Hansen introduces our new exhibition 1968: Changing Times, and looks at the highlights of that year—locally, nationally and internationally.

Join Dr Linda Zampol D'Ortia as she considers different understandings of missionary failure, analysing the tensions they created in the Jesuit mission in Japan from 1524 to 1639.

Dr Zampol is an NLA Fellow in Japan Studies, supported by the HS Williams Trust