Events
Mon 6
6 pm arrival for a 6.30 pm start
Details:
The Women’s Club presents Brigitta Olubas and Susan Wyndham for the launch of Hazzard and Harrower: The Letters.
Two extraordinary writers. One difficult mother. And a vanished literary world.
Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Harrower met in person for the first time in London in 1972, six years after they began a correspondence that would span four decades. They exchanged letters, cards and telegrams and made occasional phone calls between Harrower’s home in Sydney and Hazzard’s apartments in New York, Naples and Capri. The two women wrote to each other of their daily lives, of impediments to writing, their reading, politics and, in Hazzard’s case, her travels. And they wrote about Hazzard’s mother, for whose care Elizabeth took increasing – and increasingly reluctant – responsibility from the early 1970s (precisely the period when she herself virtually stopped writing). Edited by Brigitta Olubas, Hazzard’s official biographer, and Susan Wyndham, who interviewed both Hazzard and Harrower, this is an extraordinary account of two literary luminaries, their complex relationship, and their times.
About the Editors:
BRIGITTA OLUBAS is professor of English at UNSW. She is the acknowledged expert on the writing of Shirley Hazzard and is her authorised biographer. She coedited the first collection of essays on the writing of Harrower and is the author of Shirley Hazzard: A writing life, shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Award for Non-fiction and the Nib Literary Award.
SUSAN WYNDHAM is a journalist and writer. She is no stranger to The Women’s Club, having moderated numerous Rose Scott Women Writers’ Festival events. As literary editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and New York correspondent for The Australian newspaper she interviewed Hazzard and Harrower. She is the author of Life in His Hands: The true story of a neurosurgeon and a pianist and editor of My Mother, My Father: On losing a parent.
Cost:
Member $25 | TWC Friends $29 | Non member $33
Complimentary cocktail/mocktail on arrival.
Snack bar available with drinks and light foods for purchase.
Book by:
Wednesday, 1 May 2024
IF YOU ARE A MEMBER, CLICK HERE TO BOOK.
‘A wonderful book’ — Charlotte Wood
‘Brimming with intellect’ — Geraldine Brooks
‘Vital, compelling, terrifying and revelatory’ — Anna Funder
‘A righteous delight’ — Diana Reid
‘A book to keep close and return to often’ — Michelle de Kretser
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