Storyline
Wednesday 29 March 2023 at 10:00am for a 10:30am start to 12.00pm. In Club Only.
Speaker: Dr Jacqueline Kent
The WHO, WHAT and HOW of memoir, autobiography and biography
In order to be successful, memoir and biography need to grapple with a number of issues that bedevil writers of fiction. How easy is it to walk in someone else’s shoes? How important and accurate is memory likely to be? How far should you go in describing your own experience or anyone else’s? What assumptions can you make about other people, or even about yourself? How do you deal with difficult subjects, and what do you do when you don’t like what you find out.
All intriguing topics for biography writers to ponder, and also for life.
About Dr Jacqueline Kent
Jacqueline worked as a journalist, radio producer and scriptwriter for the ABC, and a book editor and writer. She has written fiction for young adults as well as social history, but she is primarily known as a biographer and writer of memoir. Her titles include many that have been multi-award winners and include:
Out of the Bakelite Box: The Heyday of Australian Radio, a social and oral history of Australian radio, drawing heavily on original interviews. In the Half Light: Life as a Child in Australia 1900-1970 consists of reminiscences of people from all walks of life, with emphasis on events and personalities in Australian life seen through a child’s eyes. A Certain Style: Beatrice Davis, A Literary Life, a biography of a pioneering Australian book editor; An Exacting Heart: The Story of Hephzibah Menuhin, a brilliant pianist and social reformer who lived in the shadow of her violinist brother, Yehudi; The Making of Julia Gillard, and its sequel, Take Your Best Shot; Beyond Words, a memoir of her life with writer, Kenneth Cook, and her biography of pioneering suffragist Vida Goldstein.
Jacqueline has edited across all genres for Australia’s major publishers, most recently concentrating on non-fiction, especially biography. In 1994 she was awarded the Australia Council’s Beatrice Davis Fellowship to study publishing in New York. She has been a mentor for young editors in the Australia Council/Publishers’ Association Residential Editorial Program and with the Australian Society of Authors. She has written several entries for the Australian Dictionary of Biography and she reviews books for the Sydney Morning Herald.
Cost: $10 for the session.
Bookings Essential.
Email reception@thewomensclub.com.au to book for lunch. Pay as you go.
Book by: Tuesday 28 March 2023 5:00 PM