Brian Castro
Brian Castro Wins Patrick White Award
We’re delighted that Brian Castro has won the Patrick White Literary Award. This award is for an author’s body of work and was founded by White with the proceeds of his Nobel Prize for Literature. Giramondo has published four of Castro’s works, Shanghai Dancing, The Garden Book, The Bath Fugues and Street to Street.
The judges praised Castro for his ‘outstanding contribution to Australian Literature, his continued willingness to take imaginative risks and be ‘blackly playful’, and his evident potential to produce more significant work…’
For the full judges’ citation, click here.
To read Castro’s acceptance speech, click here.
Street to Street Launch
Brian Castro’s latest novella will be launched at Kinokuniya in Sydney by Bernadette Brennan on Thursday 11 October at 6.30pm.
Giramondo at the Sydney Writers Festival
Giramondo writers will be appearing at the following Sydney Writers Festival events
For more information, of to book tickets, visit the Sydney Writers Festival
Tuesday 18th May
Inside the Westside Writer’s Group
Bankstown Youth Development Service
6-8 Bankstown City Plaza
Bankstown
6:00 pm -9:00 pm
Join some of Western Sydney’s most exciting writers for an evening of readings with live editing and critical feedback from editor Ivor Indyk and special guest author Alexis Wright. The Westside Writers Group is supported by Giramondo and BYDS, and includes writers Michael Mohammed Ahmed, Lachlan Brown, Rebecca Landon, Peter Polites, Luke Carman, Fiona Wright, Felicity Castagna, Lina Jabbir and Susie Ahmed.
Food and refreshments will be provided.
Thursday 20th May
Changing Places
Sydney Theatre, Richard Wherrett Studio
2:30 pm – 3:30 pm
For an immigrant the place of arrival can be alien and challenging and, all too often cruelly hostile, however much the newcomer tries to adapt. Alison Booth’s novel ‘Stillwater Creek’ tells the story of a Latvian concentration camp survivor and her daughter trying to fit in to an Australian small town in the 1950s. Kim Cheng Boey’s collection of essays ‘Between Stations’ is a rumination on wandering and belonging as the author travels the world before migrating from Singapore to Australia, while Natasha Solomon’s charming ‘Mr Rosenblum’s List’ chronicles the efforts of a German Jewish refugee to become an English gentleman.
Friday, 21st May
Poetry on the Harbour
Bangarra Mezzanine
10:00am – 11:00
Kim Cheng Boey, Adam Aitken and Judith Beveridge Hosted by Ivor Indyk.
Poetry: The Last Genre Standing?
Bangarra Mezzanine
4:00pm – 5:00pm
Will poetry outlast the novel in the digital age? Some say it’s the novelists who should be worried and that poetry ? unique among writing forms ? cannot be superseded. Robert Gray, Michael Palmer and Jennifer Maiden join Mark Tredinnick in discussing the likely effect of digital technologies on poetry.
Poems to Share
Heritage Pier, Upstairs
6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Eleven outstanding Australian poets – Kate Fagan, Lachlan Brown, Adam Aitken, Lindsay Tuggle, Greg McLaren, Elizabeth Allen, Fiona Wright, Joanne Burns, Judith Bishop, Andy Quan, Keri Glastonbury – come together to celebrate the work of the Red Room Company (redroomcompany.org). The audience is seated at tables with poets, to hear readings as well as a discussion on sharing. This event coincides with the release of Corban & Blair and Red Room’s Poems to Share card set, featuring the work of 40 Australian poets. Hosted by Johanna Featherstone.
To enter, you must bring something, anything to share, such as twig, a monetary donation or a poem.
Saturday 22nd May
Brian Castro
Sydney Theatre, Richard Wherrett Studio
11:30am – 12:30am
Brian Castro’s body of work stands as testament to his ingenious adaptation of fictional forms, with his latest novel ‘The Bath Fugues’‚ continuing his creative use of musical structure. He talks Bernadette Brennan about his rich prose style and the joyful play and provocation he brings to his writing.
Three Australias
Sydney Dance Company, Studio 4
1:00 – 2:00 pm
Three poets, three voices, three views of our country: Les Murray, Ali Cobby Eckerman and Kim Cheng Boey read from their work.
Reading Muster 7
Sydney Dance Company, Studio 4
4:00pm – 5:00pm
Australian writers pass the word around, reading their own work. Kate Veitch, Shirley Walker, Jack Marx and Tom Cho are rounded up by our Drover.
Late Nights at Number One
Number One Wine Bar
Goldfields House
1 Alfred Street
Circular Quay
9:30 pm – 11:30 pm
Enjoy a post-event drink or bite and listen to Jennifer Maiden, Adam Aitken and David Brooks read their poetry at the contemporary and relaxed Quayside wine bar, Number One (numberonewinebar.com). Your host: Patrick Muhlen-Schulte.
Sunday 23rd May
Poetry Anthology Overload?
Bangarra Mezzanine
11:30 am – 12:30 pm
For a small country we sure have a lot of poetry anthologies ? four at last count and more on the way. Two of them are represented here: Robert Adamson edited ‘Best Australian Poems 2009’ and Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray have just completed a thousand-page anthology. They explain their respective approaches to Susan Hayes.
Out of the box with Tom Cho
Museum of Contemporary Art
2:30 pm – 3:30 pm
In ‘Look Who’s Morphing’, Tom Cho’s first book, his characters dance through pop culture arm-in-arm with the likes of Whitney Houston’s bodyguard, Godzilla and a Gulliver-sized cock-rock singer. It’s a bizarre, biting and utterly hilarious rollercoaster ride that’s been shortlisted for prizes all over the place.
Every week, FBi 94.5 dives into someone’s record collection to talk about the music they love, the life they lead and how the two interact. Tom is a fiction and freelance writer who has written short stories, zines, the occasional business plan, and even a fictional program for the Melbourne Writers Festival. He and FBi arts broadcaster Matt Levinson will go on a conversational journey into rock star fantasies, going Gaga over style and cock rock excesses ? with a rumoured exorcism thrown in for good measure.
Afternoon Tea and Readings
Heritage Pier, Upstairs
2:30 pm – 4:00 pm
A Sydney Writers’ Festival institution. A civilised and relaxing high tea with readings from poet Les Murray and novelists Brian Castro and Kirsten Tranter. Hosted by Geraldine Doogue.
Shanghai Express
Sydney Philharmonia Choir Studio
2:30pm – 3:30 pm
It takes more than a translator to publish your book in a foreign country. Giramondo Publisher Ivor Indyk talks to Patrizia van Daalen, senior rights and acquisitions manager for the private Chinese publishing firm Shanghai 99, about getting your book into China.
Research and Writing: Personal Journeys
Sydney Dance Company, Studio 1
4:00 – 5:00
‘The Nib’: CAL Waverley Library Award for Literature recognises excellence in literary research with its annual prize. Last year’s winner, Robert Gray (‘The Land I Came Through Last’), and shortlisted authors Greg de Moore (‘Tom Wills’) and John McDonald (‘Art of Australia’) talk about their books with Suzanne Leal.
Presented by Waverley Library and Copyright Agency Limited.
Adam Aitken, Brian Castro, Bronwyn Lea and Gerald Murnane shortlisted for Adelaide Festival Awards
Adam Aitken’s poetry collection Eighth Habitation and Bronwyn Lea’s poetry collection The Other Way Out have been shortlisted for the 2010 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature for poetry.
Brian Castro’s novel The Bath Fugues has been shortlisted for the 2010 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature for fiction.
Gerald Murnane’s novel Barley Patch has been shortlisted for the 2010 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature for Innovation.
See the full shortlists here
Giramondo at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival
Giramondo authors will be appearing at the following Melbourne Writers Festival events:
Fable, Fantasy And The New Short Story
21 Aug 2009
11:30am – 12:30pm
ACMI 1
Be warned. Mothers should not read these stories to their children. Author Tom Cho and Singaporean writer Cyril Wong have debut short story collections which play with reality, fantasies and myths.
Brian Castro in Conversation
23 August
4.00pm – 5.00pm
Festival Club
Why I read
22 Aug 2009
1:00pm – 2:00pm
ACMI 2
Prominent authors Steven Carroll, Raimond Gaita and Alice Pung discuss what they read as children and the doors that books and reading unlocked – with Antoni Jach, author of Napoleon’s Double.
Adelaide Book Launch: Brian Castro
The Barr Smith Library and Giramondo Publishing warmly invite you to the launch of the new novel by Brian Castro, The Bath Fugues, to be launched by Katharine England
on Friday 5 June
5.30 for 6.00 pm
Barr Smith Library Reading Room
University of Adelaide
Enter by Eastern Doors
RSVP: (08) 8303 4064
patricia.hawke@adelaide.edu.au