Welcome to our program for 2024


For our April event we present:

Outspoken presents

Bri Lee,

speaking about her novel

The Work

Friday 12th April

Maleny Community Centre

6 for 6.30pm

Tickets $27.50* and $18 for students

We are delighted to be able to open the evening with

Carly-Jay Metcalfe,

speaking about her memoir

Breath

 
 

And, introducing,

Carly-Jay Metcalfe

Photo Saskia Wilson

Bri Lee is something of a phenomenon. The author of three non-fiction works, each of which has very publicly stirred up the murky waters of the commentariat, she has now written a novel, entitled The Work. Here is Annabel Crabb on the matter:

“Well this is annoying. Bri Lee—whose nonfiction debut Eggshell Skull revealed a fine mind and a stout heart—turns out to be a brilliant novelist as well. This novel isn’t just good; it’s superb. Assured, and powerful, and intelligent, and very, VERY hard to put down. Bri Lee has an established knack of articulating human confusion, pain and the cracks that open up in the systems we design to govern ourselves. And in The Work, she brings all her thrilling intelligence and her journalist’s eye to the art world, and its awkward historic dicta about who gets to make art, and how badly they can behave while they’re making it. Also it’s a love story. And a story about growing up in the country and moving to the city, observed with a perfect degree of spiky tenderness. I consumed it in a passion.”

Here at Outspoken we’re delighted to have been able to persuade Bri to come to Maleny to discuss her novel, but also to talk around her many other projects. These include, but are not confined to: lecturing in Media Law at Sydney University, where she’s doing a PhD into how Australia’s defamation laws stifle free speech; working as a guide on small group tours - the present one is to Egypt; doing weekend writing workshops.

 

Our introducing author will be Carly-Jay Metcalfe. Carly-Jay recently published the stunningly frank and darkly funny memoir Breath, about living, dying and trying to breathe.

Beejay Silcox writes: ‘The only thing more remarkable than Carly-Jay Metcalfe’s story is the way she tells it. Breath captures the privileges and pains of living in our transitory bodies. The absurdities. The cruelties. The bone-deep joys. This book is a love letter to the sublime human mess. An invitation to pay attention to every precious lungful.’

 


*Yes, our tickets have gone up in price! We do apologise for this but it is unavoidable. We have, apart from anything, decided not to continue our relationship with the Sunshine Coast Council’s Creative Industries Investment Program. It simply wasn’t working for us. All our funding now comes from ticket sales. Please note: we pay all our authors a standard speakers’ fee.

Tickets are really only available online (clicking the button above will take you to TryBooking's website for the event, please follow the prompts). We have arranged for a very small number of tickets to be sold at Rosetta Books, for those who really can't buy from an online service. These tickets are also numbered.

Should the event have to be cancelled due to problems with Covid or such-like, tickets will be refunded without question, less a booking fee of 50c per ticket.


Outspoken is proud to work with Rosetta Books (bookseller on the night). We thank Lea and Rob Dodd for their continued support of our events (and congratulate them on becoming the new owners of Rosetta Books!). We'd also like to thank Maleny Community Centre for their continuing help, apart from anything else they'll be running the bar on the night, both for Chris Sarra and for Sandy at the Primary School.

If you know someone who you think might be interested in attending please pass on the information. Many thanks. 

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