Body of Work: conversations with Australian literary icons
PRESENTED BY FED SQUARE
Reflections on a lifetime of writing, with some of Australia’s most celebrated writers.
This new, free, in-conversation series invites readers into the writing lives of some of Australia’s greatest living literary icons. Over decades of reflecting on various elements of Australian life – and reflecting it back to us through their writing – these writers reveal something meaningful about who we are as a people and culture: what we care about, how we see the world, how we grow, age, change, fight and love. About what we remember and what we choose to forget.
This series will deep-dive into these authors’ bodies of work, celebrating their scope, artistic progression and literary legacy to date – from their debut book to their most recent. Body of Work is presented by Fed Square and curated by author and bookseller Jaclyn Crupi.
Due to the expected popularity of this series, tickets will be limited to two per registration for each event.
COMING UP
Thursday 6 August, 6pm–7.30pm | The Edge
Helen Garner, as one of Australia’s most significant and renowned writers, needs little in the way of introduction. From her groundbreaking debut novel Monkey Grip (1977) to her latest, co-authored non-fiction work The Mushroom Tapes (2025), she continues to set the standard for fearless investigation into what makes us – and her – tick.
Touching on everything from her award-winning How to End A Story: Collected Diaries 1978–1998 (2025) to non-fiction favourite Joe Cinque’s Consolation (2004) and novels such as The Spare Room (2008), this event will be a celebration of Garner’s immense contribution to Australian letters and life across five decades.
Thursday 24 September, 6pm–7.30pm | The Edge
Award-winning author Charlotte Wood is the author of seven works of fiction and three non-fiction books, and has been celebrated for her stylistic originality, psychological depth and embodied prose.
From her debut Pieces of a Girl to her Booker Prize-shortlisted Stone Yard Devotional, her works of fiction have reflected on ideas of agency, control and chaos, climate catastrophe, female rage and grief.
This in-conversation event will be a close study of the creative risks Charlotte Wood has taken with each new project over her nearly 30-year writing career – from her Stella Prize-winning dystopian novel The Natural Way of Things to her works of non-fiction such as Love & Hunger: Thoughts on the Gift of Food.
Tickets for Body of Work: Charlotte Wood release mid-August.