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Women Writing Footy

When

Event Status

While there’s a long tradition of books about life in or around the AFL – and prominent journalists like Caroline Wilson, Sam Lane and Kelli Underwood hold high-profile positions in football culture – there has also been a measurable absence of women in football’s literary canon.

Until recently, that is. In 2013, Nicole Hayes’ novel The Whole of My World looked at the complexity of female football fandom through the lens of fiction; almost simultaneously, Anna Krien’s journalistic examination of sex, power and gender in football was published as Night Games. Since then, Miriam Sved’s Game Day has inhabited the structure and struggle of the AFL, while in The Family Men, Catherine Harris grapples with the intricacies of male kinship that the sport demands.

Coinciding with the very first match of the 2015 Premiership season, Hayes, Sved and Harris will come together for a lunchtime discussion about the role, contributions, challenges and perspectives of women storytellers in the manly world of Aussie rules. Hosted by Triple R Breakfasters co-host (and fellow footy fanatic) Alicia Sometimes.

Featuring

Miriam Sved

Miriam Sved’s fiction has appeared in various places including Meanjin, Overland, Best Australian Stories and the anthology Just Between Us: Australian Writers Tell the Truth about Female Friendship. Her first novel, Game Day (Picador), is set in and around a Victorian AFL club. She teaches creati... Read more

Catherine Harris

Catherine Harris’ short story collection, Like Being A Wife (Random House), was shortlisted for the 2011 Age Fiction Prize, the 2011 Barbara Jefferis award and as a manuscript for the 2009 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Her prose and essays have been published in Australia, ... Read more

Alicia Sometimes

Alicia Sometimes is an Australian poet, multi-media artist and broadcaster. She has performed her spoken word at many venues, festivals and events around the world. Her poems have been in Best Australian Science Writing, Best Australian Poems, Meanjin, Griffith Review, The Age and many more. She i... Read more

Nicole Hayes

Nicole Hayes is an award winning author and podcaster and a Melbourne-based creative writing facilitator. Her second YA novel, One True Thing, won the Children’s Peace Literature Prize and is a CBCA Notable book. Her most recent YA novel, A Shadow’s Breath, is a CBCA notable book, and shortlis... Read more

Location

The Wheeler Centre

176 Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne Victoria 3000

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