The Wheeler Centre
View all episodes in this series
Subtexts: Body/Language
Clementine Ford, Alice Pung, Kelli Jean Drinkwater and Karina Quinn look at what the body can realistically tell us about identity, what we can’t assume – and the space in between. We’ll open a space for all different kinds of bodies – fat bodies, fit bodies, old bodies, diasporic bodies, even absent bodies – to communicate their true identities.
Who?

Kelli Jean Drinkwater
Kelli Jean Drinkwater is a filmmaker, artist and activist recognised internationally for her creative practice and voice in radical body politics. Kelli Jean uses the body as a site to explore themes of identity, queer and feminist theory and society’s obsession with 'perfection'. Often confrontational, her work aims to investigate the complex relationship we all have with our bodies.

Clementine Ford
Clementine Ford is a Melbourne-based writer, speaker and feminist thinker. She is a columnist for Fairfax’s Daily Life and is a regular contributor to the Age and Sydney Morning Herald. Through her twice-weekly columns for Daily Life, Clementine explores issues of gender inequality and pop culture. Fight Like a Girl is her first book.

Alice Pung
Alice Pung is an award-winning writer, editor, teacher and lawyer based in Melbourne. Her books include Close to Home, On John Marsden, the memoirs Unpolished Gem and Her Father’s Daughter, and the novel Laurinda. She is the editor of the anthologies Growing Up Asian in Australia and My First Lesson.

Quinn Eades
Quinn Eades is a researcher, writer, and poet whose work lies at the nexus of feminist and queer theories of the body, autobiography, and philosophy. Eades is published nationally and internationally, and is the author of all the beginnings: a queer autobiography of the body, and Rallying.
Eades is a Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Studies at La Trobe University, as well as the founding editor of Australia's only interdisciplinary, peer reviewed, gender, sexuality and diversity studies journal, Writing from Below. He is currently working on a collection of fragments written from the transitioning body, titled Transpositions.
In 2015 Quinn Eades changed his name and gender. Prior to 2015, he was writing and speaking as Karina Quinn.

The Wheeler Centre
Subscribe to the Wheeler Centre's podcast to hear full recordings of our talks – featuring the best in books, writing and ideas.