Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Friday 09 November
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
In Memoriam, Peter Nicholls, 1939–2018
‘Science fiction writers are the hounds of hell. They raise their shaggy black heads and sniff the wind, and feel the future coming,’ the late critic and editor Peter Nicholls once said. ‘And then they howl.'
Can the same be said of writers of other forms of speculative fiction? What do the future and alternative worlds imagined by Australian authors say about our country today?
At this special event at the Wheeler Centre in November, we’ll hear readings from some of this country’s leading contemporary writers of speculative fiction – Claire G. Coleman, Rjurik Davidson, Marlee Jane Ward, Jack Dann and Peter Nicholls's children, Jack Nicholls and Sophie Cunningham. They’ll share thoughts on the foundational Australian fantasy, sci-fi and dystopian texts, and consider how local writers are expanding and subverting genre traditions.
Join our speakers as they sniff the wind and discuss the past, present and future of Australian speculative fiction.
Embiggen Books will be our bookseller at this event.
Featuring
Claire G. Coleman
Claire G. Coleman is a Noongar woman whose family have belonged to the south coast of Western Australia since long before history started being recorded. Claire writes fiction, essays, poetry and art writing while either living in Naarm (Melbourne) or on the road. During an extended circuit of the continent she wrote a novel, Terra Nullius, which won the black&write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship and was listed for eight awards including a shortlisting for The Stella Prize. Lies, Damned Lies is her first full length work of non-fiction.
Rjurik Davidson
Rjurik Davidson is a writer and editor. He has written short stories, essays, reviews and screenplays.
His works include the novels Unwrapped Sky and The Stars Askew, and the collection The Library of Forgotten Books.
Rjurik writes imaginative fiction, speculative fiction, science fiction, surrealism, magic realism and fantasy. His unique and radical speculative fiction has seen him nominated for or win a number of awards. He is also an accomplished professional and educational writer.
Jack Nicholls
Jack Nicholls writes science-fiction stories, cultural essays, children’s books and whatever else takes their fancy – all part of their attempt to chronicle the narrowing space in our culture between plausible imagination and implausible reality. Jack’s memoir of growing up transgender at the turn of the century was published in Nothing to Hide: Voices of Trans and Gender Diverse Australia (Allen and Unwin, 2022), while their stories can be found in science-fiction anthologies and online magazines of variable repute.
They have an irregular newsletter of their thoughts and wanderings which you can find at https://lettersfromjack.substack.com/.
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Marlee Jane Ward
Marlee Jane Ward is a writer, reader and weirdo living in Melbourne. She grew up on the Central Coast of New South Wales and studied Creative Writing at the University of Wollongong. In 2014 she attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle, Washington.
You can find her short stories in the Hear Me Roar Anthology, Interdictions and Mad Scientist Journal. Her debut novella, Welcome to Orphancorp, won the 2015 Seizure Viva La Novella Prize and the 2016 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction. Its sequel, Psynode, was published in 2017.
Marlee likes dreaming of the future, cats, and making an utter spectacle of herself.
Jack Dann
Jack Dann has written or edited over seventy-five books, including the international bestseller The Memory Cathedral, The Rebel, The Silent, and The Man Who Melted. He is a recipient of the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Australian Aurealis Award (three times), the Chronos Award, the Darrell Award for Best Mid-South Novel, the Ditmar Award (five times), the Peter McNamara Achievement Award and also the Peter McNamara Convenors’ Award for Excellence, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Premios Gilgames de Narrativa Fantastica award.
He has also been honoured by the Mark Twain Society (Esteemed Knight). He is the co-editor, with Janeen Webb, of Dreaming Down-Under, which won the World Fantasy Award, and the editor of the sequel Dreaming Again. Dann is the managing director of PS Australia, and his latest anthology Dreaming in the Dark is the first volume in the new line: it won the World Fantasy Award in 2017.
Dr Dann is an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow in the School of Communication and Arts at the University of Queensland. His latest short-story collection is Concentration. In her introduction, critic and scholar Marleen Barr writes: 'Dann is a Faulkner and a Márquez for Jews. His fantastic retellings of the horror stories Nazis made real are more truth than fantasy.'
Jack lives in Australia on a farm overlooking the sea.
Sophie Cunningham
Sophie Cunningham is a non-fiction writer and novelist with a passion for trees, walking and broader environmental issues. Sophie’s most recent books are This Devastating Fever (Ultimo Press) and Flipper and Finnegan ...