Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Tuesday 05 June
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
How are ideas, and our expectations, around gender and sport evolving? And how does sport inform our sense of self? Who gets to play, and who gets to win, in the field of sports?
In an outstanding new essay collection, Balancing Acts: Women in Sport, a dream-team of Australia’s finest writers, including Ellen van Neerven, Tegan Higginbotham and Nicole Hayes, wrestle with these questions and more. The essays explore the ways women and non-binary people negotiate a traditionally male-dominated space, with topics ranging from sexualisation in surf culture to marginalisation in boxing, and the vast power imbalance between athletes and coaches.
At the Wheeler Centre in June, we’ll discuss shifting perspectives and shifting goal-posts in gender and sport.
This event will be Auslan interpreted.
Readings will be our bookseller at this event.
Featuring
Ellen van Neerven
Ellen van Neerven is an award-winning writer of Mununjali Yugambeh (South East Queensland) and Dutch heritage. They write fiction, poetry, plays and non-fiction. Ellen’s first book, Heat and Light, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize. They have written two poetry collections: Comfort Food, which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize; and Throat, which was shortlisted in 2021 for the Queensland Literary Awards and the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, and won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, the Multicultural NSW Award and Book of the Year in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards. Ellen also won the Queensland Literary Awards – Queensland Premier’s Young Publishers and Writers Award and the University of Melbourne’s Australian Centre Literary Awards – Peter Blazey Fellowship in 2019.
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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 shortlisted in the NSW and WA premiers’ literary awards. She is co-author of AFL junior fiction series, Little Legends (with Adrian Beck), and co-edited an anthology of stories about AFL, From the Outer: Footy Like You’ve Never Heard It (with Alicia Sometimes). She teaches writing at Deakin University where she is also undertaking a PhD in YA fiction. Nicole is an ambassador for the Stella in Schools program and the Australia Reads campaign. She is a founding member of the award winning all-female AFL podcast and radio program, The Outer Sanctum.
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Kate Doak
Kate Doak is a freelance investigative journalist and documentary producer, who is based in Sydney, Australia. Often described as a 'policy wonkette' and an 'old school newshound' as a result of her journalistic endeavours, Kate is also highly regarded within Australian politics as an advocate of both mental health and LGBTI rights.
Tegan Higginbotham
Tegan Higginbotham is a writer, actress and comedian.
For the past four years, she’s been a regular columnist for the Sunday Age Sport. Tegan’s writing credits also include Open Slather (Comedy Channel), Little Lunch (ABC), whimn.com.au, and Fernwood Magazine.
Her acting credits include Oddball, Holding the Man, It’s A Date, Nowhere Boys and the tv series Molly. Tegan is also known for making regular appearances on The Project, Whose Line is it Anyway?, Have You Been Paying Attention?, Show Me The Movie, Whovians and ABC News Breakfast.
Over the past decade, Tegan has also engrained herself as a frank, funny and intelligent female voice amongst Melbourne’s sporting landscape. She co-hosted Sideliners on ABC alongside Nicole Livingstone, The Greatest with Matt Tilley on Fox Footy, and was a regular panelist on The Bounce. Tegan also hosts as weekly Facebook Live show, The Warmdown, for the AFLW. Her first two critically acclaimed and award nominated stand up shows for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (Million Dollar Tegan and Touched By Fev) investigated the world of boxing and football, with Tegan actually taking part in two pro-rules boxing matches for research.
In recent months, Tegan has been invited as a guest speaker at The Stella Sparks Party and Longlist Announcement, The Hamilton Pride Cup, and has filmed segments for a soon-to-be-released documentary, “Is Australia Sexist?” to be screened on SBS.