Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Monday 09 August
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
This event, scheduled to take place on Monday 9 August is cancelled. This is in response to current Victorian public health advice and the restrictions on public events.
Whether we’re talking early bloomers, late bloomers, or those who are right on time, stepping into a new chapter of our lives can be exciting, comforting, and often surprising.
In this edition of The Next Big Thing, we’re exploring what it feels like to blossom in authentic and sometimes unexpected directions.
Clem Bastow’s memoir Late Bloomer recounts her experience of an adult autism diagnosis; Shelley Parker-Chan’s novel She Becomes the Sun is a bold queer retelling of the rise to power of Zhu Yuanzhang, founding Emperor of the Ming Dynasty; and Jess Zanoni’s fiction piece, ‘Lodestar’ – published in Voiceworks – finds two sisters returning to old memories when they learn their childhood home is due to be demolished.
Join us over a drink at the Moat to hear these four exciting writers share readings about growth and transformation.
The bookseller for this event is Readings.
Please note Sara El Sayed is no longer able to appear at this event.
Due to Covid-19 restrictions, venue capacity is unfortunately limited. Read more about our live events plan here Check wheelercentre.com, follow us on social media or sign up to our e-newsletter The Wheeler Weekly for updates and any late ticket releases.
Featuring
Clem Bastow
Clem Bastow's debut nonfiction book Late Bloomer was published in July 2021. Her writing appears regularly in The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Big Issue. She co-wrote and co-presented the 2017 ABC podcast Behind The Belt, a documentary "deep dive" into professional wrestling, and in 2018 she co-produced the first wrestling death match to be held on Tasmanian soil, Night Massacre, for Dark Mofo. She holds a Master of Screenwriting from University of Melbourne/VCA, teaches screenwriting at UoM and is currently undertaking a PhD in action cinema and screenwriting at RMIT University. She lives and works on Wurundjeri land with her dog, Milly.
View Profile
Shelley Parker-Chan
Shelley Parker-Chan is an Asian-Australian former diplomat and international development adviser who spent nearly a decade working on human rights, gender equality and LGBT rights in Southeast Asia. Named after the Romantic poet, she was raised on a steady diet of Greek myths, Arthurian legend and Chinese tales of suffering and tragic romance. Her debut novel She Who Became the Sun owes more than a little to all three.
In 2017 she was awarded an Otherwise (Tiptree) Fellowship for a work of speculative narrative that expands our understanding of gender.
Jess Zanoni
Jess Zanoni is a writer and musician. She makes music in Arbes and Za Noon. She is the current Program Coordinator of the Emerging Writers' Festival. Her work has appeared in The Age, Cordite Poetry Review, Voiceworks ...
Sophie Overett
Sophie Overett is an award-winning writer, editor, podcaster and cultural producer. Her stories have been published in Griffith Review, Going Down Swinging, Overland, The Sleepers Almanac, and elsewhere. She won the 2018 AAWP Short Story Prize, and her work has been shortlisted for multiple awards, including the Text Prize and the Richell Prize.
Most recently, Sophie was the recipient of the Australia Council’s Kathleen Mitchell Award for 2021. She’s passionate about storytelling in all of its forms, but particularly stories for the page and the screen. She writes across genres and formats, with a focus on magical realism, literary fiction and horror. The Rabbits, her debut novel, is the winner of the 2020 Penguin Literary Prize, and her first screenplay, All the Little Fishes, has been optioned by Cathartic Pictures.
Lauren Taylor
Lauren is the Wheeler Centre’s Senior Programme and Podcast Producer.
She has worked extensively across Melbourne’s arts and cultural sector as a creative producer, programmer, broadcaster, podcaster, facilitator and media maker with organisations including Triple R, Monash University Performing Arts Centres, MPavilion, Noisy Ritual and ABC Radio.
Lauren was previously the Events Producer and a member of the Programming and Content team at one of Australia’s most influential community radio stations Triple R, managing the station’s outside broadcasts and live-to-airs from the Triple R Performance Space.
She has facilitated in-conversation events for MPavilion, Melbourne Writers Festival, Vivid Live, Melbourne Festival, MIFF, Melbourne Music Week, BIGSOUND and Sugar Mountain Festival and was also commissioned by MPavilion and the Robin Boyd Foundation to produce and co-host their Walsh Street Music Program podcast series.
Always searching for the new and the next, Lauren shares her latest discoveries each week as a presenter on Triple R’s Thursday drive program Breaking & Entering. The program features important new releases, in depth interviews with artists and follows critical conversations in a rapidly changing landscape.
View Profile