Celebrating Peter Temple
As a nation mired in certain delinquent traditions, you might say that Australians are overachievers in the field of crime writing. Amongst us, though, Peter Temple was one of the very best.
His prose elevated crime fiction to literary significance, too. In addition to winning prestigious crime fiction prizes including five Ned Kelly Awards and the Crime Writers’ Association Duncan Lawrie Dagger – the first Australian to claim the Gold Dagger – his last novel, Truth, won the Miles Franklin.
Temple died in March this year, a couple of days shy of his 72nd birthday. To celebrate his contribution to Australia’s crime fiction canon, we’ll bring together some of his contemporaries, friends and admirers for a night of readings from his work – and stories from his own life. Hosted by Jason Steger.
Featuring
Jason Steger is books editor at The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was a regular panelist on ABC TV’s The Book Club. Steger joined Fairfax as business editor of The Sunday Age in 1990. He became deputy features editor and then arts and books editor. He was appointed deputy managing... Read more
Kerryn Goldsworthy is a freelance writer and critic, and a former academic who lectured in literature at the University of Melbourne for 17 years. A former editor of Australian Book Review and a member of the editorial team that produced The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature (2009... Read more
Gold Dagger winning and Edgar shortlisted author Michael Robotham was born in Australia in November 1960, and grew up in small country towns that had more dogs than people and more flies than dogs. He escaped in 1979 and became a cadet journalist on an afternoon newspaper in Sydney. For the nex... Read more
As well as being an author and editor, Michael Heyward is the managing director and publisher for Text Publishing, a multi-award-winning independent publishing company in Melbourne. Text publishes Australian and international authors, including Barack Obama, Kate Grenville, Helen Garner, Tim Flann... Read more
Ian Collie is one of Australia’s most experienced producers and the founder of Easy Tiger, having previously run the Scripted division of Essential Media which was awarded the Screen Producers of Australia ‘Producer of the Year’ in 2012. His credits include the iconic ABC comedy Rake (five sea... Read more
Louise Thurtell has worked in publishing for nearly 30 years – starting out at Harper Collins before moving to Transworld, Random House and Allen & Unwin. Louise will never forget sitting down to read the manuscript of Peter Temple’s Bad Debts in 1995, and knowing within the first page ... Read more
Award-winning actress Marta Dusseldorp has worked extensively in theatre, film and television and is one of Australia’s most recognised actresses. She received the 2015 AACTA Award for Best Lead Actress in a Television Drama for ABC’s Janet King in which she plays the title role. Marta stars in ... Read more
Born in Hamilton in western Victoria in 1953, Shane Maloney is one of Australia’s most popular novelists. His award-winning and much-loved Murray Whelan series – Stiff, The Brush-Off, Nice Try, The Big Ask, Something Fishy and Sucked In – has been published around the world. In 1996, The B... Read more
