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I Am An Animal: A Wildlife Fundraiser

When

Event Status

Doors open 6.30pm; 7.00pm–8.45pm (including a short interval), Wednesday 29 April 2020

This event has been cancelled as part of our preventative measures to stem the spread of coronavirus COVID-19. If you have tickets for this event, we’ll be in touch with you directly via email.

Find out more about our response to the coronavirus situation here.

Humans are animals – but we’re letting our fellow creatures down. What do other animals mean to us, and what do we mean to them?

In April, we’re bringing together some of our favourite writers and artists to share reflections on creatures great and small. We’re raising funds for wildlife charities working with animals affected by the summer’s devastating bushfires. It’s estimated that more than a billion animals have died in the fires – and more than 100 species now need urgent help due to scorched habitat. 

Grab a drink at the bar and settle in for a night of readings, poetry, art and music, curated by Sophie Cunningham and Emily Bitto, and featuring literary animal-lovers including Helen Garner, Shaun Tan, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Chloe Hooper and more to be announced. We’ll be selling t-shirts designed by Kaz Cooke and there’ll be a raffle with prizes, too. 

Let’s do it for the koalas, quolls, dunnarts and wallabies; the alpine bog skinks, lyrebirds, broad-toothed rats, bloodclaw crayfish, glossy black cockatoos and golden-tipped bats. 

Proceeds from ticket sales, t-shirt sales and raffle tickets will be divided and donated equally to Wildlife Victoria, Birdlife Australia and Bush Heritage Australia.

Presented in partnership with Melbourne Fringe.

This event will be Auslan interpreted.

Featuring

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 –The True Story of How Tiny Jumpers Saved Little Penguins (Albert Street Books)... Read more

Emily Bitto

Emily Bitto is a Melbourne-based writer of fiction, poetry and non-fiction. She has a Masters in Literary Studies and a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne. Her debut novel, The Strays, was the winner of the 2015 Stella Prize. Emily’s fiction, poetry and non-fiction has a... Read more

Helen Garner

Helen Garner writes novels, stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction. In 2006 she received the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature, and in 2016 she won the prestigious Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for non-fiction and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award. In 2019 she was hon... Read more

Chloe Hooper

Chloe Hooper’s The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island (2008) won the Victorian, New South Wales, West Australian and Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards, as well as the John Button Prize for Political Writing, and a Ned Kelly Award for crime writing. Her latest book is The Arsonist: A Mi... Read more

Shaun Tan

Shaun Tan grew up in Perth and works as an artist, writer and film-maker in Melbourne, best known for illustrated books that deal with social, political and historical subjects through dream-like imagery. The Rabbits, The Red Tree, Tales from Outer Suburbia and the graphic novel The Arrival have bee... Read more

Ali Cobby Eckermann

Ali Cobby Eckermann’s first collections of poetry little bit long time and Kami (2010) both quickly sold out their first print runs. Her verse novel His Father’s Eyes was published by OUP in 2011. Her second verse novel Ruby Moonlight won the inaugural kuril dhagun National Manuscript Ed... Read more

Chris Flynn

Chris Flynn is the author of The Glass Kingdom and A Tiger in Eden, which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in the Age, the Australian, Griffith Review, Meanjin, Australian Book Review, the Saturday Paper, Smith Journal, the Big Issue, Monster... Read more

Carrie Tiffany

Carrie Tiffany was born in West Yorkshire and grew up in Western Australia. She spent her early twenties working as a park ranger in Central Australia. Her first novel, Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living (2005), was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Guard... Read more

Mandy Ord

Mandy Ord is a Melbourne based illustrator and cartoonist with a long history of self-publishing as well as having a number of published books including Brickdog & Other Stories with Pluto Press, NY and Rooftops with Finlay Lloyd, Galapagos with Glom Press and Sensitive Creatures with Allen &... Read more

Location

Fringe Common Rooms

Corner Victoria Street and Lygon Street, Carlton 3053 Victoria Australia

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The Wheeler Centre acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Centre stands. We acknowledge and pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their Elders, past and present, as the custodians of the world’s oldest continuous living culture.