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The Long Game: Women in Sport Today

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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 Lit... Read more

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 shortlis... Read more

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 polit... Read more

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 credi... Read more

Location

The Wheeler Centre

176 Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne Victoria 3000

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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.