Memoir/Autobiography with Helen Hagemann at FAC

 Friday, 5^th September is Prose with

Helen Hagemann.  10.00am til noon @ the Fremantle Arts Centre Café.  Cost $20

Class to read excerpts from 12 Edmonstone Street by David Malouf. Writing Exercises and discussion will centre on writing “memoir/autobiography” in particular the importance of place; houses also as a suitable subject for the short story writer.  

12 Edmondstone Street combines autobiography with a subtle, almost painterly sense of the ways in which the objects which we surround ourselves, and the places in which we live, build up our private maps of reality and shape our personal mythologies.  Malouf begins by describing with love, evocative detail, the house in Brisbane where he was born and grew up, moving from room to room, always relating the smallest items in it to the life he remembers and his widening perception of the world at large. He moves on to describe life in the Tuscan village where he lived, and the arrival of an Australian Television crew; reflecting on his first visit to India, he touches on the problems of interpreting and evaluating unfamiliar places; back in Australia, he recalls a traumatic wartime journey with his father from Brisbane to Sydney. Funny, humane and beautifully written, this is a unique and extraordinary essay in autobiography.
This remarkable book combines autobiography with a subtle, almost painterly sense of the ways in which the objects which we surround ourselves, and the places in which we live, build up our private maps of reality and shape our personal mythologies. David Malouf begins by describing in love, evocative detail, the house in Brisbane where he was born and grew up, moving from room to room, always relating the smallest items in it to the life he remembers and his widening perception of the world at large. He moves on to describe life in the Tuscan village where he lived, and the arrival of an Australian Television crew; reflecting on his first visit to India, is an internationally acclaimed author. His books include the novels The

Great World (winner of the Commonwealth Writers' prize and the Prix Femina Etranger), Remembering Babylon (shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), An Imaginary Life, Conversations at Curlow Creek, and his latest, Ransom (winner of the Criticos Prize), the short story collections Dream Stuff ('These stories are pearls' Spectator), and Every Move You Make ('Rare and luminous talent' Guardian), and his autobiographical classic 12 Edmondstone Street. His Collected Stories won the 2008 Australia-Asia Literary Award. In 2008 Malouf was the Scottish Arts' Council Muriel Spark International Fellow. Born in 1934 in Brisbane, he now lives in Sydney. Malouf, internationally recognised as one of Australia’s finest writers, has also written five collections of poetry and three opera libretti.
Books
Here is a list of his works: Johnno, An Imaginary Life, Fly Away Peter, Child’s Play, Harland’s Half Acre, Antipodes, The Great World, Remembering Babylon, The Conversations at Curlow Creek, Dream Stuff. Poetry: ‘Interiors’ (in Four Poets), Bicycle and Other Poems, Neighbours in a Thicket, Poems 1976–7, The Year of the Foxes and Other Poems, First Things Last, Wild Lemons, Selected Poems, Typewriter Music, Plays Blood Relations, Libretti  Baa Baa Black Sheep, Jane Eyre, For my Sister, Jill.