State of the (Writing) Nation: Annual Oration

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The oration will be given by a prominent Australian writer and reflect on different aspects of Australian writing and publishing.

Rebecca Lim and Ambelin Kwaymullina preface their recent anthology ‘Meet Me at the Intersection’ (2018, Fremantle Press) with: ‘We begin … in the same way that Australia began – with the stories of First Nations peoples.’ Following their lead, Writers Victoria has invited Tony Birch to give the inaugural oration. Tony will be speaking on 'The Aboriginal Voice, Theft and the Responsibility of the Writer'.

Tony Birch is the author of ‘Shadowboxing’, ‘Father’s Day’, ‘Blood’, ‘The Promise’, ‘Ghost River’ and ‘Common People’. His new novel, ‘The White Girl’, will be released in 2019. His books have been shortlisted for many awards, including the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Melbourne Prize for Literature. He is a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award winner, and in 2017 he was awarded the Patrick White Award. Tony is also a professorial research scholar in Climate Justice at Victoria University.

Award-winning poet Evelyn Araluen will also be reading on the night. Winner of the 2017 Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers, and the 2018 Judith Wright Poetry Prize, Evelyn’s writing has appeared in publications and anthologies such as ‘Overland’, ‘Southerly’, ‘Cordite’, ‘Peril’, ‘Best Australian Poems’ and ‘Growing Up Aboriginal’. She is currently completing a PhD exploring the role of critical responsibility in the reading of Aboriginal women’s writing in Australia and beyond. Born, raised, and writing in Dharug country, she is a descendant of the Bundjalung nation.

Tickets are available via the Writers Victoria website. All proceeds go to Writers Victoria’s Disadvantaged Writers Fund.

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