Also exciting in the book world is next week's announcement of the Booker Prize. I've read 4 out of 5 of the finalists and liked them all. My tip is for Percival Everett's brilliant James to take out the prize. But of course, we really want Charlotte Wood to win for Stone Yard Devotional - another gleebooks favourite.

Earlier this year, Marrickville author Sara Haddad self-published a beautiful novella about an elderly Palestinian woman living in Sydney. Haddad wrote the book, she says ‘to counter the narrative that the question of Palestine is complicated,  to be read in a single sitting, to be accesible to readers of all ages’. Now publisher UQP has picked up The Sunbird and will release a second edition on the 3rd December with an author's note, an update on the current  Palestinian ‘situation’ - Haddad’s concise precis of the history of Palestine is masterful - as well as discussion questions for bookclubs and schools.  

Michelle de Kretser - Theory and Practice

Dulwich Hill Dinner Event: Sunday 10th November 5pm  (Goldies collaboration event)   Glebe: Thursday 14th November In conversation with Fiona Giles 

It’s 1986, and ‘beautiful, radical ideas’ are in the air. Theory & Practice is a mesmerising account of desire and jealousy, truth and shame. It makes and unmakes fiction as we read, expanding our notion of what a novel can contain.

A Season of Death: A Memoir  Tuesday 12th November – Michelle Lesh and Raimond Gaita in conversation with Michaela Kalowski

In A Season of Death readers of The Fiftieth Gate and Thirty Days will rediscover the many forms of Mark Raphael Baker’s humour, his candour and his depth of thought and feeling, albeit in a different key, as it must be when those virtues reveal themselves in expressions of vulnerability that fend off self-pity.  There is profound sorrow in this memoir but there is matching joy and much love.

Santilla Chingaipe – Black Convicts  Wednesday 13th November

The story of Australia’s black convicts has been erased from our history. Recovering it in this deeply researched, fascinating and richly illuminating book, Santilla Chingaipe offers a fresh understanding of this fatal shore, and shows how empire, slavery, race and memory have shaped who we are.

Kate Fitz-Gibbon – Our National Crisis  Friday 15th November – In conversation with Lucy Turnbull

In this call to action Kate Fitz-Gibbon explains why violence against women and children is not a series of isolated incidents but a pervasive, systemic issue. Addressing domestic, family and sexual violence requires a national effort across the full spectrum of prevention, early intervention, response, and recovery and healing. 

Charles Firth and Dominic Knight  Chaser Double Event – The Chaser and Shovel Annual and Dictionary of Terrible Ideas

A pair of comedians, Charles Firth and Dominic Knight have outsourced all their writing to ChatGPT ensuring their offerings are both hilariously off-point and disturbingly accurate.  From politics to pop culture, vapes to multilevel marketing, no subject wll be safe. 

Geoff Raby – Great Game On  Sunday 24th November – In conversation with Geraldine Doogue

Australia’s former ambassador to China, Geoff Raby, takes the reader on a journey across Eurasia to understand the forces shaping today's geopolitics. Weaving his own travel stories, experiences and adventures into the fabric of his narrative, this is a grand canvas, written from the ground up.

George Megalogenis – Minority Report  Tuesday 26th November – In conversation with Sarah Macdonald

This is an essay about the teals, the Greens and the Coalition. In a contest between new and old, progressive and conservative, which vision of Australia will win out? But it’s also about Labor in power – is careful centrism the right strategy for the times, or is something more required?

Michael Visontay – Noble Fragments  Wednesday 27th November – In conversation with Caroline Baum

One hundred years ago, Gabriel Wells, a New York bookseller, committed a crime against history. He broke up the world’s greatest book, the Gutenberg Bible, and sold it off in individual pages. This is the story of an Australian man’s hunt for those fragments and his family’s debt to an act of literary vandalism.

John Brogden – Profiles in Hope  Friday 29th November – In conversation with Lynne Malcolm and Davina Smith

Every day, nine Australians take their own lives. Nineteen years ago, John Brogden came very close to adding his name to these statistics. But John survived and, since his recovery, he has become a passionate voice for mental health and suicide prevention.  Now, in Profiles in Hope, John has gathered together some incredible Australians to tell their stories. 

Chris Baker – Swimming Sydney  Tuesday 10th December – In conversation with Michaela Kalowski

A tale of 52 swims in and around Sydney that take place over a calendar year. From Palm Beach to Cronulla, Mount Druitt to Bondi,  at iconic beaches, municipal pools, harbour baths, and bushland lakes.  Taking his weekly plunges, Baker reflects on friendship, history and family, and how swimming can help us better understand ourselves. Chris will discuss this valentine to a beautiful obsession.

The Deep – From Sea to Sky  Thursday 12th December – Inga Simpson, David Dyer and James Bradley exploring the depths of the sea and sky,

Join three of Australia’s most acclaimed authors in a wonderful panel discussion as they explore the depths of the sea and sky, and reveal what they’ve discovered venturing far into the stars and under the waves, and what the deep can tell us about where we’re headed.