Friends of the University of Adelaide Library
Past Events 2005
Gay Bilson
Clearing the Table
Thursday 17 November 2005
Gay Bilson, renowned restaurateur and writer, won the 2005 Age Book of the Year Award and the 2005 Kibble Award for women writers with her book Plenty: digressions on food . The Age judges commented that "Bilson's talent is to invite us into her rarefied world and make us feel at home. Effortlessly crossing the borders of memoir, philosophy, gastronomy, art criticism and social commentary, it is an expansive, generous and thoughtful book." Unibooks will have copies of Plenty on sale at the event.
Dr Mark Carroll
Our cultural revolution: The Ballets Russes in Australia
Tuesday 18 October 2005
Dr Mark Carroll, of the Elder School of Music, will speak about The Ballets Russes Research Project which he is leading, and the impact of the Ballets Russes Australian tours 1936-1940 on Australian arts and society. The Ballets Russes tours exposed Australian audiences to cutting edge high art of the kind scarcely seen here previously, including choreographies by Massine, music by Stravinsky and decors by
Picasso. The impact of the tours was long-lasting: they inspired a generation of Australian artists. For example, a young Sidney Nolan created the set and costume design for one of the performances in 1940, and the tours led ultimately to the establishment of The Australian Ballet in 1962. The Company gave its first performance in Adelaide.
Exciting discoveries in the Barr Smith Library are supporting Dr. Carroll's research, and contemporary materials from the Special Collections of the Library will be on display.
Nicholas Jose
Recovering Australian literature
Scoping a new Anthology of Australian Writing
Thursday 15 September 2005
London-born Nicholas
Jose was recently appointed Professor of Creative Writing at the University
of Adelaide. Following a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford, he has had an international
career, including Cultural Counsellor for the Australian Embassy in Beijing 1987-90.
He has a wide readership for his novels, including Paper nautilus and The Custodians,
as well as for his accounts of travel in Australia and Asia. Professor Jose is
scoping a new anthology of Australian literature for PEN International, the Australian
Academy of the Humanities and Macquarie University.
First speaker for 2005 - Tim Flannery
Thursday, 5 May
Tim Flannery, Director of the South Australian Museum and an Affiliate Professor
at the University of Adelaide, is always stimulating, often provocative and sometimes
controversial. Dr Flannery is one of Australia's most in demand speakers on cultural,
scientific and environmental issue. He is author and editor of more than 20 books,
in addition to scholarly papers and reviews. His ecological history of Australasian
lands The Future Eaters is one of the best-selling non-fiction books in Australian
book selling history and won The Age Book of the Year Award, Non-Fiction Prize,
in 1995. The Eternal Frontier is a further ecological history of North America.
Flannery's pioneering research as a field biologist in New Guinea prompted Sir
David Attenborough to say of him:"Tim Flannery is in the league of the all-time
great explorers like Dr David Livingstone." He is the Australasian representative
for the National Geographic Society.
In 1998-9 he held the Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University. In 2002
he was invited to give the Australia Day address to the nation.
Past Events 2004
August - Sean Williams
Thursday 26 August 2004 6 for 6.30 PM Ira Raymond Exhibition
Room Barr Smith Library
New York Times best-selling South Australian speculative fiction
author Sean Williams
will speak on Writing in the Waste Land. Sean has
sixty published short stories to his name and fifteen novels, including
the Books of the Change and (with Shane Dix) the Evergence and Orphans
trilogies. He has co-written three books in the Star Wars: New Jedi
Order series and is a multiple recipient of both the Ditmar and
Aurealis Awards. He is currently working on a new fantasy series,
the Books of the Cataclysm, and Geodesica, a new space opera diptych.
He has been Chair of the SA Writers' Centreand he also DJs in his
spare time. If you are not already a fan, visit Sean's
web page for details of his books and lots of fascinating insights
and opinions which promise a very stimulating author event.
RSVP by Monday 23 August to Patricia Hawke via email
or phone 8303 4064.
Novemer - Jack Turner
Thursday 18 November 2004 6 for 6.30 PM Ira Raymond Exhibition
Room Barr Smith Library.
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Jack Turner was born in Sydney, Australia,
in 1968. He received his B.A. in Classical Studies from Melbourne
University and his Ph.D. in International Relations from Oxford,
where he was a Rhodes Scholar and MacArthur Foundation Junior
Research Fellow. He lives with his wife, Helena, and their son
in Geneva. His first book Spice has been a publishing success
with rave reviews. According to one reviewer
“What Turner does in Spice is to conduct a sort of retrospective
focus group with ancient and medieval consumers. By combing
through literature, historical records, diaries, and archaeological
evidence, he shows how
people viewed spices (costly, exotic, sexy, dangerous) and what
they were willing to risk to get them (money, life, war, hell).”
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Spice is available from Unibooks $32.95 with 10% discount for cash/EFTPOS.
RSVP by Tuesday 16 November to Patricia Hawke via email
or phone 8303 4064.
Unibooks Sean Williams competition
Unibooks will be running
a competition to promote this occasion in their University of
Adelaide store. If you buy any science fiction or fantasy book then
you get the opportunity to win Sean's new book, "The Crooked
Letter" and the complete "Change" Trilogy. There
are 2nd, 3rd, and 4th prizes as well: each of these runners-up will
receive 1 copy of "The Crooked Letter." The competition
will run until the 31st of August.
There will also be a special 30% discount offer on “The Crooked
Letter” at the Friends event and a 10% discount on Sean’s
other titles. Sean will be happy to sign your copies of his work
All chapter programs are promoted on the e-newsletter.
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the University of Adelaide Library
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