American Journeys with Don Watson

The Friends of the University of Adelaide Library invite you to a free public talk by Don Watson on Thursday 6 March 2008 at 6.00 for 6.30pm

Venue: Bragg Lecture Theatre, University of Adelaide [located at F5 on the North Terrace Campus map]

Australia's bestselling author Don Watson will talk about his recently published travel book, American journeys. The book investigates the meaning of the United States: its confidence, its religion, its heroes, its violence, and its material obsessions. The things that make America great are also its greatest flaws.

Don Watson is a Melbourne-based freelance writer with a PhD from Monash University. He has been a speechwriter for former Victorian Premier, John Cain, and has also served as speechwriter and adviser to former Prime Minister, Paul Keating until Keating's defeat in the 1996 election. In 2002 Watson's memoir of Keating's period in office, Recollections of a bleeding heart: a portrait of Paul Keating PM, was published, winning The Age Book of the Year Award.

Watson has written political satire for the theatre and television and his columns have appeared in all major Australian journals and newspapers. He was co-writer of the script of the feature film The Man Who Sued God, released in 2001.

In 2003 Watson published his best-selling Death sentence: the decay of public language; the sub-title of the American edition sums it up well: How clichés, weasel words and management-speak are strangling public language. The book was followed up by his Watson's dictionary of weasel words; both books urge us to renounce meaningless corporate and government jargon in favour of meaningful, precise language.

Don Watson was a guest at the 2004 Writers' Week where he gave two sessions on 5 March, one at 10.00am and a second session at 5.15pm. Don Watson will here again for Writers' Week 2008.

Bookings by Tuesday 4 March to:
Email: robina.weir@adelaide.edu.au
Telephone: 8303 4064

Admission is free and open to the public: gold coin donation invited.

Seating is limited.

Paul Wilkins
Deputy University Librarian
Barr Smith Library