In Conversation: Helen Garner and Merve Emre

Join celebrated author Helen Garner in conversation with literary critic and contributing writer at The New Yorker, Merve Emre, as they reflect on her fourth non-fiction book The Season.

The Season is an account of Garner's grandson's season playing football in the western suburbs of Melbourne and, at its heart, it's a meditation on love from a grandmother in her early eighties.

Garner's devotion to the under-16s team offers her a chance to connect with her youngest grandchild, Amby. To be close to him before he rushes headlong into manhood, to witness his triumphs and defeats, to fear for his safety in battle, to gasp and cheer for his team as it fights for a place in the finals.

She knows she won't live to see his life unfold. Amby is the last of Helen's three grandchildren, the youngest, and he will long survive her. The Season is a moving celebration of her grandson, of nobility, of the grit of team spirit; and acts a reflection of the nature of masculinity today.

Don't miss the chance to hear Garner and Emre unpack the experiences explored in hew newest work, and discuss The Season's place in the arc of her career.

The conversation will be followed by a Q&A.

Presented by the Western Australian Museum, Foundation for the WA Museum and Forrest Research Foundation.      

About the Speakers

Helen Garner is one of Australia’s most loved authors whose novels and works of non-fiction include The Season, Monkey Grip, The Children's Bach, The First Stone and This House of Grief. Her long list of accolades includes the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature, the Windham-Campbell Prize, an Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature, and the ASA Medal.

Dr Merve Emre is the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University. Her books include Paraliterary, The Personality Brokers and The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway. She is a contributing writer at The New Yorker and has judged the International Booker Prize.