Sport plays a huge part in Australian life and lore. Novelists Karen Viggers and Inga Simpson have taken on the topic in recent works. Join them as they compare notes and see how sporting words can be spellbinding off the field and on the page.
When a violent brawl erupts at a suburban junior soccer game, some onlookers are shocked. But others saw it coming. Rivalry, parental pressure, coaching bias, inequity, and many other factors have played a part in turning Saturday mornings into a pressure cooker.
Thirteen-year-old Audrey is a talented young football player. But does she want to play for Australia or does she just want to please her father, Ben, whose own thwarted sporting career looms large in his ambitions for his daughter? Audrey's mother, Jonica, doesn't know whether to be more concerned about her anxious daughter, her overbearing husband, or the only other girl on the team, Katerina, who is causing trouble on and off the field. And Katerina's mother, Carmen, is so busy looking for opportunities to give Katerina more game time that she fails to notice what is really capturing her daughter's attention.
“‘Sidelines’ is a riveting novel. It takes our jittery, intensely competitive era and unpicks our self-deceptions until they bleed.”
Reader Cricket Bats, one of the last traditional batmakers back in England, has a contemporary home in the Antipodes, with Allan Reader keeping the family business alive in a small workshop in Melbourne. When Todd Harrow, a gifted young batter, catches Allan's eye, a spark is lit and Allan decides to make a Reader bat for him, selecting the best piece of willow he's harvested in years to do so.
As Harrow charts a meteoric rise to the highest echelons of the sport, leaving his equally talented sister's dreams in his wake, Allan's magical bat takes centre stage as well, awakening something in him. But can Allan's fledgling renaissance – hanging as it does on the magic of that bat – carry on after Harrow is stricken by injury and a strained personal life?
“I bloody loved this – a gorgeous, heartbreaking examination of so much more than cricket.”
Tickets: $10 (entry only) // $40 (includes a discounted copy of Sidelines RRP $32.99)
Karen’s novels The Stranding, The Lightkeeper's Wife, The Grass Castle and The Orchardist's Daughter, explore themes including dying with dignity, displacement of First Peoples, wildlife conservation, clear-felling of native forests, and our relationship to the Australian landscape.
She is co-host of the Secrets From the Green Room podcast, in which she interviews writers and other bookish people about books, writing and green rooms. Her books have been translated into several languages and have enjoyed great success, in particular in France.
Inga Simpson began her career as a professional writer for government before gaining a PhD in creative writing. Her first novel, Mr Wigg came out of the Queensland Writers Centre Manuscript Development Program and Nest, Inga's second novel, was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Stella Prize and shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal. Inga's third novel, the acclaimed Where the Trees Were, was published in 2016.
Inga won the final Eric Rolls Prize for her nature writing and her account of her love of Australian nature and life with trees, Understory, was published in 2017. Her first book for children, The Book of Australian Trees, illustrated by Alicia Rogerson, was published in 2021. While finishing the first draft of The Last Woman in the World, Inga was evacuated twice as bushfires engulfed surrounding settlements. She lives near the coast among trees.
We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we live and work, and recognise their unbroken connection to country. We pay our respects to elders past and present, and are privileged to continue the tradition of storytelling in this place.