Bayside Literary Festival
May
27
10:00 AM10:00

Bayside Literary Festival

  • Highett Neighbourhood Community House (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Bayside Library Service in conjunction with Highett Neighbourhood Community House invites readers and writers to come together for a day of discussions, workshops and presentations with authors such as Sian Prior, Sofie Laguna, A.S. Patric and Stuart Kells. Local authors will be showcasing their work and books will be available to purchase on the day.

Bayside Literary Festival Program (PDF, 2.04MB)

Come along and enjoy a day of literary immersion and bookish fun. Leigh will be appearing from 4-5 pm on a panel discussion The dark side. How do you write believable crime fiction? Alongside Vikki Petraitis, Anna George and Anne Buist.

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The 2017 Ned Kelly Awards
Sep
1
6:00 PM18:00

The 2017 Ned Kelly Awards

Join us for a criminally good evening of storytelling, prizes and laughter at the annual Ned Kelly Awards. Hosted by Jane Clifton, the Ned Kelly Awards celebrates Australia’s finest crime writing with awards for the best Crime Fiction, First Crime Fiction, True Crime and the S.D Harvey Short Story Award.

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Sister's in Crime Davitt Awards
Aug
26
7:30 PM19:30

Sister's in Crime Davitt Awards

This year, 99 books written by Australian women and published in 2016 are competing for the Davitts. The six categories are: Best Adult Crime Novel, Best Young Adult Crime Novel, Best Children’s Crime Novel, Best Non-fiction Book, Best Debut Book (any category) and Readers’ Choice (as voted by the members of Sisters in Crime).

Frock up and come to see the multi-talented Hilary Bonney present Sisters in Crime’s 17th Davitt Awards for the best crime books by Australian women. Prior to the presentations, she will discuss her own life in crime with Professor Sue Turnbull, Sisters in Crime’s ambassador.

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The 2016 Ned Kelly Awards
Aug
28
4:00 PM16:00

The 2016 Ned Kelly Awards

 

Don’t miss the 21st Ned Kelly Awards, celebrating the best in Australian crime writing. Enjoy the awards ceremony, live storytelling, live music from The Hired Guns, door prizes and an open bar, all tied together by MC Jane Clifton. Guests include Leigh Redhead, Vikki Petraitis, QC Phil Dunn and Vic Police ex-Purana taskforce boss, Jim O’Brien.

Doors and bar open 3.30pm for pre-event drinks. Limited seating with plenty of standing room available. 18+ event, ID may be requested.

Supported by the Australian Crime Writers Association

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Jul
10
9:30 AM09:30

Crime Fiction and Community

The University of Edinburgh is holding a crime fiction conference and I'll be presenting this paper: Hardboiled and Loaded with Sin: Investigating Sex Worker Sleuth.

In the early 2000s, coinciding with the emergence of the subgenre known as Tart Noir, a number of crime novels emerged with strippers, porn stars and prostitutes as protagonists. Authors such as Christa Faust, Jenny Scholten, Sara Gran and myself appropriated the conventions of hard boiled, noir and feminist detective fiction to create investigative characters who were current or former sex workers. While the PI is traditionally an outsider, the sex worker investigator is doubly so. This paper will examine how these transgressive characters navigate and problematise concerns about class and gender within the stratified communities in which they operate, and how these texts speak to various feminist and post-feminist debates in relation to sex work, female objectification and agency.

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Jun
25
to Jun 27

Captivating Criminality Crime Fiction, Traditions and Transgressions.

I'll be presenting a paper at Bath Spa University called: Féministes Fatales: The Transgressive Women of Contemporary Noir.

Authors including Megan Abbott, Gillian Flynn and Annie Hauxwell are writing ugly, misanthropic, morally compromised and eminently realistic characters who expose femininity as performance. They are neither the garden variety femme fatale, nor the earnest, heroic feminist protagonist of the seventies and eighties. I will argue that noir, with its sense of alienation, entrapment, paranoia, and its facility for critiquing social, cultural and economic ideology, is the perfect genre through which to explore contemporary discourses on third wave and ‘post’ feminism and to accurately reflect the complexity of female experience.

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Jun
15
to Jun 16

Interdisciplinary Approaches to 'Setting the Scene': Representation of Rurality in Crime Fiction and Media Culture

I'll be presenting a conference paper at Queens University Belfast, titled: Dead Hearts and Lonely Roads: Australian Rural Noir.

This paper will investigate Australian rural noir through a comparative textual analysis of Kenneth Cooke’s Wake in Fright, Chris Womersley’s The Low Road, and Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites. It will consider the ways in which Australian rural noir uses landscape to subvert the pastoral paradigm and will examine the tensions between the exterior landscape and the interior life of the protagonists. Finally, it will reflect on the particularly Australian cultural anxieties implicit in these texts.

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Death in July
Jul
4
to Jul 5

Death in July

Ballarat writers and Sisters in Crime have got together to produce Death in July. The festival is a celebration of Australian women’s crime writing and is sure to get your blood pumping!

A stellar line up of authors will appear at the festival to speak on a fascinating range of topics including “the CSI effect” and YA crime writing. Guest writers include Leigh Redhead, Angela Savage, Honey Brown, Ellie Marney, Simmone Howell and many more. See the program for a full list of authors and events.

The festival will be held at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka across the weekend of 4 – 5 July, starting with a lovely launch evening on the Friday night featuring a keynote from guest author Angela Savage.

See the Ballarat Writers Inc website for details.

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Author talk at The Reading Room, Fitzroy Town Hall
May
7
7:00 PM19:00

Author talk at The Reading Room, Fitzroy Town Hall

Leigh Redhead is an Australian mystery writer who is best known as the creator of the intelligent, vivacious and sexy character, Simone Kirsch, a stripper who leaves the sex industry to become a private investigator. Hear how Leigh drew upon her own experiences as a stripper, waitress and check-out chick in writing her books. Presented in partnership with the PLVN and State Library of Victoria's High Road to Reading program.

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Author talk at St Kilda Library
May
6
6:30 PM18:30

Author talk at St Kilda Library

Leigh is best known as the creator of the intelligent, vivacious and sexy Simone Kirsch, a stripper who leaves the sex industry to become a private investigator. Hear how Leigh drew on her own experience as a stripper, waitress and 'check-out chick' (you name it, the dodgier the better!) in writing her books.

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