Virtual Talk: A Bloody Good Rant with Tom Keneally
Date & Time
Prolific author Tom Keneally joins us via Zoom to share his passions, memories and demons.
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER & RECEIVE ZOOM DETAILS
Free online event – everyone welcome!
The Tom Keneally Centre
Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts is proud to be the home of the Tom Keneally Centre, Thomas Keneally’s living legacy to Australia, which holds his research collection as well as copies of his own works and some items from his private collection of photographs and memorabilia.
SMSA Members can borrow books from this collection, and the space is also available for venue hire.
Currently closed to the public due to COVID capacity restrictions, we look forward to reopening the Tom Keneally Centre in February 2022.
Image: Author Thomas Keneally, photo by David Mariuz
Virtual Talk: A Bloody Good Rant with Tom Keneally
Thomas Keneally has been observing, reflecting on and writing about Australia and the human condition for well over fifty years. In this talk, Tom draws on a lifetime of engagement with the great issues of our recent history and his own moments of discovery and understanding, to share with us his passions, memories and demons.
In his latest book, A Bloody Good Rant, Tom has written with unbounded joy of being a grandparent, and with intimacy and insight about the prospect of death and the meaning of faith. He is outraged about the treatment of Indigenous Australians and refugees, and argues fiercely against market economics and the cowardice of climate change deniers. And he introduces us to some of the people who have dappled his life.
Join Tom via Zoom for this special event – a chance to hear from and ask questions of the great man behind some of Australia’s most treasured literary works.
Free online event – everyone welcome!
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER & RECEIVE ZOOM DETAILS
About Thomas Keneally
Thomas Keneally is a truly great Australian. He was born in 1935 and is one of the country’s finest writers.
As well as his many novels, he has published a number of histories including his three-volume series Australians. His novels include The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Schindler’s Ark (known as Schindler’s List to many) and The Dickens Boy.
He has won the Miles Franklin Award, the Booker Prize, the Los Angeles Book Prize, the Royal Society of Literature Prize, the Scripter Award of the University of Southern California, the Mondello International Prize and the Helmerich Prize. He lives in Sydney with his wife Judy.
About the Book
Following a lifetime observing Australia and its people, Tom Keneally turns inwards to reflect on what has been important to him.
‘When I was born in 1935 I grew up, despite the Depression and World War II, with a primitive sense of being fortunate . . . The utopian strain was very strong . . . if we weren’t to be a better society, if we were simply serfs designed to support a system of privilege, what was the bloody point?’
Thomas Keneally has been observing, reflecting on and writing about Australia and the human condition for well over fifty years. In this deeply personal, passionately drawn and richly tuned collection he draws on a lifetime of engagement with the great issues of our recent history and his own moments of discovery and understanding.
He writes with unbounded joy of being a grandparent, and with intimacy and insight about the prospect of death and the meaning of faith. He is outraged about the treatment of Indigenous Australians and refugees, and argues fiercely against market economics and the cowardice of climate change deniers. And he introduces us to some of the people, both great and small, who have dappled his life.
Beautifully written, erudite and at times slyly funny, A Bloody Good Rant is an invitation to share the deep humanity of a truly great Australian.
You can purchase Tom’s book from Abbey’s Bookshop. We’ll also make a copy available for borrowing from the SMSA Library.
The Tom Keneally Centre
Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts is proud to be the home of the Tom Keneally Centre, Thomas Keneally’s living legacy to Australia, which holds his research collection as well as copies of his own works and some items from his private collection of photographs and memorabilia.
SMSA Members can borrow books from this collection, and the space is also available for venue hire.
Currently closed to the public due to COVID capacity restrictions, we look forward to reopening the Tom Keneally Centre in February 2022.