Love and Friendship

Sat 8 Sep 2018

Sally Piper + Bridie Jabour + Helen Jukes (UK)

Festival Hub, Maiwar Green

Relationships / Romance

305

#Performances

#About the event

Duration: 60 minutes

Bridie Jabour: The Way Things Should Be

Claudia is getting married in a week. Well, she’s 85% sure she is getting married in a week. Maybe 75%… First, she must return home to spend the week with her siblings Zoe, Phinn and Poppy who, despite their best intentions, are quick to return to long-established battle lines.

The arrival of her best friend Nora, desperately trying to keep her own demons quiet, does nothing to soothe the possessive sisters. Meanwhile, their parents George and Rachel, long estranged from each other, are struggling with how different their children turned out to what they’d imagined. Taller, maybe?

The Way Things Should Be is a warm, funny and genuine novel about the conflicting joys and disappointments of millennials. It explores the complex relationships between parents and adult children, what we expect and what actually receive, and the complicated terrain that is the relationships with our siblings, best friends, and ourselves.

Sally Piper: Geography of Friendship

When three young women set off on a hike through the wilderness they are anticipating the adventure of a lifetime. Over the next five days, as they face up to the challenging terrain, it soon becomes clear they are not alone and the freedom they feel quickly turns to fear. Only when it is too late for them to turn back do they fully appreciate the danger they are in. As their friendship is tested, each girl makes an irrevocable choice; the legacy of which haunts them for years to come.

Now in their forties, Samantha, Lisa and Nicole are estranged, but decide to revisit their original hike in an attempt to salvage what they lost. As geography and history collide, they are forced to come to terms with the differences that have grown between them and the true value of friendship.

Helen Jukes: The Honeybee Heart has Five Openings

A fascinating, insightful and inspiring account of a novice beekeeper's year of keeping honeybees.

Chair: Alex Adsett

#Artists

Sally Piper

Sally Piper is a Brisbane-based writer. Her debut novel, Grace’s Table (UQP 2014), was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards - Emerging Queensland Author category and she was awarded a Varuna Publishing Fellowship for her manuscript. She holds a Master of Arts (Research) in Creative Writing from Queensland University of Technology. Sally is an active member of the Queensland Writers Centre and currently presents workshops and seminars for them and mentors other writers on their ‘Writer’s Surgery’ program.

Her short fiction and non-fiction has appeared in various print and online publications, to include an award-winning short story in the inaugural One Book Many Brisbanes anthology, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Saturday Paper, The Weekend Australian, WQ, Quality Women’s Fiction (UK), Peninsular Magazine (UK) and Writer’s Forum (UK).

The Geography of Friendship (UQP 2018) is her second novel. Since publication in July, The Geography of Friendship has received favourable reviews across several major media outlets and was selected by The Australian Women’s Weekly as their ‘Great Read’ for July. The Geography of Friendship and Grace's Table will be published by Legend Press (UK) in 2019.

Bridie Jabour

Bridie Jabour is assistant news editor at the Guardian where she has written commentary on social affairs, feminism and pop culture. She has reported on federal and state politics and appears regularly on ABC's The Drum, Triple J's Hack, ABC Weekend Breakfast and Sky News.

She has a Walkley in her house but it does not have her name on it.

Her debut novel is The Way Things Should Be.

Helen Jukes (UK)

Helen Jukes is a writer, beekeeper, and writing tutor. Her writing has appeared in Caught by the River, BBC Wildlife, Resurgence, Backroad Journal, The Junket, and LITRO. She tutors on the creative writing programme at Oxford University, and also with the Bee Friendly Trust, a London-based charity founded by beekeeper Luke Dixon to promote our understanding of honeybees and help nurture sustainable habitats.

She lives in the Welsh Marches, UK.

#Moderator

Alex Adsett

Alex Adsett is a literary agent specialising in genre fiction, as well as a freelance publishing consultant offering commercial contract advice to authors and publishers. She has more than eighteen years experience working in the publishing and bookselling industry and has managed Alex Adsett Publishing Services since 2008. As a consultant, Alex helps authors and publishers negotiate publishing contracts in line with industry standards. As a literary agent, she is focused on finding exceptional manuscripts for adults, young adults and childrens. Alex represents a select stable of authors including Maria Lewis, Gary Kemble, Jodi McAlister, Shannon Horsfall, and Kylie Chan.