Name: The Creative Spirit: Weaving Tales of Women’s Originality, Survival and Love
Start: 2023-10-22T09:00:00+11:00
End: 2023-10-22T21:55:00+11:00
Location: Room 2

The Creative Spirit: Weaving Tales of Women’s Originality, Survival and Love

22 October 2023 | 9:00 am - 9:55 pm

Sally Colin-James’, Lauren Chater’s and Emma Harcourt’s recent books feature women with creative spirits who must struggle to foster and maintain that spark. Felicity Pulman will discuss why it can be dangerous for women to be free thinking, the inspiration for the authors’ characters, and the research needed to understand the artistic or intellectual lives of women in past centuries.

All plenary sessions, interviews and panels are included in your weekend conference ticket. There’s no need to reserve a seat in individual sessions.

About Sally Colin-James

An Australian Postgraduate Award scholarship for a PhD in professional writing inspired Sally Colin-James to depart her corporate communications career and write full time. Her debut novel, One Illumined Thread, won the HNSA Colleen McCullough Residency Award, the Varuna PIP Fellowship Award and a placement with the Australian Writers Mentoring program. She has been the recipient of the Byron Writers Festival Mentorship Award and her work was shortlisted from 2,000 entries across 54 countries for the international 2021 First Pages Prize.

About Lauren Chater

Lauren Chater is the author of three historical novels – The Lace Weaver (2018), Gulliver’s Wife (2020) and The Winter Dress (2022), published by Simon & Schuster. In 2018 she was awarded a grant by the Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund to visit The Netherlands for research. She is currently working on her fourth novel, The Beauties.

About Emma Harcourt

Emma is an author, researcher and journalist. She’s worked for the BBC, CNN, SBS, News Ltd and the Financial Times Group. Her best decision was committing to writing historical fiction and her first book, The Shanghai Wife was published in 2018. Her second book, The Brightest Star came out in July. She also reviews books for the weekend Australian literary pages, works part-time as the head of content strategy for a subscription-based media company and, most importantly, is trying to finish her third historical fiction.