15/10/2020
Book #13, the great Joanne Fedler and The Creativity Couch special guest, does it again.
Bravo! 👍👊💃🏼
It is SIX DAYS until my new book, Unbecoming is thrust upon the unsuspecting public, ie all of you and the first title of mine and Karen McDermott's new imprint, Lusaris.
19 years ago, on that date, I arrived in Sydney, a hot mess, laden with two small children, a terrified, anxious immigrant.
Unbecoming is my 13th book, which feels like way too many words for any one person, but you should know - I have worked harder on this book than on any of my others. It is the most hard-won of all of my writing - I had to break and remake myself, lose people I love, wean myself off my children so they can fly into their own lives without too much ancestral baggage, and rewrite the plot three times to keep up with the quantum nature of unfolding events around us.
Lana Kanareck Hirschowitz, just finished it in anticipation of an interview, and wrote to me: 'your readers are recipients of the greatest gift - feeling heard and understood... (it's) the best account of letting go of (our children) I can remember.... I felt like we were on the same page, on the same sentence, fixated on the same word.' So that gives me hope that you'll love it. I mean, my wish is that you'll see your life represented honestly in these pages (whether you have kids or not - this book is for all women in their midlives).
Given Covidnall, launching is happening next Thursday 22 October at the wonderful bookshop Gertrude and Alice where I'll be chatting to Miriam Hechtman about the utter joys of menopause, the paradox of the empty nest, how grief becomes your most loyal companion and what it’s like to be a termagant (a quarrelsome, irascible, curmudgeonly shrewish woman – at last!) and other topics I write about in Unbecoming.
In-house seats are sold out, but there are plenty of ONLINE places.
We've timed it at 8pm in Sydney so that if you're in South Africa, it is 11am, to coincide perfectly with your mid-morning coffee break.
Proceeds will go to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation (so how good is that?) You can grab a ticket here https://www.eventbrite.com/.../an-evening-with-joanne...
If you have a podcast or would like to interview me, just PM me or contact my publicist Candice Meisels [email protected]
If you're in Sydney or the surrounds (an hour or two) and would like to organize a private 'launch' in your home for up to 10 friends, please email me [email protected] and we can organize that too.
