MONA: Women of Letters … and People of Letters

Rebecca Fitzgibbon Events Media Manager Museum of Old and New Art
The written letter. Crisp pages creased by careful fingers. The heady scent of ink. Probably a dried splotch of merlot. And all those gorgeous words. Oh yeah, go ahead and swoon, you sapiosexual, you.

Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire are bringing their literary salon to Hobart town: the acclaimed and entirely stimulating ‘Women of Letters’.
WOMEN OF LETTERS
& PEOPLE OF LETTERS
AT MONA
SEPT 8 & 9, 2013
Since its inception in 2010, Women of Letters has become an Australian literary institution and the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart is a bit tickled to be playing host to the Tasmanian premiere of Women of Letters and People of Letters on September 8 and 9, 2013.

Spearheaded by wordsmiths Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire, Women of Letters has performed sold-out events in Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra, Darwin, Brisbane, Sydney, Byron Bay and Newcastle. In 2011 Penguin Australia published a first collection of the letters from the events which went on to be a bestseller, with a second volume released in 2012 and a third due at the end of this year.

The events and the books have featured some of Australia’s finest and most popular writers, actors, musicians, politicians and entertainers, including award-winning writer Helen Garner, Oscar-winning filmmaker Adam Elliot and internationally acclaimed musician Paul Kelly writing charmingly on topics as diverse as ‘A letter to my first boss’ and ‘A letter to the best present I ever received’. In March 2013, Women of Letters staged its first international tour – a run of three critically acclaimed shows in Los Angeles, New York and Austin, Texas as part of the South by South West festival.

All of the funds raised from Women of Letters, including the royalties from both books, go to Edgar’s Mission, an animal rescue shelter outside of Melbourne (to date, Women of Letters have raised over $350,000 for Edgar’s). Needless to say, we’re thrilled to have them at Mona. Yep, it’s official: you’ve got mail.

WOMEN OF LETTERS
SUNDAY 8 SEPTEMBER 2013
2.30 – 4.30 PM
EROS & THANATOS ROOMS, MONA, HOBART
$20 / $15 +BF from www.mona.net.au/what’s-on/events.aspx
TOPIC “A letter to the advice I should have taken”
SPEAKERS

KABITA DHARA is director and publisher at Melbourne-based publishing house Brass Monkey Books, specialising in fiction from India and non-fiction that engages with the Australia–India relationship.

POSIE GRAEME-EVANS is an Australian author and the creator of ‘McLeod’s Daughters’ and ‘High-5’.

MISSY HIGGINS is an ARIA Award-winning Australian singer-songwriter, musician and actress with a social and environmental conscience.

LOUISE SAUNDERS is the long-time presenter of 936 ABC Hobart’s Drive program; a journalist who has covered politics, royal visits, court cases, public events, and much in between.

MARIA VENUTI AM is an Australian actress and singer, known for her roles in ‘Stupid Stupid Man’, Pizza’ and ‘Always Greener’.

ALISON WHYTE is a Tasmanian-born Logie and Helpmann Award winning actor, starring in TV series ‘Frontline,’ ‘Satisfaction’ and more recently, ‘The Bloody Chamber’ at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre.

HOST
Michaela McGuire is a columnist and writer whose first book, ‘Apply Within: Stories of Career Sabotage’, was published in 2009. She writes a weekly political blog for The Monthly and her second book of non-fiction will be published by Melbourne University Press in 2014.

PEOPLE OF LETTERS
MONDAY 9 SEPTEMBER
6.30 – 8.30 PM
EROS & THANATOS ROOMS, MONA, HOBART
$20 / $15 +BF from www.mona.net.au/what’s-on/events.aspx
TOPIC “A letter to the thing I wish I’d written”

SPEAKERS

PINKY BEECROFT is an award-winning Australian singer-songwriter and performer, lead singer of the bands Machine Gun Fellatio and The White Russians, and a MOFO regular.

PAUL DEMPSEY is an award-winning Australian musician, best known as the lead singer, guitarist and principal songwriter of Australian rock group Something for Kate.

DEWAYNE EVERETTSMITH is an Indigenous Tasmanian singer songwriter with contemporary soul who has toured internationally and become the voice of Tourism Australia’s international marketing campaign.

MARIA GRENFELL is an Australian/New Zealand composer and Coordinator of Composition at the University of Tasmania’s Conservatorium of Music. Her work takes influences from poetic, literary and visual sources and from non-Western music and literature.

LALLY KATZ is an award-winning American dramatist now resident in Australia ,whose postmodern and absurdist plays include the recent ‘Stories I Want to Tell You In Person’.

MICHAEL VEITCH is a comedian, author and broadcaster widely known for his quick wit on sketch comedy TV shows such as ‘D-Generation’ and ‘Fast Forward’.

DANIELLE WOOD is the Vogel and Dobbie award-winning Tasmanian author of ‘The Alphabet of Light and Dark’, ‘Deep South: Stories from Tasmania’ and ‘Finding Serendipity’, among others.

HOST
Mchaela McGuire is a columnist and writer whose first book, ‘Apply Within: Stories of Career Sabotage’, was published in 2009. She writes a weekly political blog for The Monthly and her second book of non-fiction will be published by Melbourne University Press in 2014.
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MONA
Museum of Old and New Art
655 Main Rd, Berriedale, Tasmania
Ph 61 3 6277 9900
www.mona.net.au

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INTERVIEWS
Women of Letters co-founders Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire are available are available for interview. More info: www.womenofletters.com.au