Join Michael Farrell at Better Read than Dead for the Sydney launch of The Victoria Principle, the award-winning poet’s first work of fiction.
The event will be hosted by Astrid Lorange. Copies of the book will be available for purchase on the night.
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DETAILS
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Thursday 5 June
From 6.30pm
Better Read Than Dead
265 King St, Newtown
Tickets:
https://www.betterreadevents.com/events/the-victoria-principle-michael-farrell
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ABOUT THE BOOK
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In The Victoria Principle, Michael Farrell extends the humour and narrative drive demonstrated in recent collections such as I Love Poetry and Googlecholia to the short story. The collection begins with a writer character trying to do literary justice to the fear of birds; other stories feature creative activity, such as the conceptual artist who deliberately boils an egg to Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, or the would-be writers who attend a nude retreat in Nova Scotia. There is pathos, too, in a storyteller’s relationship with his sister, and in that of a gay doctor with a straight Italian waiter, who is trying to make ends meet while supporting two children with two different women. The stories also revisit classical and popular myths, such as the judgement of Paris, and the life of Andy Gibb. The associations brought into play can be unexpected or absurd, but the process has its own logic: we may think of these fictions as meta-fictions, as ‘thought stories’ rather than short stories, offering inflections and reflections on queer Catholicism and mental breakdown, amidst the ongoing contradictions and ironies of contemporary Australian life.
Order here:
https://bit.ly/thevictoriaprinciple
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ABOUT MICHAEL FARRELL
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Michael Farrell was born in Bombala, NSW in 1965, and has lived in Melbourne since 1990. Michael has a PhD in literary studies from the University of Melbourne and is a practising artist, as well as a poet. Awards include the 2018 Judith Calanthe Queensland Literary Award for I Love Poetry, and the Peter Porter Poetry Prize for ‘Beautiful Mother’. Michael has performed and published internationally, and has been given residencies in Italy, Slovenia, Japan and China, as well as giving guest lectures in China and Chile.
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The book will also be launched in Melbourne on 6 May. Learn more here:
https://www.facebook.com/events/637596342475109/
Also check out other Arts events in Alexandria, Literary Art events in Alexandria.
