Michelle de Kretser in-conversation with Belinda Castles

It’s 1986, and ‘beautiful, radical ideas’ are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda she meets artists, activists, students—and Kit. He claims to be in a ‘deconstructed’ relationship, and they become lovers. Meanwhile, her work on the Woolfmother falls into disarray.

Theory & Practice is a mesmerising account of desire and jealousy, truth and shame. It makes and unmakes fiction as we read, expanding our notion of what a novel can contain.

Michelle de Kretser, one of Australia’s most celebrated writers, bends fiction, essay and memoir into exhilarating new shapes to uncover what happens when life smashes through the boundaries of art.

Our event space is wheelchair accessible via a stair lift. For any other accessibility questions, please email events@betterread.com.au.

Michelle de Kretser was born in Sri Lanka. She lives in Warrane/Sydney on unceded Gadigal land. An honorary associate of the English Department at the University of Sydney, she has won several awards for her fiction. Theory & Practice is her seventh novel.

Belinda Castles is the author of four novels and winner of the Australian/Vogel’s and Asher literary awards, as well as being named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Novelists. Her most recent novel, Bluebottle, was long-listed for the Stella Prize. She is the editor of the collection Reading like an Australian Writer and is working on a fifth novel and a book about walks with writers in Sydney. She has taught writing in Australia and the UK and is currently a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Sydney.