Molly Murn

Join us for an evening with Molly Murn in-conversation with author Meredith Jaffe discussing Molly's debut novel, Heart of the Grass Tree.

About the Book

Pearl remembers Nell’s feet stretched towards the campfires on the beach, her fourth toe curled in and nestled against the middle toe like a small prawn. They all have a curled fourth toe – Diana, Lucy, Pearl.

When Pearl’s grandmother Nell dies unexpectedly, Pearl and her family – mother Diana, sister Lucy – return to Kangaroo Island to mourn and farewell her. Each of them knew Nell intimately but differently, and each woman must reckon with Nell’s passing in her own way. But Nell had secrets, too, and as Pearl, Diana and Lucy interrogate their feelings about the island, Pearl starts to pull together the scraps Nell left behind – her stories, poems, paintings – and unearths a connection to the island’s early history, of the early European sealers and their first contact with the Ngarrindjeri people.

As the three women are in grief pulled apart from each other, Pearl’s deepening connection to their history, the island’s history, grounds her, and will ultimately bring the women back to each other.

Heart of the Grass Tree is an exquisite, searing and hope-filled debut about mothers and daughters and family stories, about country and its living history.

Praise

"Heart of the Grass Tree is a brilliant achievement. A strange and compelling story that held me in thrall from the first page to the last. ” - Alex Miller, twice winner of the Miles Franklin Award.

"Molly Murn has created a gorgeously lyrical story of love, family and belonging set against the landscape and history of Kangaroo Island." - Hannah Kent, author of Burial Rites, and The Good People.

About Molly

Molly Murn is a South Australian author and poet. She holds a Bachelor of Dance, a Masters of Creative Arts, and is currently a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at Flinders University. Molly also works as a bookseller at Matilda Bookshop in the Adelaide Hills. Heart of the Grass Tree, is her first novel. Molly’s poetry has been published in various anthologies including Overland, Transnational Literature and Friendly Street. She lives in the Adelaide Hills and loves to tango, read, walk, listen to records, and spend time in wild places. For more, see: https://mollymurn.com

About Meredith

Meredith Jaffé is the author of two published works of fiction, The Fence (2016) and The Making of Christina (2017). She is the Festival Director for StoryFest held on the NSW South Coast and regularly facilitates at other writers’ festivals, literary lunches and author events. For four years she wrote the weekly literary column The Bookshelf for the online women’s magazine The Hoopla. Her reviews, author interviews, feature articles and opinion pieces have appeared in The Hoopla, Australian Author, the Guardian Australia, The Huffington Post and Mamamia.