Patti Miller - The Joy of High Places Book Launch

Join us for the launch of Patti Miller's new book The Joy of High Places, a  soaring memoir of longing, resilience and delight in the natural world.  To be launched by celebrated Australian poet, essayist and teacher, Mark Tredinnick.

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About the Book

In this extraordinary and unexpected book, Patti tells the story of her own long-distance walking over hundreds of kilometres in Europe and of her brother’s life-changing obsession with paragliding.

As adults, a tragic accident changes their relationship. One day, Barney’s wing collapses and he plummets to earth, breaking his spine. The story of his struggle to walk again intersects Patti’s long-distance journeys, creating an intense narrative of determination and triumph.

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For Patti, walking is a radical act – a return to what has made us all human — that bestows a connection to wild nature and to creativity it self. But as she listens to her pragmatic and methodical brother tell his story, she learns that flying is his door to untrammelled joy too. She realises that she is ‘meeting’ him for the very first time.

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Praise

"Each time I opened this book, I felt as though I was returning to a wise and true friend. Patti Miller captures the pleasures of the body, the joy of landscape, the thrill of knowing and being known. More than that, she unpacks the mysteries of memory, and the way we carry our past into our present. I loved it." — Kathryn Heyman, author of Storm and Grace.

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About the Author

Patti Miller is an award winning writer as well as tutor and mentor of other writers. She is the author of eight books – non fiction, memoir and fiction as well as writing texts. She also features in three collections and has contributed articles, essays, stories and interviews to numerous literary magazines and newspapers, including Southerly, Mattoid, H.Q, The Melbourne Age, The Australian, Good Reading Magazine, SMH’s The Good Weekend, SMH’s Spectrum, The Guardian (UK), Asia Literary Review, Christchurch Press, Island, Art Monthly, Eureka St, Look, Mama Mia, SA Weekend Magazine, Adelaide Advertiser, Bonjour Paris, Brisbane Courier Mail and Meanjin.

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Patti began teaching Writing at University of Technology Sydney in 1984 and then Writing and Literary Studies at University of Western Sydney the following year. She teaches extensively, including for Better Read Literary Tours, where you can study the art and joy of memoir writing with Patti in Paris this October. Click here for more information.