Memoir Club, 1 December 2015: Beth Yahp in conversation with Patti Miller

And Memoir Club End of Year Party! 

Tuesday, 1 December 2015, 5.30PM for 6.00-9.00PM

Entry $10/15. 
RSVP: memoirclubsydney@gmail.com

Dinner available: $15 for a delicious vegetarian plate. Text Rosada to book: 0450 907 422

Our last Memoir Club session for 2015, with founder Beth Yahp and one of our strongest supporters, Patti Miller, in conversation about Beth’s new memoir, Eat First, Talk Later.

 

This will also be a party to celebrate all things memoir and the community built and nourished by the Memoir Club for Readers and Writers as we go into recess for the summer.

Beth’s ‘beautifully crafted memoir of her ancestors, her parents, and herself is shaped around journeys criss-crossing the Malay Peninsula where her Siamese-speaking Eurasian mother and her Hakka Chinese father met and married in 1961’ (Hilary McPhee, Australian Book Review, November 2015).  

This memoir is a hybrid that takes us to surprising places and challenging ideas – a book about a road trip that is also a quest for family, nation, food and identity. While telling her parents’ story Beth presents a history of Malaysia, of race, politics, colonialism and independence, corruption and resistance – and more food! 

Eat First, Talk Later is evocative, funny, thoughtful, insightful, bursting with stories and anecdotes. Beth has a sure sense of structure, the writing is beautifully textured, and there’s a lot of lovely musing about memoir:

'Remember, you’re still following a feeling: a something you intuited at the beginning of your journey into your own life, and the life of your memory, and the memory of your family and country – or, more accurately, your countries. The feeling is there, now more than the faint scratching you started with, but still barely discernable, still travelling under your skin’s surface. '

 This evening is also an end of year celebration for the Memoir Club, to mark three years of our gathering to share in conversations around the reading and writing of memoir and other forms of life writing - and celebrate the wonderfully engaged, interested and generous community that has come together over the last three years!

Hope to see you there!

Beth Yahp is an award winning novelist who has also written for the stage and radio. Her first novel, The Crocodile Fury (1992), has been translated into several languages. She edited Family Pictures (1994), a book of essays about the many incarnations of family. Her libretto for composer Liza Lim’s opera Moon Spirit Feasting, won the APRA award for Best Classical Composition in 2003.  In 2010-2011 she presented the travel program Elsewhere on ABC Radio National. She completed a Doctor of Creative Arts at UTS in travel and memoir, and is a highly regarded teacher of writing who has taught in Paris, Malaysia and Sydney. Beth currently teaches in the MA in Creative Writing program at the University of Sydney. 

Patti Miller is a writer and teacher who has published two books on life writing, Writing Your Life (1994) and The Memoir Book (2007). Her other books include a novel and most recently, two books of narrative nonfiction, The Mind of a Thief (2012) and Ransacking Paris (2015). She is an experienced and much admired teacher of Life Writing, who runs writing retreats in Paris and Ubud as well as presenting courses in Sydney. She has also run special life writing workshops for indigenous groups, women’s refuges, environmental groups, migrants and refugees.  

Where: 60 Clovelly Road, Randwick 2031; $15/$10

Dinner: To book a plate of Rosada’s delicious vegetarian food, please TEXT her on 0450 907 422. 

Help Please: If you’re able to help with setting up, please come early – we also need help with clearing up, so please email Bindu Narula: bindunarula@hotmail.com if you can help. Thank you! 

Phone: 02-9398 5203 (for directions and venue info) Street parking available. Clovelly bus 339 on the doorstep. For how to get there, see: http://randwickliteraryinstitute.com.au/faqs/