Memoir Club Upcoming Events: Reading at the RLI Arts Festival 29 November and Beth Yahp in conversation with Patti Miller, Tuesday 1 December 2015 - our last session for the year!

Memoir Club Reading at the

Randwick Literary Institute Arts Festival 2015

Sunday, 29 November 2015, 2.00-4.00PM

60 Clovelly Road, Randwick 2031; free event

Members of the Sydney Memoir Club, family, friends, lovers of the Arts! Join us at the Annual RLI Arts Festival for an afternoon of literary delight! A number of talented local writers will be reading excerpts of their work as part of this celebration of creativity and community. In addition to the readings, there will be art and craft stalls, and café style food and beverages. Come along and enjoy the festivities! Please RSVP to Jessica: jesskirkness@hotmail.com

Beth Yahp in conversation with Patti Miller,

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 - text Rosada for a delicious vegetarian plate: 0450 907 422

Do join us at the Randwick Literary Institute for 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. 

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/