Book launch: The Comforting Weight of Water by Roanna McClelland

Book launch: The Comforting Weight of Water by Roanna McClelland

Please join us as the Hon. Julia Gillard, AC launches Roanna McClelland's debut novel, The Comforting Weight of Water.

Winner of the Arts South Australia Wakefield Press Unpublished Manuscript Award at the 2022 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature.

In a near future where it never stops raining, a young adolescent runs wild. With only the cantankerous Gammy and a band of terrified and broken villagers for company, The Comforting Weight of Water explores coming of age when society – and all its cues – has been washed away.

For the few survivors, questions of identity, nature, love, and fear are explored through the eyes of a child, against a backdrop of encroaching water.

Roanna McClelland is an emerging writer of fiction and non-fiction with a background spanning environmental policy, law, politics, media, and research. Her debut novel, The Comforting Weight of Water, won the Arts South Australia Wakefield Press Unpublished Manuscript Award in 2022. She is currently completing a PhD in environment and water law. Her work explores conceptualisations of climate, the environment, identity, and human nature in modern society.

Hon. Julia Gillard, AC was the 27th Prime Minister of Australia. She currently serves as the Chair of Beyond Blue, one of Australia’s leading mental health awareness bodies; is the inaugural Chair of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, which through research, practice and advocacy, is addressing women’s under-representation in leadership. In 2021 she was appointed as the Chair of Wellcome, a global charitable foundation which supports science to solve urgent health challenges. She was recently appointed to lead the Royal Commission into Early Childhood Education and Care in South Australia. Her second book Women and Leadership: Real Lives, Real Lessons is co-authored by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and was released in 2020. Her third book, Not Now, Not Ever – 10 years on from the misogyny speech, was released in October 2022.

RSVPs are essential for this free event.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

The Light Room, 63 Light Square, Adelaide, Australia