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What powers of perception, reflection and remembering are needed to craft a truly great memoir? And what tools can life writers use to extend memoir beyond memory to create literature that challenges, inspires and speaks to our times?Drawing on 50 years at the front line of the environmental movement, Bob Brown’s Defiance gathers stories of nature's defenders, shares reflections on the people and places that have shaped him, and makes the case that courage, persistence and community can still win.
Author Debra Dank has penned two illuminating and at times devastating memoirs about family, culture and the Gudanji Country to which she belongs: Ankami and the multi-award-winning We Come with This Place.
In Mother Shadow, journalist Cynthia Banham uncovers a family secret — that her great-grandmother was not an orphan but a foundling, abandoned by an unwed mother; she follows the trail across continents and generations to reckon with what it means to mother, and be mothered, on your own terms.
Together, these acclaimed writers reflect on how the craft of memoir can illuminate both oneself and the society in which we live.
KEY INFO
Date: Sunday, 1 November 2026
Time: 11:30-12:30pm
Venue: Tibbi Whalan Hall
Tickets & More Info: https://www.bluemountainswritersfestival.com.au/events/how-to-write-a-life
Bob Brown is an acclaimed author, philosopher and green activist. His earlier books include Wild Rivers, Lake Pedder, Tarkine Trails, The Greens, Memo for a Saner World, Earth, In Balfour St., Optimism, Green Nomads (1 and 2), Four Days on Islay and Thera. Bob's Defiance, Stories From Nature and its Defenders was released in October 2025.
Dr Debra Dank is a Gudanji/Wakaja and Kalkadoon woman from the Barkly Tablelands in the Northern Territory and an Enterprise Fellow with the University of South Australia. She is the author of We Come with This Place, Terraglossia, and Ankami.
Cynthia Banham is a writer, journalist and lawyer. She's the author A Certain Light: A Memoir of Family and Loss and Hope. Her most recent book is Mother Shadow: A Meditation on Maternal Inheritance.
Zohra Aly has a Masters in Creative Writing and her essays and short fiction have been published in Meanjin, Sydney Review of Books and Island, as well as various anthologies. She is currently working on a collection of essays.
This event is part of the 2026 Blue Mountains Writers Festival, head to bluemountainswritersfestival.com.au for more information.
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81-83 Katoomba St, Katoomba NSW 2780, Australia, 81-83 Katoomba St, Katoomba NSW 2780, Australia, Katoomba
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