About this Event
Join us for a conversation between author Kate Holden and The Paperback's Anna MacDonald. Kate will be speaking about her recent book of essays, The Ruin of Magic published by Black Inc.
The Ruin of Magic description from Black Inc.:
In The Ruin of Magic, award-winning writer Kate Holden follows in the footsteps of Katherine May, Maggie Nelson and André Aciman, crafting essays of intimate personal experience and sharply informed rumination on life in strange times.
In gorgeous prose Holden meditates on her instinctive yearning for long-ago Europe versus the natural belonging she feels to the Australian landscape, and asks, What is a home? The strongest shelter or the most lethal trap, a museum of ourselves or a showcase of fashions? What, then, does it mean to make ourselves at home in an Australia still finding its way amidst old and avoided truths? Is nostalgia a reasonable mourning of timeless lore lost or a dangerous fantasy? And what has happened to magic and beauty in the glare of modern life?
Reading Rainer Maria Rilke, Patti Smith, Walter Benjamin and D.H. Lawrence, dreamers and philosophers and poets, pagan history and new criticism, Holden writes with humour and sorrow of all the ways life today warps us under its glare – and how to find a haven in the subtle shadows.
Kate Holden is the author of two highly praised memoirs, In My Skin and The Romantic, and the Walkley Award–winning The Winter Road. She is a regular contributor to The Saturday Paper, The Monthly and The Age.
Anna MacDonald is a bookseller and writer. Her books are Between the Word and the World (2019) and A Jealous Tide (2020). She also runs The Paperback Bookshop.
Event venue & nearby stays
Bard's Apothecary, 24 Crossley Street, Melbourne, Australia
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