Susan Wyndham in Conversation with Jacqueline Kent

'At last I read her books, reminding myself to breathe, wondering if her characters could extricate themselves from her finely spun web of psychological torment. I seized my chance to interview Elizabeth Harrower again...'

Elizabeth Harrower wrote some of the most intense, original and highly regarded novels of the twentieth century. Then she abruptly stopped writing in the 1970s and became one of the most puzzling mysteries of Australian literature. Why didn't she continue? Harrower gave evasive answers to friends and interviewers, and only since her death in 2020 has a deeper search been possible.

In this definitive biography, renowned journalist and writer Susan Wyndham grapples with the elusive Harrower. She immerses us in the author's tumultuous family, her complex friendships with Patrick White, Christina Stead, Kylie Tennant and Shirley Hazzard, and her timeless probing of the human spirit in five remarkable novels.

Drawing on time spent with Harrower, revealing analysis of her fiction and new research, Wyndham unmasks a literary legend.

Susan Wyndham is a writer and journalist who has been New York correspondent forThe Australian newspaper and literary editor of theSydney MorningHerald. Her most recent book, co-edited with Brigitta Olubas, is Hazzard and Harrower: The letters. In 2024 she was awarded a National Library of Australia Fellowship to research the life of Elizabeth Harrower.

Jacqueline Kent is a Sydney-based writer of non-fiction and biography, as well as young adult fiction, general articles and literary journalism. Heer books include A Certain Style, An Exacting Heart,TheMaking of Julia Gillard, Bonjour, Mademoiselle! (with Tom Roberts), and her most recent book Inconvenient Women: Australian radical writers 1900 -1970.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Constant Reader Bookshop, 27 Willoughby Road, Crows Nest, Australia