September 11, 2014
‘Living National Treasure’ to present plenary talk
Esteemed author Thomas Keneally to make special visit to UOW on Monday 29 September.
Thomas Keneally in the Tom Keneally Centre, © Helen White, courtesy of Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts.
Thomas Keneally, AO, hailed as a living national treasure, who published his first novel half a century ago, is making a special visit to UOW on Monday 29 September.
Keneally, 78, will deliver a plenary talk (entitled ‘50 Years of Fiction’) at UOW in a year marking his 50 years as a writer, activist and general celebrity.
Following his plenary talk, a conference will be conducted with papers surveying Keneally’s representations of Australia and the place of his work in the world. It will include commentary on his well-known The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith and on his Booker Prize-winning novel of 1982, Schindler’s Ark (which Stephen Spielberg made into his Academy Award-winning movie, Schindler’s List).
Keneally’s first novel was The Place at Whitton. Since then, he has acted, scripted plays and films, written a host of novels, written historical books, won a fistful of prizes, led several campaigns (for improved conditions for writers’, for an Australian Republic, for better treatment of asylum seekers), taught in the US, been translated into over a dozen languages, and had more media appearances than many politicians.
Associate Professor Paul Sharrad from the Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts said the conference would celebrate and analyse the career of a Living National Treasure.
The 29 September conference is being hosted by the Colloquium for Research in Texts Identities and Cultures, Faculty of Law, Arts and Humanities, under the auspices of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature and as part of Professor Sharrad’s Australian Research Council project.
Media contact: Associate Professor Paul Sharrad on +61 2 4221 4757 or +61 428 790 378.