author event: inga simpson
wednesday 9 november || 6.30pm
In store | Tickets $10 | Bookings essential
We are delighted to welcome acclaimed writer, Inga Simpson, to discuss her latest novel, Willowman. Inga is the author of several novels including Mr Wigg, Nest, Where the Trees Were and The Last Woman on Earth, and is renowned for her nature writing. Her 2016 memoir Understory related her love of trees, and she expanded on this theme with her first children’s book, the beautifully illustrated Book of Australian Trees, in 2021.
Willowman
Release date: 26 October 2022
Cricket has a willow heart. Batmakers around the world have tried everything, crafting bats from birch, maple, ash, even poplars… After two hundred years, cricket bat making is still beholden to a single species: salix alba caerulea – or white willow.
Reader Cricket Bats, one of the last traditional batmakers back in the old country, has a contemporary home in the Antipodes, with Allan Reader keeping the family business alive in a small workshop. Allan lives alone, all but estranged from his adult daughter, quietly going about his days with the cricket commentary for company.
When Todd Harrow, a gifted young batter, catches Allan’s eye, a spark is lit and Allan decides to make a Reader bat for him, selecting the best piece of willow he’s harvested in years to do so.
As Harrow charts a meteoric rise to the highest echelons of the sport, leaving his equally talented sister’s dreams in his wake, Allan’s magical bat takes centre stage as well, awakening something in Allan and bringing him back into himself. But can Allan’s fledgling renaissance – hanging as it does on the magic of that bat – carry on after Harrow is cursed by injury and a strained personal life?
Set as the new short form of the game began to gain prominence, Willowman is a love letter to the art and beauty of cricket and a meditation on the inner lives of certain kinds of men and women, for whom it is a way of life. Award-winning author Inga Simpson writes exquisitely about a national sport you will never view the same way again.
The Last Woman in the World
Available now
AFTER THE FIRES. AFTER THE VIRUS . THEY CAME.
It’s night, and the walls of Rachel’s home creak as they settle into the cover of darkness. Fear has led her to a reclusive life on the land, her only occasional contact with her sister. A hammering on the door. There stands a mother, Hannah, with a sick baby. They are running for their lives from a mysterious death sweeping the Australian countryside. Now Rachel must face her worst fears: should she take up the fight to help these strangers survive in a society she has rejected for so long?
From the critically acclaimed author of Mr Wigg and Nest, The Last Woman in the World looks at how we treat our world and each other – and what it is that might ultimately redeem us.
The Book of Australian Trees
Available now
Trees tell stories about places. Australia has some of the tallest, oldest, fattest and most unusual trees in the world. They have changed over thousands of years, adapting to this continent’s deserts, mountains, and coasts. Many have found clever ways of dealing with drought and fire.
Their leaves, flowers and seeds are food for birds, insects and mammals. Old trees have lots of hollows, which make good homes for possums, sugar gliders, birds and bees. But trees aren’t just important for other animals, we need them too. What trees breathe out, we breathe in. They are a vital part of the Earth’s ecosystems.
When you first stand in a forest, the trees all seem the same. But if you look more closely, they are each a little different, like people. This book is a love song to Australian trees, from the red ironbark to the grey gum, the Moreton Bay fig to the Queensland bottle tree.
The first book for children from one of Australia’s most beloved authors.
Understory
Available now
“The understorey is where I live, alongside these plants and creatures. I tend the forest, stand at the foot of trees and look up, gather what has fallen.”
This is the story of a tree-change, of escaping suburban Brisbane for a cottage on ten acres in search of a quiet life. Of establishing a writers retreat shortly before the Global Financial Crisis hit, and of losing just about everything when it did. It is also the story of what the author found there: the beauty of nature and her own path as a writer.
Understory is a memoir about staying in one place, told through trees, by the award-winning author of MR WIGG, NEST and WHERE THE TREES WERE.
About the Author
Inga Simpson began her career as a professional writer for government before gaining a PhD in creative writing. In 2011, she took part in the Queensland Writers Centre Manuscript Development Program and, as a result, Hachette Australia published her first novel, Mr Wigg, in 2013. Nest, Inga’s second novel, was published in 2014 and was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Stella Prize and shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal. Inga’s third novel, the acclaimed Where the Trees Were, was published in 2016.
Inga was awarded the final Eric Rolls Prize for her nature writing and has obtained a second PhD, exploring the history of Australian nature writers. Inga’s account of her love of Australian nature and life with trees, Understory, was published in 2017. Her first book for children, The Book of Australian Trees, illustrated by Alicia Rogerson, was published in 2021. The Last Woman in the World, her critically acclaimed environmental thriller, was published in 2021 and shortlisted for the 2022 Fiction Indie Book Award. Inga lives on the NSW south coast among trees.