trent dalton:
in conversation with jock serong
friday 14 november || 6:30pm
THIS EVENT HAS NOW SOLD OUT
Join us for one of the most exclusive literary events for 2025 – celebrating the release of his fourth novel, Gravity Let Me Go, we are thrilled to welcome one of Australia’s most exciting contemporary writers to the Peninsula for the first time. Trent Dalton in conversation with fellow best selling author Jock Serong on Friday 14 November at the New Peninsula Centre, Mount Martha.
Arrival 6:30pm
Ticketing Options
There are 5 different ticketing options available for this event. You may choose to book for the event only (books will be available for purchase and signing on site on the night), or incorporate a pre-order for the new book with your ticket purchase. Note that all ticket + book options incorporate a discount off the recommended retail price of the books.
All book included tickets will allow for the collection / shipping of the book from release date to enable attendees to read the book prior to the event. You may then bring your book with you to the event for signing. Pre-ordered books do not have to be collected prior to the event – there were will be a collection point at the event for those who wish to collect on the night.
Event Ticket Only $20.00 – Attendance at event only, no books included. Books will be available for purchase and signing at the event.
Event & Book (PB) $50.00 – includes attendance at the event plus a copy of the paperback edition of Gravity Let Me Go. This ticket option is for customer collection in store or at the event. Books will be available for collection at Farrells Bookshop from the release date Tuesday 30 September. Ticket holders will be advised when their book is available for collection.
Event & Book (PB) POSTED $63.00 – includes attendance at the event plus a copy of the paperback edition of Gravity Let Me Go. This ticket option includes shipping for the book to be sent to you from the release date Tuesday 30 September. Ideal for those not local to Mornington. You will be advised of tracking details for your parcel once shipped.
Event & Book (HB) + Bonus Book $65.00 – includes attendance at the event plus a copy of the hardback edition of Gravity Let Me Go plus a bonus copy of Boy Swallows Universe. This ticket option is for customer collection in store or at the event. Books will be available for collection at Farrells Bookshop from the release date Tuesday 30 September. Ticket holders will be advised when their book is available for collection.
Event & Book (HB) + Bonus Book POSTED $78.00 – includes attendance at the event plus a copy of the hardback edition of Gravity Let Me Go plus a bonus copy of Boy Swallows Universe. This ticket option includes shipping for the books to be sent to you from the release date Tuesday 30 September. Ideal for those not local to Mornington. You will be advised of tracking details for your parcel once shipped.
Gravity Let Me Go
Available 30 September
Trent Dalton, Australia’s #1 bestselling author, returns with the astonishing Gravity Let Me Go – a story you won’t ever forget.
There are one thousand stories up and down your street. There are nine thousand stories in your neighbourhood. This is the one about true crime journo Noah Cork, and the most important story he almost missed in pursuit of his dreams.
Dark, gritty, hilarious and unexpected, Gravity Let Me Go is a novel about marriage and ambition; truth-telling and truth-omitting; self-deception and self-preservation. It’s a novel about the stories we want to tell the world and those we shouldn’t, and how the stories we keep locked away are so often the stories that come to define us.
It’s the story of a murder.
It’s the story of a marriage.
It’s the story of a lifetime.
about the author
Trent Dalton is a two-time Walkley Award–winning journalist and the international bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe, All Our Shimmering Skies, Love Stories and Lola in the Mirror.
Lola in the Mirror was the winner of the 2024 ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year, the 2024 Book People Fiction Book of the Year and the 2024 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award. It has sold over 320,000 copies across all formats since publication in October 2023.
The Boy Swallows Universe television series, which aired in January 2024, was Netflix’s most successful Australian-made show to date. It ranked in the top 10 in 52 countries and reached the number one spot in Australia, number four in the UK and number six in the US.
Following standing ovations and glowing reviews at the Brisbane Festival in 2024, the critically acclaimed stage adaptation of Trent Dalton’s Love Stories is set for a four-city national tour in September 2025.
Gravity Let Me Go is Trent’s fourth novel and will be released on 30 September 2025.
about jock serong
Jock Serong grew up in the suburbs of Melbourne, and like a poorly tied dinghy, he’s been drifting away ever since. As a student and young lawyer, he volunteered with the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service on the Bringing Them Home inquiry, and did a stint in the Western Desert building a native title claim with the Martu people.
He drove a ‘73 HQ panel van around the country, spent some time sorting frozen prawns in Carnarvon and changed lightbulbs in Darwin Casino for seven bucks an hour. He fetched up on Victoria’s west coast in the mid-nineties, then left again and became a criminal barrister. He worked with asylum seekers back when detention centres were onshore.
And he never wrote a word of it.
As Senior Grump in a young family he moved back to the coast, and something about the kelp and the storms and the long nights kicked him into gear: writing for Surfing World and other publications, he began trying to tell stories that weren’t sports-writing so much as people and place-writing. Environments, First Australians, mental health, forgotten histories, the tiny miracles of life on a reef. As surfing itself expanded beyond 20th century stereotypes, Jock’s writing kept pushing into new corners of the experience.
Alongside Mick Sowry and Mark Willett, Jock edited and published Great Ocean Quarterly for two fraught and wonderful years, and has produced five novels: Quota (2014), The Rules of Backyard Cricket (2016), On the Java Ridge (2017) and the Bass Strait historical novels Preservation (2018), The Burning Island (2020), The Settlement (2023), and Cherrywood (2024).
He divides his time between Port Fairy in western Victoria and Flinders Island in Bass Strait’s Furneaux Island group.