End-of-year gathering with acclaimed writer Charlotte Wood

A very special end-of-year gathering with Booker Prize shortlisted novelist and writer Charlotte Wood, discussing her internationally acclaimed Stone Yard Devotional.

Charlotte’s novel is a beautiful, joyful, rich story about a woman facing both personal and social crises in middle age, who retreats to a convent in the Monaro Plains of NSW. It asks readers to engage with some of the most important challenges we face as a university (and society): living with profound uncertainty, defining deep value and building trust. Deservedly, the novel was praised and promoted worldwide. Charlotte talks about these questions — as writer and feeling human — with Sophie Gee and Danielle Celermajer.

This is an event to bring our communities together to think and reflect on how we continue to build trust and a sense of courageous purpose.

Time and location

Date: Tuesday 9 December 2025

Time: 5pm

Location: Sydney Policy Lab, RD Watt Seminar Room 203, University of Sydney (Main Campus)

About Campus Collaboration

Campus Collaboration is a project co-led by Sophie Gee (Vice Chancellor's Fellow, English); Danielle Celermajer (Sydney Environment Institute) and Kate Harrison Brennan (Sydney Policy Lab). We facilitate and lead activities to build communities of trust across the university, grounded in the idea that uncertainty and complex difference — states of not-knowing —are crucial for creating strong institutions.

Our work emphasizes care and compassion as foundational to our purpose as a university. We're interested in arts and humanities-led activities because these disciplines are uniquely skilled in working with complex emotions, uncertainty and creative ambiguities.

Work of this kind, as we all know, is nuanced. It takes time to get beyond first steps and relatively superficial engagements. So, with this in mind, we’ve organised these activities to bring our communities together and reflect deeply, without a specific focus on a time-urgent “problem”.

Questions? Please email: louise.cooper@sydney.edu.au