Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife, Francesca Wade In Conversation with Jill Jones

Named One of the Best Ten Books of 2025 by The Washington Post Book World

Named Best Book of the Year by Artforum

Drawing on never-before-seen interviews, a richly researched, sweeping examination of one of the most influential and mythologized literary figures of the 20th century and her partner’s emergence from the shadows after her death, in the decades-long fight to ensure her legacy.

Pushing beyond the conventions of literary biography, Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife is a bold, innovative examination of the nature of legacy and memory itself, in which Wade uncovers the origins of Stein’s radical writing and reveals new depths to the storied relationship that made it possible. A captivating, brilliant work of biography, Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife is a groundbreaking examination of a true literary giant.

Francesca Wade is the author of Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars (2020), which was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. She has received fellowships from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, the Leon Levy Center for Biography and the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and her work has appeared in The New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, Granta and other places. She lives in London.

Jill Jones lives on Kaurna land. Her most recent book is How to Emerge (2025). Her Acrobat Music: New and Selected Poems was shorted listed for the 2024 South Australian Literary Awards, long listed for the 2024 ALS Gold Medal and commended in the 2023 Wesley Michel Wright Prize. Other recent books include Wild Curious Air, winner of the 2021 Wesley Michel Wright Prize, and A History Of What I’ll Become, shortlisted for the 2021 Kenneth Slessor Award and the 2022 John Bray Award. In 2015 she won the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry for The Beautiful Anxiety.

This event is part of Constellations 2026, the community-led response to the attempts to silence Palestinian voices at Adelaide Writers' Week. We stand in solidarity with Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah.

This event is free and is made possible through volunteer efforts. All authors are being paid ASA rates, made possible through donations and sponsorship. We would appreciate any donation you are able to make.

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