Inga Simpson & Meredith Jaffé In-Conversation

Dr. Inga Simpson is an award-winning novelist and nature writer. She began her career as a professional writer for Federal Parliament and before gaining PhDs in creative writing and English Literature. Inga’s first novel, Mr Wigg, was published in 2013. Since then, she has published 8 books. Her most recent novel, Willowman, is listed in BookPeople’s 100 must-read Australian novels. Her next novel, The Thinning, will be released in November.
Willowman is an enthralling literary novel about a batmaker and a gifted young cricketer. 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 England, has a contemporary home in the Antipodes, with Allan Reader keeping the family business alive. 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, Allan's magical bat takes centre stage as well, awakening something in him. But can Allan's fledgling renaissance carry on after Harrow is stricken by injury and a strained personal life?

Meredith Jaffé is the author of four novels for adults — The Tricky Art of Forgiveness, The Dressmakers of Yarrandarrah Prison, The Making of Christina and The Fence. Her bestselling novel, The Dressmakers of Yarrandarrah Prison, was voted in the 2023 and the 2022 Better Reading Top 100 and the 2021 Booktopia Favourite Australian Book Award Top 50. Meredith is the former Festival Director of StoryFest and regularly runs workshops and facilitates at author events. Previously, she wrote the weekly literary column for the online women’s magazine, The Hoopla. Her writing has also appeared in the Guardian Australia, The Huffington Post, and Mamamia.
Meredith’s most recent novel, The Tricky Art of Forgiveness, is a witty, poignant, and insightful exploration of marriage. Diana Forsyth is in the midst of planning the Big Party, a combined celebration of her husband Will's 60th and their 30th wedding anniversary. But then she finds a torn scrap of paper hidden inside the folds of one of his cashmere sweaters, with the words, I forgive you. As empty nesters who have just downsized from the family home, she and Will are supposed to be embracing a new promise of glorious freedom - not revisiting a past that Diana has worked very hard to leave behind. 

Inga and Meredith will be available for book signings at the Yass Book Store stand in the Library from 1.30pm-2pm.