About the event

Host: Professor Emma Johnston AO, Vice-Chancellor, the University of Melbourne
MC: Juliet Rieden, author and journalist
Panellists: Dame Quentin Bryce AD, CVO, The Honourable Julia Gillard AC, Laureate Professor Marcia Langton AO

At this Melbourne launch of Quentin Bryce: The Authorised Biography you’ll have the unique opportunity to hear from Australia’s first female Governor-General Dame Quentin Bryce, first female Prime Minister the Honourable Julia Gillard and Foundation Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne Laureate Professor Marcia Langton. These eminent leaders will discuss historic moments when their lives intersected and reflect on how Australia has evolved over the past half century, battles fought and the challenges that still lie ahead.

Refreshments and book signing opportunities will take place after the panel discussion.

About the book

When Quentin Bryce was sworn in as Australia’s first female governor-general in 2008, she made history. It was one of many firsts in a singular career dedicated to reform and serving community.

Her early childhood in a western Queensland bush town shaped her sense of self and her destiny. Young Quentin dreamed of changing the world and then set out to do it. She was the first from her school to go to university and among the first women admitted to the Queensland Bar. In revolutionary times her advocacy for human rights – especially for women, children and Indigenous Australians - underpinned her every role which included teaching in the male-dominated university law faculty, federal sex discrimination commissioner, CEO and Chair of the National Childcare Accreditation Council, Principal of Sydney’s Women’s College, governor of Queensland and Australia’s governor-general.

This biography traces the triumphs and the barriers as Quentin shattered glass ceilings and reveals the woman behind the high offices she held. Mother of five and grandmother to twelve, it is her partnership with soulmate Michael Bryce and the love of family, enduring friendships and belief in community that have sustained her. Her passion for the arts and elemental connection to Australia’s ancient landscape feeds her soul.

Fascinating, candid and insightful, Quentin Bryce: the Authorised Biography tells the remarkable story of one of Australia’s most impactful changemakers.

About the author

Juliet Rieden is an author, journalist, magazine editor, book reviewer and royal correspondent. Her previous books include The Writing on the Wall, a personal investigation into Juliet’s family’s fate in the Holocaust; Rising Heart, the memoir of Sierra Leonean kidnap survivor Aminata Conteh-Biger; and The Royals in Australia. Juliet spent more than two years researching and writing Quentin Bryce: The Authorised Biography, involving more than 120 exclusive interviews covering every aspect of Dame Quentin’s life.