Readers - Books and Conversation with Joy McCann
Thursday 23rd July | 8pm | Petersham Bowling Club

Join us for in 2026 for Readers - Books and Conversation, our monthly conversation series celebrating books and readers through in-depth yet relaxed discussions with authors about their work, creative process, and the ideas that inspire them. Hosted by renowned interviewer and curator Michaela Kalowski with book sales by Gertrude and Alice and author signings at the door.

Moisture, temperature, gravity. These are the ingredients that create the life story of the driest of Earth’s continents.

Heart of Ice takes the reader on a compelling journey across space and time, navigating entangled stories of ice and rock, humans, animals and other species, through the prism of Antarctica’s ice. Joy McCann – author of the internationally acclaimed Wild Sea – eloquently draws on a vast body of scientific and historical research to explore how Antarctica’s ice sheets, its glaciers, ice shelves and sea ice, have been imagined, inhabited and invested with meaning over time. She invites readers to see this vast icy realm in a different way – as a vibrant, storied, multispecies environment and a powerful agent that has shaped (and continues to shape) our history and our planet.

‘In Heart of Ice, Joy McCann has created something remarkable – a meticulously researched and intellectually expansive exploration of Antarctica and its many meanings, shimmering with the transformative power of poetry.’ – James Bradley, author of Deep Water

‘Heart of Ice is a visionary work of scholarship. The expansive scales of time and space in the narrative of polar ice require all the skills of human empathy to ﬁnd expression. McCann is a magniﬁcent interpreter of Antarctica’s powerful yet precarious cryosphere, and how it will critically inﬂuence our planet’s ecosystem. An essential guidebook to a continent the whole world is watching, vital reading for any human whose research or desires draw them to the southern latitudes, and for all those elsewhere curious about this mysterious continent and concerned for its future.’ – Nancy Campbell, author of The Library of Ice

Tickets on sale now.

Contact the host of Readers - Books and Conversation w/ Joy McCann