Readers - Books and Conversation

A monthly series by Petersham Bowling club hosted by Michaela Kalowski.

Celebrating books and readers, this is a monthly series of in-depth and relaxed conversations with authors about their latest work, and their body of work, their writing process and the ideas that inspire them.

Michaela Kalowski is an interviewer, moderator and curator for writers and ideas festivals. Highlight interviews include Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell, Michelle de Kretser, Amos Oz, Stan Grant, Holly Ringland & Etgar Keret. She's the curator of ABC RN’s on-air writers festival, Big Weekend of Books, now in its 4th year. In 2022 she was curator of International Author events for Brisbane Writers Festival. Michaela has conducted radio interviews for ABC RN’s The Music Show, Big Ideas & The Bookshelf, ABC Classic and has presented programs across ABC radio.

June’s featured author: Jonathan Seidler

Jonathan ‘Jonno’ Seidler is an author, creative director and culture critic. His work has been published frequently in The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, Monocle and GQ. Jonathan co-founded the long-running music blog One A Day, launched two nationally syndicated fiction series for Broadsheet and recently commissioned, edited and published an Unyoked anthology of nature writing. Jonathan wrote and performed the score for short film Snare, shortlisted for SXSW and Tribeca 2019 and more recently was music supervisor on the SBS series Latecomers. As a creative director, Jonathan produced nationally recognized pro bono campaigns for Keep Sydney Open, One Wave and the Equality Campaign. He is a regular guest on ABC Radio National's Download This Show, discussing media, culture and technology. He once played drums in bands, now mostly in his garage.

His most recent work, ‘It’s a shame about Ray’’ is an extraordinary and powerful memoir about family, love and the power of music. Blackly funny and frequently devastating, It traverses family, death, hope, love, survival, compassion and the deep relationship we can develop with music throughout our lives when nothing else is enough. It's a Shame About Ray asks how we shape new identities from old tragedies - and whether the answers might be hiding in the bestselling record of 2001.

'A brilliant and brutally raw tribute to family, survival and the indisputable profundity of noughties nu-metal.' TIM MINCHIN

'Unbelievably poignant and ingenious. And punk as f*ck.' MEGAN WASHINGTON

Arrival by 7:30pm is recommended, the event starts at 8pm.

Petersham Bowling Club is honored to present these events for our community and would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the traditional custodians of this land we meet on and pay our respects to the Elders both past, present and emerging.

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