The Way of the Kind Rebel: A First Readers' Evening (Cornwalls)

The Way of the Kind Rebel
A First Readers' Evening with Donna Sherwani

An evening on Collins Street. A reading, a conversation with Lynda Ford OAM, founder of Mosaic Intercultural Solutions who has spent her career building intercultural understanding across Australia, pomegranate tea and dates, and a signed advance copy to take home.

Twenty-six years ago I got off a boat and arrived in this country as a teenager with little English and no idea what I was supposed to become.

I have been walking towards this book ever since. It started properly after a TEDx talk, and it took three years to put on paper, written in the hours between the kids, work, grief, and everything else that doesn't stop while you write.

What if kindness is the most rebellious act of all?

The Way of the Kind Rebel argues that kindness and rebellion are the same act. That the people who actually shift things are the ones who defied with purpose, led without a map, and acted even when others considered them small.

It moves between my own life, from the mountains of Kurdistan to the pilgrim roads of Spain and Japan, and the lives of refugees, revolutionaries and everyday people who changed something without permission. It is written for everyone who has been told they are too small, too new, too quiet or too much to change anything. It asks one question: how do we resist a broken world without losing our humanity?

The world does not need more spectators. It needs kind rebels.

Where we're gathering

Grata Flos Matilda Greig, known as Flos Greig completed her articles of clerkship at Cornwalls in 1905, then became the first woman admitted to practice law in Australia. She was a true trailblazer in every sense of the word. No one had gone before her. She led without a map, as kind rebels do, and her story lives in these pages.

The evening

5:45pm — Doors open. Tea, dates and your copy.
6:00pm — Welcome and Acknowledgement of Country.
6:10pm — I read from the book.
6:30pm — In conversation with Linda.
7:00pm — Signing, photos, and time to talk.
8:00pm — Close.

Your copy

Your ticket includes a signed advance copy of the book.

The book reaches bookshops across Australia and New Zealand in April 2027. Fewer than 250 advance copies exist before then, and 100 are available for this evening. Each copy is hand-numbered and signed. Tell me at checkout who you'd like your copy dedicated to, and I'll write it in before the night. If you'd like a second copy for someone else, you can add one when you book.

Collect your copy at the welcome table when you arrive. Have your ticket ready on your phone.

Tea and dates

No alcohol, and not for want of hospitality.

Tea is how my ancestors welcomed people. It is what brings community together. Dates are what you carry when you are crossing a journey. A neighbour once handed me pomegranate tea with the words kindness is still here, and that sentence is more or less what this book is about.

The details

Thursday 19 November, 5:30pm to 8pm.
Level 4, 380 Collins Street, Melbourne.

Bring your partner or a friend at no extra cost. Please let me know at checkout how many are coming, so there's a seat and a cup of tea for everyone.
Tickets close days before, so I have time to write in every copy.

Tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.

We'll be gathering on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong Boon Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation, whose sovereignty was never ceded. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Thank you

The venue is provided by Cornwalls. Thank you Cornwalls.