The Erratics

with Vicki Laveau-Harvie / chaired by Kerryn Goldsworthy

CANADA/AUSTRALIA

Vicki Laveau-Harvie became a debut author in her mid-seventies with her extraordinary memoir, The Erratics. Returning to wintry Alberta after 18 years to tend to their infirm ageing parents, Vicki and her sister navigate the willful cruelty of their harsh, mad mother, and excavate the past and the psychological damage she unleashed on their family. “Be glad if you forget”, she writes. A book of unsettling honesty, tar-black humour and welcome warmth, The Erratics was the first memoir to win the Stella Prize.

Participants

Vicki Laveau-Harvie was born in Canada, lived for many years in France and is now based in Australia. She has worked as a translator, a business editor and an academic. Her memoir, The Erratics, is her first book and won the 2018 Finch Memoir Prize and the 2019 Stella Prize. She has also won prizes for her short fiction and poetry.

Kerryn Goldsworthy is an Adelaide writer and critic. She won the Pascall Prize for Cultural Criticism in 2013, and the 2017 Horne Prize for her essay The Limit of the World. She is the author of Adelaide, in New South Publishing’s Cities series.

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WHEN

Thu 05 Mar, 5:00pm

WHERE

Pioneer Women's Memorial Garden
East Stage

DURATION

1 hr

NOTE

For the podcast of this session click here.

ACCESS

Wheelchair accessible

The Erratics

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