Skip to main content
Scroll For More
Listen

Geraldine Brooks on Writing History

Geraldine Brooks

The voices of the unheard are always the most intriguing to me, the ones that were denied an opportunity. So where do you find them?

Geraldine Brooks

Hear from two-times Pulitzer Prize winning author Geraldine Brooks. Brooks' novels are complex narratives steeped in history and anchored in fact that often contain fascinating unsolved mysteries. 

In conversation with Fiona Morrison from literary studies at UNSW Sydney, listen about the pleasures and challenges of writing, why she loves writing history, how she gets into her creative flow, and of course her books which include People of the Book, March and Caleb’s Crossing, and her new novel Horse.  

Horse glides effortlessly across three places – 1850s Kentucky, 1950s New York City and 2019 Washington DC. From a discarded painting in a roadside clean-up, forgotten bones in a research archive, and Lexington, the greatest racehorse in US history, Horse is a sweeping story of spirit, obsession and injustice in America.   

This event is presented by the UNSW Centre for Ideas and UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture 

Speakers
Geraldine Brooks

Geraldine Brooks

Geraldine Brooks AO is the author of six novels, including the recent New York Times bestseller, Horse, and the 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner, March. Born, raised and educated in Sydney, she worked for The Sydney Morning Herald, the National Times and The Wall Street Journal, for which she covered crises in the mideast, Africa and the Balkans. Her non-fiction works include Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence.

Fiona Morrison

Fiona Morrison

Fiona Morrison is an expert in postcolonial literatures in English and Australian literature and has taught extensively across the English literary canon. Her most recent book, Christina Stead in America (Sydney University Press, 2019), centres on Stead’s American novels (1940–1955). Her current research project is about The Fortunes of Richard Mahony trilogy (1917–1929) by Henry Handel Richardson.

For first access to upcoming events and new ideas

Explore past events