In conversation with Tom Keneally

Tom Keneally will be in conversation with Alex Sloan on Tom's book, A Bloody Good Rant. My passions, memories and demons, a deeply personal, passionately drawn and richly tuned book, which draws on a lifetime of engagement with the great issues of our recent history and his own moments of discovery and understanding. A Bloody Good Rant is an invitation to share the deep humanity of a truly great Australian.

Tom Keneally has been observing, reflecting on and writing about Australia and the human condition for well over fifty years .He is outraged about the treatment of Indigenous Australians and refugees, and argues fiercely against market economics and the cowardice of climate change deniers. And he introduces us to some of the people, both great and small, who have dappled his life. Beautifully written, erudite and at times slyly funny.

In A Bloody Good Rant, Keneally "relishes a chance to offer opinions, ask questions and raise concerns about a smorgasbord of subjects ranging from history and culture to climate change in economics, refugees and Aboriginal Australia, women and homosexuality, anti-Semitism and the church, being a grandparent and even the prospect of death" Troy Bramston. The Australian.

Thomas Keneally AO is a national treasure and one of Australia's finest writers. His novels include The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Schindler's Ark and The Dickens Boy. His numerous nonfiction works include the three-volume series Australians. Keneally has won the Miles Franklin Award, the Booker Prize, the Los Angeles Book Prize, the Royal Society of Literature Prize, the Mondello International Prize and the Helmerich Prize.

Alex Sloan AM, the 2017 Canberra Citizen of the Year, is a regular conversationalist for ANU Meet the Author events. Alex is a Director and Deputy Chair of Australia's progressive think-tank, The Australia Institute, Director of The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and Director and Deputy Chair of the ACT Writers Centre

Penelope Cottier, who writes poetry as PS Cottier and is currently the Poetry Editor at The Canberra Times, will give the vote of thanks. In her long review of A Bloody Good Rant in The Canberra Times, she reflected on Keneally's "breadth of interests" expressed in "a moving, funny, angry and explorative book".

This event is in association with Harry Hartog Bookshop. Books will be available for purchase on the evening in the Cultural Centre foyer. Pre-event book signings will be available from 5.30pm, and available again after the event.

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Apodcast will be made available after the event.