Meet the Author - Susan Lever

Susan Lever will be in conversation with Robert Hefner on her new book A.D. Hope. A Life, the first biography one of Australia's greatest poets.

Alec Derwent Hope (1907–2000), with a long association with the Australian National University, was one of Australia's most acclaimed poets. His first collection was not published until he was forty-eight years old, mainly because of its sexual nature and fears of censorship, but its release cemented his reputation as the pre-eminent Australian poet of his time.This biography recounts Hope's early life in rural Tasmania, the influences of his education at Sydney and Oxford universities, his notoriety as a critic and wit in the 1940s and '50s, and his career as a poet and academic, which placed him at the centre of Australian literary life for over fifty years.

Drawing on Hope's poetry, notebooks and surviving letters to friends, biographer Susan Lever examines the many contrasts and contradictions of Hope's life: a polite, softly spoken man with a savage wit; a professor who refused to confine himself to the narrow specialisations of the academy; an intellectual with an emotionally complex inner life who lived in an outwardly conventional way in ordinary Australian suburbia; a poet responding to the major cultural shifts of the twentieth century and concluding that the contemporary poet's task was the renewal of tradition.

'In this highly engaging biography, Susan Lever provides invaluable insight into one of Australia's most important cultural figures, revealing A. D. Hope to be a poet of complexity, a generous promoter of other writers and an early advocate of Australian literary studies. This finely-researched book should generate much-needed fresh readings of Hope and his work.' —Ann Vickery,

Dr Susan Lever OAM, a graduate of the ANU and Sydney University, taught literature for many years at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, and she is the author and editor of several books, including The Oxford Book of Australian Women's Verse and A Question of Commitment: Australian Literature in the Twenty Years after the War.

Robert Hefner is a former Acting Editor and Assistant Editor of Eureka Street. He was Literary Editor of The Canberra Times from 1988 to 2000 and currently works as a freelance writer, editor and musician.

The vote of thanks will be given by Emeritus Professor Paul Hetherington.

Books will be available for signing from 5.30pm and again after the event.