Kate Grenville in conversation with Karen Viggers

Kate Grenville will be in conversation with Karen Viggers on Kate’s new book The Country Schoolmaster : A Mystery in 88 Letters.

‘I stood there holding the hundred-year-old letter with a feeling that was familiar from other archives, other bulging files of dog-eared paper. It was a blood-running-fast, itchy-palm, eyes-wide-open feeling of stumbling on something. A story …’

Rummaging around in the archives one afternoon, Kate Grenville comes across an innocuous-looking file full of letters about a schoolteacher in country New South Wales. Intrigued, she keeps reading – and discovers a tale far more curious and complex than first appears. Was Joseph Connor savagely beating the students in his care? Or was he the victim of a small-town vendetta? And what went so terribly wrong between him and his daughter?

Ultimately, Grenville simply has to know: was Connor a victim or a villain? Part colonial cold case, part locked-room mystery, part the dance of a writer's imagination among facts and semi-facts, The Country Schoolmaster is a book like no other. In it, the novelist comes to understand the seductive pleasure of story-making, but also its dangerous limitations.

Kate Grenville AO is one of Australia's most celebrated writers. Her novels include the international bestseller and award-winning The Secret River,  The Lieutenant, Lilian's Story, the Orange Prize–winner The Idea of Perfection and A Room Made of Leaves. Her works of non-fiction include One Life: My Mother's Story, Elizabeth Macarthur's Letters and, most recently, Unsettled: A Journey Through Time and Place. Kate has received honorary doctorates from Sydney University, Macquarie University and the University of New South Wales and a Lifetime Achievement in Literature from the Australia Council.

Karen Viggers is a veterinarian and award-winning, bestselling Australian author of five novels: The Stranding,The Lightkeeper’s Wife, The Grass Castle, The Orchardists’s Daughter and Sidelines. She is co-host with Irma Gold of the Secrets From the Green Room podcast. Karen's work is set in Australian landscapes and explores dying with dignity, displacement of First Peoples, wildlife conservation and clear-felling of native forests.

Ann McGrath, AM FASSA FAHA, Distinguished Professor, School of History, Australian National University, will give the vote of thanks.