A literary event of readings and discussion featuring Mike Ladd in conversation with Aidan Coleman and readings from Bronwyn Lovell and Melanie Pryor.
The Dog-Eared Readings is a regular literary event that brings a curated selection of writers together for an evening of high-calibre readings and discussion. For the Nature Festival we will be hosting a special event that aligns with the Festival's theme of 'flow' and featuring writers and poets whose work focuses on the natural world.
Our featured writer is beloved poet Mike Ladd who will be in conversation with Aidan Coleman.
Mike Ladd is a South Australian poet, essayist and nature lover. He has published ten collections of poetry and prose, including the natural history haibun Karrawirra Parri, Walking the Torrens from Source to Sea, from Wakefield Press. His most recent book is Dream Tetras (2022) an experimental collaboration with visual artist Cathy Brooks. Mike was the editor of ABC Radio National’s Poetica program, which ran for eighteen years and brought Australian and international poetry to a wide audience. His new and selected poems Now Then is published by Wakefield Press.
Aidan Coleman is a Senior Lecturer at Southern Cross University on the Gold Coast, and the coordinator for Creative Writing. He is the author of three books of poetry, which have been shortlisted for national awards. A biography, Thin Ice: A life of John Forbes, is in press with Melbourne UP. Aidan is the poetry editor for Social Alternatives and TEXT.
And our readers for the night will be avid hiker and author Melanie Pryor and poet Bronwyn Lovell.
Melanie Pryor is a nonfiction writer living on Kaurna Yerta. She writes about bodies, landscapes, and belonging. Her personal essays and short form memoir have been published in The New York Times, Meanjin, Westerly, fine print, Southerly, Overland and other places, including on wine bottles as part of the 2017 Overland/Story Wine Prize. Melanie was a writer in residence at the Vermont Studio Center, USA in 2019 and holds a PhD in creative writing.
Bronwyn Lovell is an ecofeminist poet and science fiction scholar. In both her creative and academic work, she explores how popular conceptual understandings of nature and science are gendered in the public imagination, and how looking at life through a lens warped by gender bias can profoundly corrupt the ways we see ourselves as humans, relate to our planet, and envision futures in the great space beyond. Bronwyn’s poetry collection In Bed with Animals is published by Recent Work Press, and her verse novel Between Worlds is forthcoming from UWA Publishing.
