Chris Womersley is the bestselling author of four novels The Low Road, Bereft and Cairo and City of Crows, and the short story collection A Lovely and Terrible Thing. He has been published in the UK, US and Europe, has received the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction, an Indie Award for Best Fiction, an ABIA Award for Literary Fiction and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, the Gold Dagger Award for International Crime Fiction, The Age Book of the Year and the ALS Gold Medal for Literature. Chris's short fiction has appeared in Granta, The Best Australian Stories, Meanjin and Griffith Review and the anthologies Where there's Smoke, Sleepers X and Meanjin A-Z, and has also won or been shortlisted for numerous prizes. He lives in Melbourne with his wife and son.
Contact him at: chriswomersley.com
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LICENSING AGREEMENT
Join us for a night that celebrates Melbourne, art, friendships and one of our city's greatest writers, Chris Womersley. Melbourne, 1991. Fresh out of detox and five years after his involvement in the theft of Picasso's masterpiece The Weeping Woman from the NGV, Edward Degraves - art forger and drug addict - returns to Melbourne for a new start. All he needs is to make one last visit to The Diplomat, a seedy motel renowned for its drug dealers and eccentrics. But Edward's new-found sobriety is both a torment and a gift. As he revisits old haunts, he is confronted by reminders of the past: ruined relationships, a stalled career as an artist and - looming over everything - the death of his beloved wife Gertrude. Shot through with grief and dark comedy, The Diplomat is a powerful story of love and recovery - and a stark evocation of the fine line between self-destruction and redemption. This event is free to attend but bookings are essential.
6:30 PM