THE ROT - EVELYN ARALUEN BOOK LAUNCH
Join us for an afternoon of collective solidarity and to mark the launch of The Rot by Evelyn Araluen, published by UQP. There will be readings by Micaela Sahhar and also by members of Readers and Writers Against the Genocide. The event will be a tribute to the power of literature in the face of unfolding genocides, here and overseas.
When: November 8
Time: 2-4pm
Where: Blak Dot Gallery, 33 Saxon Street Brunswick 3056
Free but registration is essential.
About the book
The Rot is an unflinching study of the decaying romances, expired hopes and abject injustices of the world. A liturgy for girlhood in the dying days of late-stage capitalism, these poems expose fraying nerves and tendons of a speaker refusing to avert their gaze from the death of Country, death on Country, and the bloody violence of settler colonies here and afar. Across sleepless nights, fractured alliances and self-destructive coping strategies, The Rot is what happens when poetry swallows more rage than it can console, quiet or ironise – this book demands you ready yourself for a better world.
About the author
Evelyn Araluen is a Goorie and Koori poet, editor and researcher. Born and raised on Dharug Country and in the broader Western Sydney Black community, she now lives on Wurundjeri Country where she is a lecturer at the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development, a co-editor of Overland Literary Journal and Chairperson for the Board of the Institute of Postcolonial Studies. Her debut poetry collection, Dropbear, won the 2022 Stella Prize and the Australian Book Industry Award’s 2022 Small Publisher’s Adult Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for the premier’s awards of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. Her work has also received the Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers, the Judith Wright Poetry Prize and a Melbourne Prize Career Development Award.