Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Monday 16 April
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
The very first event to run at the Wheeler Centre was a Debut Mondays session – and two years on, we’re as committed as ever to fostering new talent.
Whether it’s meeting Australian literature’s newest wunderkind or hearing a known quantity strike a bold new path, Debut Mondays is your chance to be part of the literary avant-garde.
Each month in the brand new Moat Bar and Café at the Wheeler Centre, we’ll introduce you to a special selection of new voices from across Victoria and beyond, including a special guest in every session from Voiceworks magazine.
This month, meet Romy Ash, Bruce Scates, Ailsa Piper and Oliver Mol.
Featuring
Ailsa Piper
Ailsa Piper has worked throughout Australia as a playwright, theatre director, actor, teacher, speaker and pate-wrapper.
Her first love was the theatre, which took her from Western Australia, where she grew up on a sheep station in the Gascoyne area, to Sydney and on to Melbourne. Her love affair with the city continues after over two decades.
Ailsa was co-winner of the inaugural Patrick White Playwright’s Award for her script Small Mercies, and a three-year resident actor in Neighbours’ Ramsay Street. She has been nominated for Green Room Awards for acting and directing in the theatre, and in July 2012, John Bell directed a production of an adaptation of Duchess of Malfi, which she co-wrote. She has been a board member at the Arts Centre, Playbox and numerous other arts organisations.
She is passionate about walking and language, and her first book, Sinning Across Spain, reflects those passions.
Romy Ash
Romy Ash is a Melbourne-based writer. Her first novel Floundering was long-listed for the Miles Franklin Award. She is a writer of fiction and non-fiction. She has been anthologised in Best Australian Stories and Best Australian Essays.
Bruce Scates
Professor Bruce Scates has lectured in history in both Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand.
He has published in leading international journals and is the author or co-author of five books published by Cambridge University Press, most recently A Place to Remember: A History of the Shrine of Remembrance (2009). All of these books won critical acclaim and the last won the coveted NSW Premier’s History Award.
His work has frequently featured in the media, including opinion columns in major dailies, documentaries screened on ABC TV and in Aotearoa/ New Zealand and innumerable radio broadcasts. He is the Chair of the History and Heritage Panel of the Centenary of Anzac Advisory Board and has served on several other national committees, including the controversial inquiry into exhumations at Fromelles.
Professor Scates leads regular study tours of the Gallipoli Peninsula and is the historical advisor the Premier of Victoria’s Spirit of Anzac Tour. An experienced public speaker, he has delivered the Annual History Lecture at Government House in Sydney, the Arts Public Lecture in Federation Square, Melbourne, the prestigious Sir Keith Sinclair Address in Aotearoa/New Zealand, among many other presentations.
Oliver Mol
Oliver Mol is a Sydney-based writer. He is a staff writer at The Adventure Handbook. He is 26. He grew up between America and Australia.
He has lived in Houston, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. He was the recipient of a 2014 ArtStart Grant, the co-winner of the 2013 Scribe Nonfiction Prize for Young Writers and the recipient of a 2012 Hot Desk Fellowship.
He has appeared at Emerging Writers' Festival and Melbourne Writers Festival. He has read creative non-fiction at the Museum of Contemporary Art. He has interned at The Lifted Brow, was a fiction editor at Voiceworks and is part of the Stilts Collective. His debut book Lion Attack! will be out through Scribe Publications early 2015. He is excited about life.