No matter how compelling a novel or a film might be, if you have to study it, there’s always the risk you’ll end up hating it. Not any more! A gift to VCE students, their teachers (and of course life-long learners) Texts in the City is a weekly exploration of the classic texts – both old and new – that appear on the VCE English reading lists.
For our brand new season of Texts in the City, we’ve asked schools to nominate which texts on the curriculum they’d most like to see discussed. By presenting speakers who are intimately familiar with each chosen work, as a writer, reviewer, publisher or performer, we’ll offer new perspectives on these classic books, creating the chance to take the obligation out of – and put the joy back into – reading for the VCE.
Sessions run at the student-friendly timeslot of 4.30pm – 5.15pm and are subsequently hosted on the Wheeler Centre website.
This week, Andrew McDonald and Emmett Stinson explore Graham Greene’s The Quiet American.
Featuring
Andrew McDonald
Andrew McDonald writes books for kids. He is the author of the bestselling Real Pigeons series and the Hello Twigs series (both illustrated by Ben Wood). Andrew lives in Naarm/Melbourne, where he makes up stories and ...
Emmett Stinson
Emmett Stinson is a lecturer in publishing and communications at the University of Melbourne and president of SPUNC, Australia’s only advocacy group for small presses.
He has been fiction editor for Wet Ink: The Magazine of New Writing, book reviewer for Triple R’s Breakfasters, and a panellist on the Australian Department of Innovation’s federal Book Industry Strategy Group.
Emmett’s debut collection of short stories, Known Unknowns (Affirm Press) was shortlisted for the Steele Rudd Award for short fiction. He is a recipient of The Age Short Story Award and a Lannan Poetry Fellowship. His essays, reviews, and fiction have appeared in The Age, The Australian, The Big Issue, Kill Your Darlings, Meanjin, The Monthly, Overland, The Sleepers Almanac, The Modernism Handbook (Continuum, 2009), and more.
Banning Islamic Books in Australia, which he co-wrote with Richard Pennell and Pam Pryde, was published by Melbourne University Press in June 2011