Historic Hall
The Centre for Modern Australian Writing
Opening in March 2012, Centre for Modern Australian Writing will provide Ballarat readers with an opportunity to experience the best in modern Australian writing in the relaxed atmosphere of the recently refurbished library of the Ballarat Mechanics’ Institute.
Comfortable chairs, tables and a coffee machine are being installed so that readers can sit and browse while they enjoy a cuppa, or simply relax with friends.
About once a month an acclaimed Australian writer will be invited to talk about his or her newly published book at a lunchtime gathering. Arrangements are being made with the publishers and Ballarat bookshops to have books available for purchase on these occasions so that members of the institute and their friends can take away a signed copy. Publishers have also been invited to provide promotional material and copies of each featured writer’s book so that they can be available for members to borrow from the lending library.
The Centre for Modern Australian Writing will be opened on March 23 by the manager and breakfast presenter of ABC Radio, Dominic Brine. He will introduce our first acclaimed writer, Paddy O’Reilly who will talk about and read from her new book The Fine Colour of Rust.
The Fine Colour of Rust is a wryly funny, beautifully observed, life-affirming novel about friendship, love and fighting for things that matter. In Loretta Boskovic, Paddy O’Reilly (writing as P A O’Reilly) has created a truly endearing heroine who gives us all permission to dream.
Paddy’s short story collection, The End of the World (UQP) was released to critical acclaim in April, 2007. The stories in the collection have won a number of national and international story awards including ‘The Age’, the ‘Judah Waten’, ‘Zoetrope All-Story’ (USA) and the Commonwealth Broadcasting Corporation (UK).
The End of the World was chosen as one of the year’s best books in various publications from Australian Book Review to The Financial Review. It was shortlisted in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards and commended in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.
Paddy’s debut novel, The Factory, was also in the best books of the year lists in Australian Book Review and the Sydney Morning Herald and was Highly Commended in the FAW Christina Stead Award for Fiction. It was broadcast in fifteen episodes as the ABC Radio National Book Reading during July 2009.
Her novella ‘Deep Water’ was published in 2007 as one of four in the novella anthology, Love and Desire.
She has also written screenplays and worked as additional screenwriter for films which have been nominated for AFI awards and screened nationally and internationally.
Paddy has been Asialink writer-in-residence in Japan, a fellow at Varuna: the Writers’ House, writer-in-residence at Kelly Steps Cottage, Tasmania, and The Lockup, Newcastle, presenter and reader at the International Conference on the Short Story in Toronto and a full fellow at the Vermont Studio Center, USA.
Paddy spent several years working as a copywriter in Japan. She now lives in Melbourne, Australia.
