09 August 2022
On Thursday 18 August, UniSA’s Creative People, Products and Places (CP3) Research Centre and the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund will host the second event in six-part speaker series Writing, Gender and the Natural World.
Titled “Unnatural Being”, the upcoming session will feature writer Jennifer Mills delivering an Auslan-interpreted presentation that can be attended in person or via Zoom.
Jennifer Mills is an author, editor and critic based on Kaurna Yerta (Adelaide). Her latest novel, The Airways (2021), was recently shortlisted for an Aurealis Award for Horror. Her previous work, Dyschronia (2018), was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin, Aurealis (for Science Fiction), and Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature.
Mills – who is currently Artist in Residence at Vitalstatistix – says her fiction and non-fiction aims to “amplify the uncanny in the Anthropocene”.
“In an era of unnatural disasters, stories about the future of nature are often dominated by loss and mourning,” Mills says.
“Perhaps what we have thought of as ‘nature’ no longer serves us. If nature is not a place but a set of relationships, what values might spring from writing that disturbs, disrupts, and unsettles those relationships?”
Writing, Gender and the Natural World series curator, UniSA Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Literature, Dr Jessica White, says Mills’s presentation will offer a unique insight into the relationship between nature and humanity, particularly given the author’s focus on what she describes as a “queer imaginary” which works to “dissolve the borders between self and other, human and non-human, and natural and unnatural beings.”
The Writing, Gender and the Natural World series showcases female and non-binary writers speaking about the importance of our environment at a time of climate and extinction crises, with monthly events held until the end of 2023 at accessible venues in Adelaide and regional South Australia. Details of future events will be available soon.
When: Thursday 18 August, 5.15pm for 5.30pm to 7pm
Where: Bradley Forum (H5-02), Level 5 Hawke Building, UniSA City West Campus or remotely.
Register for Unnatural Being here. This is a free event, but registration is required.
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Media contact: Dan Lander M: +61 408 882 809 E: dan.lander@unisa.edu.au
