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About The Event
This event has been postponed due to COVID-19. If you are a ticket-holder, check your email for updates sent by Roaring Stories via Eventbrite. Sign up to Roaring Stories to stay in the loop for future author events.
Join author and passionate nature advocate Claire Dunn in her search for discovering the wild in the city, as captivatingly explored in her new book, Rewilding the Urban Soul.
Held upstairs at charming restaurant and pub, the Royal Oak Balmain, this Roaring Stories event will be hosted by Alison Gibbs, author of Repentence, a profoundly moving novel on place.
Tickets can be purchased via Eventbrite. Attendees are asked to arrive at 6.30pm for a 7pm start. Seating is unallocated – another reason to arrive early to secure an optimal spot.
Rewilding the Urban Soul will be available for purchase at the venue through Roaring Stories, with book signings from Dunn following discussion.
The event will also be livestreamed from the Live section of the Roaring Stories Facebook page, and available to view later as an upload on the Roaring Stories YouTube channel.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Once upon a time, a burnt-out Claire Dunn spent a year living off the grid in a wilderness survival program. Yet love and the possibilities of human connection drew her back to the city, where she soon found herself as overscheduled, addicted to her phone, and lost in IKEA as the rest of us. Given all the city offers — comfort, convenience, community, and opportunity — she wants to stay. But to do so, she’ll have to learn how to rewild her own urban soul.
Join Claire as she sits by and swims in the brown waters of the Yarra River, forages for undomesticated food in the suburbs, and explores many other practices in a quest for connection. To make our human hearts whole, she realises, we’ve all got to pay attention and learn to belong to our cities — our land. This is where change begins. For ourselves and for the world.
‘Love makes us move to the city. Duty makes us stay. But how do we create a livable habitat for our bodies and spirits and relations in these murderous places? You might find the answer in this book.’ – Tyson Yunkaporta, author of Sand Talk
ABOUT CLAIRE DUNN
Claire Dunn is a writer and a passionate advocate for rewilding our inner and outer landscapes. She worked for many years as a campaigner for the Wilderness Society and now facilitates nature-based reconnection retreats and contemporary wilderness rites of passage. In 2010, Claire lived in the bush for a year as part of a wilderness survival program, an experience she wrote about in My Year Without Matches. She currently lives in Melbourne.
ABOUT ALISON GIBBS
Alison Gibbs was born in 1963 and grew up in the towns and villages of northern NSW. Her short stories and essays have been published and broadcast in Australia and the UK, and have received numerous short-listings and awards. Her debut novel Repentance, published by Scribe to critical acclaim in January 2021, is set in the rainforests and farmlands of the Border Ranges and examines a moment in the mid-1970s when our attitudes to the environment underwent a seismic shift. Alison now lives in Sydney’s inner-west where she runs her own copywriting consultancy, producing text for the not-for-profit sector. She remains a passionate birdwatcher and organic gardener, and is a founding member of the Mudcrabs Cooks River Eco-Volunteers, carrying out litter reduction and bush regeneration along one of Australia’s most degraded urban waterways.
This event is presented by Roaring Stories Bookshop Balmain with Scribe Publications.
With thanks to our venue partner the Royal Oak Balmain.
Please note that tickets are non-refundable.
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