Author In-Conversation: Michelle de Kretser

Michelle de Kretser was born in Sri Lanka and lives in Warrane/Sydney on unceded Gadigal land. Theory & Practice, her most recent novel, won the 2025 Stella Prize and the Prime Minister's Literary Award. Her fiction is published across the world. About the book: Theory & Practice is a mesmerising account of desire and jealousy, truth and shame. It makes and unmakes fiction as we read, expanding our notion of what a novel can contain. The novel is set in 1986, and ‘beautiful, radical ideas’ are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda she meets artists, activists, students - and Kit. He claims to be in a ‘deconstructed’ relationship, and they become lovers. Meanwhile, her work on the Woolfmother falls into disarray. Michelle de Kretser, one of Australia’s most celebrated writers, bends fiction, essay and memoir into exhilarating new shapes to uncover what happens when life smashes through the boundaries of art. This event has been assisted by the Australian Government through Writing Australia, its principal Literature investment and advisory body.