Author talk - Susan Francis, about her memoir and latest novel
Join us to hear from author Susan Francis to talk about her memoir The Love That Remains (2020, Allen & Unwin) and her recent novel Revelation Beach (2025, Wild Dingo Press.)
Both books are a search for truth. Her memoir tells of her search to discover the truth about her parents. Although happily adopted, her unknown roots left her with insecurities. Susan's need to search for the truth about the past doesn't stop with her birth parents. She discovers another shocking secret which needs verification, and to be understood and accepted.
Her novel Revelation Beach exposes one of Australia’s most shameful cover-ups, where lives were sacrificed for oil, gas and political expediency. At once a literary page-turner and a powerful reckoning, this novel asks the question: How far would you go to uncover the truth?
Susan spent a year in Indonesia in 1980, where she experienced conversations shutting down when she walked into social settings and witnessed chunks of articles in the newspapers blacked out by the censor as ongoing resistance by the Timorese filled the media. This led to years of researching this bloody history. In Revelation Beach, Susan intricately weaves fact with fiction to highlight our crucial relationship with our northern neighbours and the devastation when we chose to look away from genocide. With the fiftieth anniversary of the journalists’ deaths in October 2025, Revelation Beach showcases one of the greatest government cover-ups in Australian history.
This meeting is free for members, non members are welcome to join by purchasing a $15 ticket below.
Speaker: Susan Francis is an award-winning writer of fiction and creative nonfiction. She also teaches writing workshops and facilitates literary interviews and mentorships. Her second book, an historical crime fiction titled Revelation Beach, was released by Wild Dingo Press on 1 October 2025 and was recently listed for the 2026 Davitt Awards. In 2022, she was granted a Writers Victoria Neilma Sidney Travel Fund and also an ASA mentorship. Susan’s memoir, The Love that Remains was published in 2020 by Allen & Unwin. It was a finalist in Varuna’s Publisher Introduction Program. Her short stories have appeared in The Saturday Paper, Island Magazine, The West Australian, Newcastle Short Story Anthology and Portside Review. Susan has a Masters of Letters in Australian Literature from the University of New England, and a Masters of Creative writing from Macquarie University. She returned to live in her hometown of Newcastle in 2016. Website: https://www.susanfranciswriter.com/about