Join us to hear from two authors; Guest speaker Kristine Phillip and SWWV member Evelyn Cronk talking about their debut books. Memoir and novel respectively we’ll learn about the books and their authors’ paths to publication.
Members are free, non members are welcome to attend by buying a ticket below for $15. Or why not become a member? Details on joining the society are here.
Girl Friday: An Extraordinarily Ordinary Working Life is the hilarious and moving memoir about women at work, pay inequality and the alienating nature of the 21st century workforce. This is a story about resilience and reinvention, and it is also a story about how we are not human resources, we are human beings.
Kristine was 15 when she lied to get a junior office job as a Girl Friday in 1975 – she took the job because she thought she only had to go to work on Fridays. She went on to experience the full gamut of working life, from joblessness, self-employment, mind-numbing office roles, toxic workplaces, and out-of-control workloads. Miraculously, Kristine clocked up forty years of admin work, and then in her fifties she became unemployable and ready to tell all.
Wisecracking, frank and completely relatable, Kristine Philipp’s Girl Friday offers stirring insights into the personal and political contexts of working women’s lives, the lengths older women must go to keep a job, the trials of walking the poverty line in later life and the power of friendships and camaraderie in the workplace.
Kristine Philipp began life in Melbourne in 1960. In 1975 she started office work, on and off for forty years, in the university sector, small business, the public service and community organisations. In 1984, she was the subject of a half-hour episode for Faces of Change, an ABC TV documentary series and book about women in Australia, and was remembered by Anne Deveson in her 2003 book Resilience. Kristine inspired and helped to develop the lead character in Mary Callaghan’s 1988 feature film Tender Hooks. She won a scholarship and graduated with BA Hons in cinema-media studies in 2000. Kristine has written and performed stand-up comedy shows at Fringe Festivals, and writes articles for Friends of the Earth. Kristine’s creative non-fiction short stories are published in a local literary journal, on ABC online and are produced as audio stories. Kristine is an unemployable, old punk, and this is her working life memoir Girl Friday.
SWWV member Evelyn Cronk will present her debut novel Without Question.
Prior to writing it, she enjoyed a productive career in the Australian film industry as a film editor and post-production supervisor. Evelyn moved from actively editing to become manager of a specialist post-production house, Roar Digital, a subsidiary of film production company, White Hot Productions. She read and discussed many of the scripts submitted to White Hot Productions for consideration.
Evelyn proffered her story synopsis, thinking that the script supervisor might like to take her outline and turn it into a film script. The supervisor and producers loved it. They encouraged Evelyn to develop the story as a novel. Without Question was published on January 25th 2024. There is a proposed limited episode TV series based on the novel to follow.
About Without Question
Isabella Clemens was born in Britain during the chaos of World War II. After the death of her mother, her father, distinguished war correspondent Howard, brings Isabella, to his home in Yarra Glen, Australia, to be brought up by her aunt Fiona. Howard remains a loving, if distant and authoritative, figure in her life.
Isabella meets the man who will have a huge impact on her life. Eli, an Israeli structural engineer, has experienced a life so different from her own, it is as if they are from two different planets. She is devastated when Eli leaves on a regular business trip and never returns. Her loss is incalculable. She also has to face the possibility that Eli was someone other than the man she believed him to be.
When her father dies, two small photographs found in his wallet throw every belief she holds about her own life, and his, into disarray. These faded pictures unlock a web of secrets that change Isabella's life forever.
Evelyn Cronk