#Performances
#About the event
Duration: 90 minutes
Rick Morton will discuss his memoir: One Hundred Years of Dirt, an unflinching memoir that at its heart is a testimony to the strength of familial love and endurance.
#Artist
Rick Morton
Rick Morton is an award-winning journalist and the author of three non-fiction books. His latest My Year of Living Vulnerably launched on 17 March, 2021.
Morton is also the author of One Hundred Years of Dirt (MUP, 2018) and the extended essay On Money (Hachette, 2020).
Dirt is part family memoir, part book of essays about growing up on the outside in Australia. It explores intergenerational trauma, poverty, addiction and mental health and the role of a mother who tried to love enough for the failures of everyone else around her. He is the Senior Reporter for The Saturday Paper. Originally from Queensland, Rick worked in Sydney, Hobart, Melbourne and Canberra as the social affairs writer for The Australian with a particular focus on social policy including the National Disability Insurance Scheme, aged care, the welfare system, religion and employment services. Rick is the winner of the 2013 Kennedy Award for Young Journalist of the Year and the 2017 Kennedy Award for Outstanding Columnist. He appears regularly on television, radio and panels discussing politics, the media, writing and social policy.
One Hundred Years of Dirt was shortlisted for the 2019 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, longlisted for the 2018 Walkley Book of the Year, and longlisted for both Biography Book of the Year and the Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year for the 2019 ABIA Awards. Dirt was also shortlisted for the National Biography Award.
#Moderator
Melanie Myers
Melanie is a writer, editor and researcher. Her debut novel Meet Me at Lennon's (UQP) won the 2018 QLA's Glendower Award for an Emerging Writer. Her work has been published in Kill Your Darlings, Griffith Review, Arena Magazine, Overland, Hecate, TEXT and elsewhere. She is a winner of the 2022 Griffith Review Emerging Voices competition and the 2024 winner of the UQ Creative Writing Fellowship. She teaches at the University of Queensland.
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