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The recent death of Muhammed Ali has reignited conversation about boxing and it’s cultural significance. Four boxing enthusiasts, Arnold Zable, Phil Brown, Grantlee Kieza and Luke Stegemann yarn about the sport they all love.
Brisbane Writers Festival
2016 Highlights
Presented by Lock Stock & Barrel
On The Ropes
Arnold Zable
Arnold Zable is a highly acclaimed novelist, storyteller, educator and human rights advocate. Formerly a lecturer at the University of Melbourne, Arnold has worked in the USA, Papua New Guinea, China, and many parts of Europe and Asia. He has conducted writing workshops throughout Australia, and worked with refugees, immigrants, the homeless, the profoundly deaf, Black Saturday bushfire survivors, problem gamblers and other groups, using writing as a means of self-understanding and healing. Violin Lessons is his most recent novel.
Luke Stegemann
Luke Stegemann is Associate Publisher with Griffith Review and has had a varied career working in media, business management, education and interpreting/translation. He lived and worked in both Europe and Asia for some twenty years, returning to Australia in 2008 to act as editor-in-chief and general manager of The Adelaide Review, and went on to found The Melbourne Review in 2011. A committed Hispanist, he is the author of The Beautiful Obscure: Australian Pathways through the Cultural History of Spain. In his spare time, he works as a tournament judge and referee with Boxing Australia.
Melissa Lucashenko
Melissa Lucashenko is an award-winning Aboriginal writer who lives between Brisbane and the Bundjalung nation. Her latest novel, Mullumbimby (UQP, 2013), won the Queensland Literary Award for fiction, was shortlisted for 2014 Kibble Literary Award and 2013 Good Reading Magazine Top Fiction Read, and was longlisted for 2014 Stella Prize and 2014 Mile Franklin Literary Award. Her essay ‘Sinking below sight’ from Griffith Review 41: Now We Are Ten won a Walkley Award in 2014.
Grantlee Kieza
Grantlee Kieza is a prize-winning writer for The Courier Mail and Sunday Mail newspapers in Brisbane and has previously written for Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegrah and The Australian, covering assignments in Europe, America, Asia and Africa. He is a Walkley Award finalist and the author of the bestselling biographies Bert Hinkler: The Most Daring Man in the World and Monash: The Soldier Who Shaped Australia.
Phil Brown
Phil is Arts Editor at The Courier-Mail newspaper and a weekly columnist whose articles and columns appear in Qweekend magazine in The Courier-Mail, and in the lifestyle magazine Brisbane News where he writes about his life … and mines the rich ore of his artistic nature, with occasional references to Dumb and Dumber. He likes it to be known that although he writes for a lifestyle magazine he does not claim to have one. A lifestyle, that is.
“As an author I write about myself,” Phil says. “And, if that sounds self-indulgent, you don’t know the half of it. Mind you if you read either of my memoirs – Travels with My Angst and Any Guru Will Do, both published by University of Queensland Press, all will be revealed. Existential angst reigns in these and both of my books of poetry – Plastic Parables and An Accident in the Evening. Is that a good thing? You can be the judge of that.”
Phil is a popular presenter at festivals and events of an artistic or literary nature and is available for speaking engagements. In fact try shutting him up.