Cirrus@Austlit

'A celebration of insights from a luminairie of Australian letters.

'The first time around these pieces were not widely heard or read. A roomful of festival-goers in Sydney or Penang or Ballarat could well have heard me hold forth on the subject of Enid Blyton, say, or kissing, it’s true, and a few of my newspaper articles – my feuilletons, as I’m calling them – may have caught the eye of some readers of the Byron Shire Echo some years ago. It’s not that these audiences were unappreciative, but they were limited. Nowadays a podcast can attract an audience of tens of thousands  around the globe, while I performed for the most part in more intimate spaces – these were entertainments, so to speak, for un-known friends.'

'No festival organiser, newspaper editor or publisher who has worked with Robert Dessaix is likely to have escaped a request for copies of his wonderful, fleeting talks and short works, or feuilletons.

'These ephemeral pieces — including an overlooked short story ('not my usual genre, but [it] is also a performance, after all, a turn, a numéro, about love’) — are the work of a conjurer whose words dazzle, then seem to vanish almost as soon as they arrive. They are collected, and often annotated, for the very first time in Abracadabra.

'From the wonder of learning foreign languages, to ‘the words I wished I’d said’, Abracadabra is brimming with the thoughtful, witty and humorous observations for which Dessaix is known, and proves, once again, that his way with words is equally magical on the stage as it is on the page.

'Part memoir and personal record, Abracadabra is a work many years in the making, an engrossing collection of observations and ideas which remind us why we read: for pleasure, after all.' (Publication summary)

'What we now want from a biography, or autobiography, is the very thing that Virginia Woolf said that we have no right to want: art. Not only art, obviously, but art nevertheless. And we love the illumination of dark corners of the soul, having quite a few of our own, if we're honest with ourselves.' Robert Dessaix

'The Seymour Biography Lecture was presented annually at the Australian National University and the National Library of Australia from 2005 to 2023, by eminent biographers, autobiographers and memoirists. From political profiles to 'tragic poems', this collection of the lectures investigates the philosophical scaffolding that holds up the form of biography and the deft skill required to tell the truth of a life beautifully.

'Over seventeen years, internationally significant authors have spoken on topics such as 'Biography and the Struggle for the Soul of Australia' (Jill Roe, 2007), 'Truth. Truthfulness. Self. Voice.' (Raimond Gaita, 2017) and 'Honouring the Biographer's Contract' (Chris Wallace, 2023). Interrogate the art of life-writing with thoughtfulness, humour and candour along with: Dr Brenda Niall AO Professor Lawrence Goldman Emeritus Professor Jill Roe AO Richard Holmes Dr David Day Professor Frances Spalding CBE Robert Dessaix Professor Jeffrey Meyers Drusilla Modjeska Professor Ray Monk Robert Drewe David Marr Raimond Gaita Richard Fidler Emeritus Professor Judith Brett Jacqueline Kent Professor Chris Wallace'  (Publication summary)