Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer

WRITERS AND READERS WEEK, Friday 9 – Wednesday 14 March 2012

GERMAINE GREER

“If a woman never lets herself go, how will she ever know how far she might have got? If she never takes off her high-heeled shoes, how will she ever know how far she could walk or how fast she could run?” Germaine Greer

Widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of our time, Germaine Greer will discuss her life and times at the Wellington Town Hall for Writers and Readers Week. “We are thrilled to mark Germaine’s first appearance at a New Zealand literary festival,” says Writers and Readers Week Manager Anne Chamberlain. “She remains one of the world’s most outspoken and lively commentators on how we live today.’’

An Australian scholar, writer and academic, Greer was born in Melbourne and educated in Australia and at Cambridge University. Her first book, The Female Eunuch (1970), took the world by storm and remains one of the most influential texts of the feminist movement. She has had a distinguished academic career in Britain and the US and makes regular appearances in print and other media as a broadcaster, journalist, columnist and reviewer. Since 1988 she has been Director (and financier) of Stump Cross Books, a publishing house specialising in lesser-known works by early women writers.

Among her many other books are Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility, The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause and Shakespeare’s Wife. In 1999, The Whole Woman, a sequel to The Female Eunuch, was released. Greer is Professor Emeritus of English Literature and Comparative Studies at the University of Warwick.

Lisa Jardine wrote in The Guardian in 1999: “Professor Greer’s detractors may pooh-pooh its influence, but the fact is that for women born in the immediate post-war years there was ‘before Greer’ and ‘after Greer’. The book, and Germaine’s attention-grabbing brand of stand-up-comic, in-your-face assertiveness, taught us all how to behave badly and take control of our lives.”

Following the success of The Female Eunuch, Greer travelled the world to promote her book. On the New Zealand leg of her tour in 1972, she was arrested for using the word ‘bullshit’ during her speech, which attracted major rallies in her support. Among Greer’s other books are Daddy, We Hardly Knew You, a diary and travelogue about her father. She has also written extensively on issues surrounding indigenous Australians.

“The feminist revolution has not failed,’’ Greer wrote in the Melbourne Age in 2010. “It has yet to begin. Its ground troops are fast developing the skills and muscle that will be necessary if we are to vanquish corporate power and rescue our small planet for humanity.”

WHEN: 6.30pm Monday 12 March 2012

WHERE: Wellington Town Hall

DURATION: 1 hr

TICKETS: $33/$28 Bookmark Pass & Friends

ENDS

Writers and Readers Week is supported by the Lion Foundation, Victoria University of Wellington, John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellowship, Unity Books, Museum Art Hotel, Australia Council for the Arts, Australian High Commission, Goethe Institut, Canada Council for the Arts, Embassy of Spain and the Embassy of the United States of America.

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