Join us for an evening of far-ranging discussion on addiction and chronic illness with Lucia Osborne-Crowley, Matt Rowland-Hill and Oliver Mol.
Lucia Osborne-Crowley's books I CHOOSE ELENA and MY BODY KEEPS YOUR SECRETS make the case for a new understanding of abuse, trauma and shame by way of her own story of surviving sexual assault.
Oliver Mol's TRAIN LORD recounts how he lived through the hell of a ten-month migraine, finding a path towards healing when, with no other options, he took a job as a train guard.
Matt Rowland Hill's ORIGINAL SINS tells how he traded a fundamentalist Christian upbringing for a decade of heroin and crack addiction before a kind of salvation arrived in the most unexpected of forms.
Join Lucia, Oliver and Matt for an intimate discussion about memoir, addiction, chronic illness, recovery, laughter, hope and healing – and about the question of how far redemption is possible, in life and art.
Lucia Osborne-Crowley is the author of I CHOOSE ELENA (2019) and MY BODY KEEPS YOUR SECRETS (2021), which won the Somerset Maugham Prize for Nonfiction. Her work has been translated into several languages and her journalism has appeared in Granta, the Sunday Times and GQ among other outlets. Her third book, on the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, will be published in August. She grew up mainly in Sydney and lives in London.
Oliver Mol is the author of LION ATTACK! (2015) and TRAIN LORD (2022), which was a Guardian, Australian Book Review and Sydney Morning Herald book of the year. He is a contributing editor at Apartamento Magazine and is a Marten Bequest Scholar for Prose through the Australian Council of the Arts. He grew up in Sydney and lives in Paris.
Matt Rowland Hill grew up in south Wales and south east England and ORIGINAL SINS is his first book. It has been translated into several languages; was longlisted for the 2022 Baillie-Gifford Prize for nonfiction; and was a Guardian, New Statesman and Sunday Times book of the year.