
Image credit: Tolga Tuncay
Thursday 17 April 2025
Speaker: Margaret Ann Spence
Topic: The Price Women Paid For Political Choices Made by Men
While writing Cold War in a Hot Kitchen: a memoir of mid-century Melbourne, Margaret Spence delved into history to understand the political and social tensions that pervaded her childhood home as well as society at large: immigration, inflation and industrial unrest, government secrecy and suspicion, the legacy of the masculinist culture of mining on her paternal grandmother and father, and a disturbing career vs. child choice faced by her adored aunt, later known as the feminist journalist Nan Hutton. With a domestic cold war mimicking the external Cold War, Margaret considers the influences and challenges facing women then and now.
Margaret Ann Spence’s first novel, Lipstick on the Strawberry, was a winner in the First Coast Romance Writers 2015 Beacon Contest and her second, Joyous Lies, was a finalist in the 2021 Somerset Book Awards for Literary and Contemporary Fiction. She now lives in the United States.
Where – The meeting room at the Customs House Library, at Circular Quay.
When – The talk will begin at 12.15, The room is open from 11.30 for tea/coffee/sandwiches.
Entry – $20 JSNWL members $25 non-members
PLEASE BOOK BY NOON Monday 17 February 2025
Phone the library on (02) 9571 5359 or email .au