A bestseller when first published in 1992, Honk If You Are Jesus has now been re-released, 30 years later, in the Ligature-Heritage series. Adapted for the stage in 2006, the play won the 'Ruby' Award for Best New Work, and the 'Curtain Call' Award for Best Comedy. Anticipating Jurassic Park in many ways, the book soon leaves the resurrection of extinct animals from their DNA to the resurrections of humans, of a particular human.
Join Peter in conversation with David Marr at the Adelaide Writer's Week
Only Peter Goldsworthy could write a memoir titled The Cancer Finishing School. He explains to David Marr why cancer makes good copy for a writer.
WHEN
Tue 05 Mar, 10:45am
WHERE
Pioneer Women's Memorial Garden
West Stage
New from Viking Penguin: The Cancer Finishing School is a darkly funny, bittersweet memoir offering lessons in how to live life in the shadow of an incurable illness.
‘My first stray thought: cancer is a gift. I’m lucky to have it. What priceless material for a doctor-writer.’
Accidentally diagnosed after a scan of his dicky knee, he was thrown into a world that he knew only too well from the other side: a world that soon shrank to hospital visits, sleepless and hyped-up nights on dexamethasone and life-saving chemotherapy. What lessons might cancer teach him before it finishes him off? he asks, obliquely.
New Release: Minotaur
Peter Goldsworthy's new novel features a blind detective determined to deliver justice to the man who shot him, even though his failed assassin has broken out of jail and is equally determined to finish the job. Cleverly structured around the five senses, and with the action confined to one week, it’s pacey and taut, with the cat-and-mouse tension leavened by lighter interludes.
Goldsworthy is interested in all that his protagonist cannot see, as he is forced to meet evil, acting on a trust in his senses, and the ineluctable mystery that is memory.
More information: https://www.penguin.com.au/books/minotaur-9780143795698
BASED ON THE NOVEL BY PETER GOLDSWORTHY. ADAPTED & DIRECTED BY HUMPHREY BOWER.
“Bower is a born storyteller” – The West Australian
An extraordinary love story and an ethical conundrum, Wish is based on the astonishing novel by leading Australian writer Peter Goldsworthy, and adapted by Helpmann Award winner Humphrey Bower.
JJ, the hearing son of deaf parents, agrees to teach Sign to the mysterious ‘Eliza’. She demonstrates a gift for Sign and bonds passionately with her new teacher.
Humphrey Bower plays JJ, joined by dancer-choreographer Danielle Micich as Eliza, with live music by Leon Ewing in this intimate Australian work that will take you to the outer limits of language, nature, ethics and love.
Nominated: Best Director (Humphrey Bower) Equity Guild Awards
Winner: Members’ Choice Award, Blue Room Theatre Awards
Winner: Blue Stone Award, Best Performance (Humphrey Bower & Danielle Micich)
Winner: WA Dance Award, Outstanding Female Performance (Danielle Micich)
WRITER: Peter Goldsworthy, adapted and directed by Humphrey Bower
STARRING: Danielle Micich & Humphrey Bower
LIGHTING DESIGNER: Andrew Lake
ASSOCIATE LIGHTING DESIGNER: Joe Lui
MUSIC: Leon Ewing
A co-production with Night Train Productions
Originally supported by The Blue Room Theatre
“If you think I’m going to let this shithole wear me down you’re mistaken!”
As a young boy in post-war Darwin, Paul Crabbe begins to take piano lessons from the enigmatic Eduard Keller, an Austrian émigré with a shadowy past and a pedagogical pedigree traced back to Liszt and Beethoven.
For Keller, escaping his ghosts in the isolation of the Top End, music has always been his way of dealing with the horrors of the world. For Paul, learning the piano starts as an inconvenience but soon becomes an obsession, his ticket out of a town full of drifters and misfits. The relationship between the ‘maestro’ and his pupil is an uneasy one but as Paul grows from ex-obsessed adolescent into self-questioning man, he learns about life through music, and through Keller’s experiences and understanding of human nature.
Goldworthy’s coming-of-age novel, voted one of the Top 40 Australian books of all time, has been turned into a wise and funny play about love, betrayal, loyalty, guilt, and the pursuit of artistic excellence.
“A masterful novel has been adapted into an equally masterful play” Australian Stage
Preview Wed 30 Apr 7:30pm
Thu – Sat 7:30pm, Sun 5pm
Final performance, Sat 24 May 5pm
Full $32 | Concession $27 | Groups (10+) $27 | Members $22 | Previews $17 | Student Rush $17 | Cheap Thursdays $17
The Ringtone Cycle, a cabaret quintet for soprano, piano trio and iPhone, lyrics by Peter Goldsworthy, music by Graeme Koehne, will be produced by Opera Australia during the Melbourne Ring Cycle, Nov 28th to Dec 1st 2013.
Link to details and bookings:
http://www.melbournerecital.com.au/whatson/buytix?perfid=6090All Peter's novels and short story collections now available ebooks on Kindle and ibooks.
The Kiss
In addition, his celebrated short story The Kiss was recently released as Penguin ebook Special.
Link to the website for Ashlee page's multi-award winning screen adaptation here: thekiss.net.au
His Stupid Boyhood
August 2013: Penguin will publish 'His Stupid Boyhood' a comic memoir of childhood.
Wish
Also in August 2013: Text Publishing will reissue Peter's 1995 novel Wish in their Text Classics series. with an introduction by James Bradley.
January 2014: HarperCollins will republish Maestro in their Angus&Robertson Australian Classics series.
Noosa Longweekend festival June 18th -19th 2011
Berlin International Literature Festival, September 7th to 17th 2011
Gravel (2010)
New short stories by Peter Goldsworthy, published by Penguin Hamish Hamilton, to be launched at Adelaide Writers Week on March 1st 2010, by J M Coetzee.
Eight brilliant stories by a master of the form, author of the classic Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam and The Kiss.A contented woman finds herself considering a bizarre sexual invitation that just days before filled her with scorn. A mediocre man is pulled into a strange dance with his stalker. A father gives his daughter a Christmas present with a disturbing history. An ugly sports parent plays a game of ridiculous chance. A young boy's music lesson offers him a discordant insight into adult behaviour. And in a primal tale about the borderline between animals and humans, death is horrifyingly not the end of the story...
Compulsively readable, pitch-perfect in mood, Gravel ponders the forces that can wear down a marriage, darken desire, lead people to thwart their best intentions.
Information about all of Peter Goldsworthy's publications, latest news and upcoming events.
