Jane Messer - Raven Mother

Name: Jane Messer - Raven Mother
Start: 2026-03-24T18:30:00+11:00
End: 2026-03-24T18:30:00+11:00
Location: Upstairs at Gleebooks

About

Tuesday 24th March

In conversation with Kim Kelly

In a powerful work of memoir, history and biography, Jane Messer retraces the tragic and hopeful steps of her Jewish German grandmother, Bella. From pre-war Berlin to Tel Aviv to Melbourne, Messer follows Bella’s journey and tries to understand her choices, including why she left her son Michael in England before the war. Along the way, Messer speaks with historians, peace activists, scholars and refugees in Germany, Israel and Palestine, and, constantly, to her beloved father.
Shifting between the personal and historical with lyrical precision, Raven Mother grapples with the grand scale of global events and the intimate struggles of family and memory.

Jane Messer is the accomplished writer of the novels Night By Night, Provenance and Hopscotch, along with short stories (most recently in the London Magazine), radio dramas and essays (most recently Axon journal). She is a former Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Macquarie University, and currently a (virtual) Visiting Fellow at the University of Canberra’s Centre for Creative and Cultural Research. In 2025 she launched StorySALOON, a live show and podcast dedicated to contemporary Australian short stories.

Kim Kelly is a well-known book editor and award-winning author of several fictions and creative non-fictions, long and short, including Ladies’ Rest and Writing Room and Touched: A small history of feeling. She is currently a PhD candidate at Macquarie University, where she is researching the representation of Jews in Australian fiction. Her scholarly work has appeared in the international Journal of Historical Fictions, and she has presented research papers at various conferences across Australia and in Germany. Kim lives and works in Sydney and Central West NSW, on Eora and Wiradjuri lands, grateful every day.