The Endling | Keely Jobe in Conversation
About
A feminist utopia crumbles with one impossible birth.On an isolated mountaintop, a small feminist community is fracturing under the weight of ideological divides and dwindling numbers. Mila struggles to hold the women together, while deeper in the bush her aunt Frank — an ailing recluse — lives with only her dog, Chicken Midnight, for company. Nearby, an orchid endling approaches its own death, and the extinction of its entire species.
As Frank grows increasingly unwell and secretive about her condition, the community women begin mysteriously falling pregnant. When Mila gives birth to the only boy, their hardline separatist ideals face an impossible test.
Vividly expressed, wildly funny, and wholly original, The Endling examines the volatile intersection of community and politics, exploring what happens when the borders we construct between species, between sexes, between self and world prove more porous than we imagine.
Keely Jobe is a writer of fiction and nonfiction living on the east coast of Lutruwita/Tasmania with her partner and two staffies. Her work has appeared in The Monthly, Island Magazine, Australian Geographic, and Cosmos. She has a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Tasmania and is the nonfiction editor at Island Magazine. The Endling is her first novel.
Keely will be in conversation with Jane Rawson. Jane is the author of essay collection Human/Nature: On life in a wild world, novels A history of dreams, From the wreck and A wrong turn at the Office of Unmade Lists, a novella, Formaldehyde, and the non-fiction book The Handbook: surviving & living with climate change. She is the Managing Editor at Island magazine and co-edited Breathing space, a collection of reflections and projections on nature in Tasmania.
Join Keely and Jane at the Afterword Cafe.
Date
Tuesday 31 March 2026 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM (UTC+11)Location
Fullers Bookshop
131 Collins Street, Hobart TAS 7000
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The Endling | Keely Jobe in Conversation
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