Angela O'Keeffe - Phantom Days

Name: Angela O'Keeffe - Phantom Days
Start: 2026-05-07T18:30:00+11:00
End: 2026-05-07T18:30:00+11:00
Location: Upstairs at Gleebooks

About

6pm for 6:30pm Thursday 7 May

Angela O'Keeffe in conversation with Amy Sambrooke

From the award-winning author of The Sitter and Night Blue comes another mesmerising novel – told, in part, by a book.

Before Isabel has even cracked the spine of a novel she bought on a whim ahead of an overseas trip, she senses something beginning within her. From Sydney to London and back again, the book is a quiet observer. When it’s left in an airport taxi and Isabel’s boyfriend takes it home, the book begins to learn about him – about his family and his past. Soon, it begins to understand: Isabel is not safe.

Angela O’Keeffe is the master of voice, and Phantom Days is a marvel: eerie, elegant and unforgettable. With O’Keeffe’s signature emotional depth and narrative quirkiness, this novel explores the unknowability of other people, the mysteries of the body and the strange ways stories shape, complicate and safeguard our lives.

'A unique reading experience, this hypnotic book unfolds like origami in reverse, revealing the layers that create each single moment – layers of individual experience, of ancestral inheritance, and of the physical world itself.' Rachel Morton

Angela O’Keeffe completed a Master of Arts in Writing at UTS, and her first novel, Night Blue, was shortlisted for the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing and the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. She was awarded the 2023 Varuna Eleanor Dark Fellowship. Her second novel, The Sitter, won the 2024 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and was longlisted for the 2024 Miles Franklin Literary Award. She lives and works on unceded Gadigal land.

Amy Sambrooke was Creative Director of Varuna the National Writers’ House from 2017 to 2023, and Artistic Director of the Blue Mountains Writers’ Festival from 2019 to 2023. Subsequently, Amy rejoined Varuna to lead the development of an extensive range of professional development programs for emerging and mid-career writers, and is now Learning & Development Manager at Varuna, as well as a sessional academic at UNSW. Amy frequently hosts in-conversation sessions for festivals and other events, and has over 20 years’ experience working with organisations across the arts, media, heritage, education and public policy.