Mantle | In Conversation with Romy Ash
About
Nature has another evolution in store for usUrsula is a self-possessed geologist. In her life on the mainland, she’s a guardian of the timescale, dividing history into segments and reading the Earth’s depths. It sounds like science fiction, but it’s simply science.
When her ailing mother is struck with a mystery illness she is called to the coastline of lutruwita/Tasmania. What begins as an incurable rash evolves into something more dangerous.
With the sickness spreading across the island, and beyond, Ursula finds herself stranded, stuck in her mother’s house and increasingly entangled with a younger man who she met at the pub. She is grieving, beginning to unhinge – and now she too has the rash.
The wild places of the island are solace, even as the world around her begins to shift. As she faces this eruption of new life, and grapples with death and decay, Ursula realises that this change may not signal an end, but a beginning.
Deeply moving and utterly original, Mantle is a powerful novel that shows us our fate is intertwined with the people around us, and the fate of our world.
Romy Ash is the author of Floundering, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin, Commonwealth Book Prize and Prime Minister’s Literary Awards; and a children’s picture book called As Bright as a Rainbow. She was named one of Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian Novelists of the Year in 2013. Her work has been published in the Guardian, The Saturday Paper, Griffith Review, Meanjin, Best Australian Short Stories, Best Australian Essays, among others. She lives in Naarm/Melbourne with her family.
Romy will be in conversation with Kate Kruimink. Kate is a writer whose work has been recognised in prizes in Australia and the UK. Her most recent novel is Heartsease (winner of the Tasmanian Premier’s Prize for Fiction) and her most recent book is the novella Astraea (winner of the Weatherglass Novella Prize). She is the Fiction Editor at Island.
Join Romy and Kate at the Afterword Cafe.
Date
Thursday 4 June 2026 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM (UTC+10)Location
Fullers Bookshop
131 Collins St, Hobart TAS 7000
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Mantle | In Conversation with Romy Ash
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