Jo Tuscano - Girl of Sea and Sky

Name: Jo Tuscano - Girl of Sea and Sky
Start: 2026-07-05T14:30:00+10:00
End: 2026-07-05T14:30:00+10:00
Location: Upstairs at Gleebooks

About

2.30pm for 3pm Sunday 5 July

Jo Tuscano in conversation with Irina Dunn

Sarah Stone thinks that perhaps she has killed someone. After an accident, Sarah is left with dissociative amnesia and is admitted to a psychiatric hospital against her will, where the professionals suggest hypnosis. Sarah trusts no one and is antisocial.

Sarah’s nighttime ritual is to hold a shell; it opens a portal, and she is transported back to the beach to her old life before the hospital.
Sarah trusts no one until the arrival of Elena, a Prosopagnosia (face-blindness) sufferer. Sarah knows that Elena cannot recognise her, so her secrets are safe. She opens up to Elena and to her therapy group.

Sarah begins hypnosis and, one afternoon, experiences an explosion of memories. She now understands that things didn’t happen as she thought they had, and in time, she is discharged and ready to resume her life. Sarah is healed in a very unlikely place with people society often shuns.

Jo Tuscano is an author of fiction and non-fiction. Her novel The River Child (Odyssey Books) was published in 2022. Her non-fiction Back on the Block (ASP/AIATSIS) was published in 2009, This Is Where You Have To Go (Pantera) was published in 2024, and With What I Have Left (New Holland Press) was published in 2024. Jo has been published in Westerly Overland, the Sydney Morning Herald, Women’s Weekly, Marie Claire, Mama Mia media, The Daily Telegraph, the New England Review, Stringybark, Spineless Wonders and many other publications.
Jo is a graduate of the Allen and Unwin Faber course.

Irina Dunn is the former director of the NSW Writers’ Centre and the present director of the Australian Writers Network. She is the director of ID Consultancy. Irina has a wealth of experience in publishing and editing. She is a published author, reviewer and film maker and has chaired and spoken at many writers' festivals nationally and internationally. Irina's award-winning film Fighting for Peace, about the Australian women's peace movement, received critical acclaim at the San Francisco International Film and Video Festival. Her documentary about the controversial Ananda Marga case, Frame-up: Who Bombed the Hilton, Who Didn't?, helped to secure an inquiry into the case, which led to the three accused being freed and pardoned.