Kris Kneen - Rite of Spring

Name: Kris Kneen - Rite of Spring
Start: 2026-07-01T18:00:00+10:00
End: 2026-07-01T18:00:00+10:00
Location: Upstairs at Gleebooks

About

6pm for 6.30pm Wednesday 1 July

Kris Kneen in conversation with Benjamin Law

In the hope of salvaging their relationship, Miranda and Richard become caretakers of a remote island lighthouse off the coast of Tasmania. Richard wants to shake up the malaise that had him falling into an affair, Miranda wants to understand what has changed and to recover from a diving accident that almost took her life. Both are excited about the renewal and adventure that the mysterious lighthouse promises. But what begins as a reuniting, quickly turns for Miranda in to an untamed journey back to the ocean that swirls at the core of her being.

Few write so vividly about bodily intimacy and spirit as Kneen. Rite of Spring beautifully fuses place, psychological drama, the primordial nature of the ocean and the personal search for a centre. It is a mind-blowing novel about a woman on the cusp of menopause that transcends our expectations about who and what we can be.

'Thank the literary gods for Kris Kneen! For the way they make desire dangerous again, the body luminous, and shame impossible. For giving us a sea full of monsters – and the terrifying grace of finding one inside ourselves.' – Beejay Silcox

'A psychosexual page turner dripping with tension, lust, bodies in flux. Kris Kneen's Rite of Spring is Australian gothic at its best.' – Siang Lu

Kris Kneen is the award-winning author of memoir: Affection, Fat Girl Dancing. The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen and fiction: An Uncertain Grace, Steeplechase, Triptych, The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine, Wintering, as well as the Thomas Shapcott Award-winning poetry collection Eating My Grandmother. They have written and directed broadcast documentaries for SBS and ABC Television. They live in Brisbane, Australia, where they work as a bookseller.

Benjamin Law is a journalist, columnist, TV screenwriter and author of The Family Law, Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East and Quarterly Essay 67: Moral Panic 101. The Family Law is an award-winning TV series for SBS that Benjamin created and co-wrote over three seasons. He is a weekly columnist for Good Weekend magazine.