Dr Louise Helfgott is an award-winning writer with a PhD in Creative Writing. She has an extensive collection of plays, poetry, and short stories published and plays/musicals produced for the stage. Her most recent book Thistledown Seed was published in July 2022 and had been previously shortlisted for the Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript in 2018.   Thistledown Seed was one of five books shortlisted for the Premier’s Prize for Book of the Year in 2023.  The award supports, develops and recognises excellence in writing.

Other recent notable achievements include receiving the Todhunter Literary Award for Drama (2014) for her play Light in her Eye (performed Perth Fringe Festival 2018) and being shortlisted for workshopping in the national Playwriting Australia Competition (2010, 2011) for her play Frames (performed Class Act Theatre 2014).

Interweaving fiction and memoir in multiple threads, Thistledown Seed follows the displacement and violence of the Holocaust for a Polish family who subsequently settle in Western Australia. In this deeply moving account, Louise Helfgott explores another side of her family’s tragic past made famous in the Oscar-winning movie, Shine. The floating thistledown seed is like the diaspora of the Jewish people who were scattered around the world as a result of the Holocaust.

An opportunity to hear from our Guest Author, Dr Louise Helfgott whose book Thistledown Seed was one of five shortlisted for the Premier's Prize for Book of the Year in 2023.

Tickets can be purchased from https://si-mandurah.tidyhq.com/schedule/events at $60 per person including a two course sit down lunch, tea and coffee.

The deadline to purchase tickets is:  10 November 2024.

Dress:  Smart Casual.