Author talk: 'Signs and Wonders' with Delia Falconer

Join Walkley Award-winning author Delia Falconer in conversation with Ailsa Piper discussing Delia's latest book.

In 'Signs and Wonders', Delia explores how it feels to live as a reader, a writer, a lover of nature and a mother of small children in an era of profound ecological change. She looks at how global warming is changing not only our climate but our culture. Beautifully observed, brilliantly argued and deeply felt, these essays show that our emotions, our art, our relationships with the generations around us – all the delicate networks that make us who we are – have already been transformed.

How is our imagination affected when something that used to be ordinary – like a car windscreen smeared with insects – becomes unimaginable? What can the disappearance of the paragraph from much contemporary writing tell us about what’s happening in the modern mind?

Scientists write about a 'great acceleration' in human impact on the natural world. 'Signs and Wonders' shows that we are also in a period of profound cultural acceleration, which is just as dynamic, strange, extreme and, sometimes, beautiful. Ranging from an ‘unnatural’ history of coal to the effect of a large fur seal turning up in the park below her apartment, this book is a searching and poetic examination of the ways we are thinking about how, and why, to live now.

This event is in collaboration with Randwick City Library.