Maggie MacKellar: Graft

​Maggie MacKellar discusses her newly released memoir, Graft, with Bernadette Brennan – a gorgeously written reflection, set in Tasmania, on motherhood, farming, nature and home.

In her third memoir Maggie MacKellar describes a year on a Merino wool farm on the east coast of Tasmania, and all the life – and death – that surrounds her through the cycle of lambing seasons. She gives us the land she knows and loves, the lambs she cares for, the ewes she tries to save, the birds around her, and the dogs and horses she adores. 

A story of resilience and a stunning thanksgiving for a place and a moment in motherhood, Graft is a timely reminder of the inescapable elemental laws of nature.

Maggie MacKellar was born in 1973. She has published two books on the history of settlement in Australia and Canada and two memoirs, When It Rains and How To Get There. She now lives on the east coast of Tasmania with her partner and two children.

Bernadette Brennan is a critic and researcher of contemporary Australian writing. She is the author of a number of publications, including a monograph on Brian Castro and two edited collections: Just Words?: Australian Authors Writing for Justice (UQP 2008), and Ethical Investigations: Essays on Australian Literature and Poetics (Vagabond 2008). In 2017 she published her award-winning literary biography A Writing Life: Helen Garner and Her Work (Text). Her most recent book, Leaping Into Waterfalls: The Enigmatic Gillian Mears (A&U 2021), was shortlisted for the 2022 NSW Premier’s Douglas Stewart award and won the prestigious Magarey Medal for Biography, the National Biography Award and the Age Book of the Year (non-fiction). Bernadette is also one of five judges for the Miles Franklin Award.