Personal Score
Ellen Van Neerven In Conversation With Kieran Pender
“As First Nations people from Australia are the oldest surviving living culture in the world, we are also the oldest living sporting culture and the oldest sportspeople in the world.”
Ellen van Neerven's first work of nonfiction, Personal Score, is a ground-breaking look at sport on this continent from a First Nations and queer perspective.
In a country where sport is a foundational part of the national identity, what does it mean to play on stolen land? What power do athletes have – on and off the field – to challenge our preconceptions of gender and sexuality?
On the eve of the Women’s World Cup final, don’t miss this vital conversation.
Artist
ELLEN VAN NEERVEN is an award-winning writer of Mununjali and Dutch heritage. Ellen’s first book, Heat and Light, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize. They have written two poetry collections: Comfort Food, which was shortlisted for two awards, and Throat, which won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and the Multicultural NSW Award and Book of the Year in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards.
Moderator
KIERAN PENDER is an Australian writer, lawyer and academic. He is an award-winning journalist, contributing to The Guardian, The Monthly, The Saturday Paper and The New York Times. Kieran has covered the world's biggest sporting events, from the Olympics to the Men's and Women's World Cups to the Tour de France. He is also a senior lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre and an honorary lecturer at the ANU College of Law.