Books at the Bowlo
Presented in collaboration with Club Lambton.
Calling All Booklovers!
What to expect:
- 6 pm – 7 pm: Host your regular book club or simply catch up with friends over a meal while chatting about your latest read.
- 7 pm – 8.30 pm: A conversation and Q&A with local authors. We talk about their books, inspirations and literary journey. Hosted by Nina Cullen and Katherine McLean.
Event Details
Cost
Entry is free. Lucky door prizes with every meal purchase.
Bookings
Book ahead to secure your table! Call Club Lambton on 02 4957 3272 or book online here.
Walk-ins also welcome.
Preorder The Book
Copies of the monthly featured book can be ordered via Betty Loves Books! This book will be available for collection at the event, as well as prior to the event.
Preorder here and receive a 10% discount. (Coming soon).
Coming Up: Tuesday 10 November
Inside Out by Kathleen Folbigg
Twenty years in jail: Kathleen Folbigg’s extraordinary story of wrongful conviction, and how science, advocacy and friendship freed her.
In 2003 Kathleen Folbigg was convicted of killing her four babies. Her trial relied on her husband’s accusations and diary entries expressing her guilt over her children’s deaths. She was sentenced to forty years in prison.
In Inside Out Kathleen takes us back to her traumatic childhood, her difficult marriage, her dream of nurturing a family, and the profound souring of that dream into a nightmare.
This is also , however, a story of unwavering friendship and resilience. Tracy Chapman and Kathleen were close at school. After Kathleen was jailed, Tracy renewed contact and, convinced her friend could never have committed such crimes, began advocating for her with extraordinary tenacity. She never doubted Kathleen’s innocence, relentlessly petitioning for new evidence to be examined, and for a new approach to be taken as doubts about the safety of the conviction grew among scientists and the legal community.
Ultimately, these two women together faced down a misogynistic justice system and forged a friendship that supported Kathleen as she endured the trauma of the prison system. And finally, after many devastating setbacks, came the leaps forward needed to overturn one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in Australia’s history: in 2023 Kathleen was released, pardoned and exonerated.
For the first time, in Inside Out Kathleen lays bare her time in prison, her life before she was wrongfully accused, and her hopes for the future; while Tracy describes with passion and insight the fight she took up to help to free her friend, and shares her hopes that their story will prevent other women from suffering as Kath did over those long twenty years.
Kathleen Folbigg
I am Kathleen Folbigg. Co Author of inside Out, an autobiographical account of the most tragic injustice in Australian history since Lindy Chamberlain over 30 odd years ago. I am sure that you are all familiar with that name. My name has now been added to that unfortunate club.
Inside Out is about my experience surviving a similar injustice, and the efforts and suffering of many people that helped me, over the long 20-year battle to regain my freedom after being accused, tried and convicted for the deaths of my four children over a 10-year span. The book contains personal details, stories, pictures and commentary, as well as the friendship that was tried and tested along the way. It ends with my return to freedom and society.
It took two years to write and, for me, was a good way to send my message to everyone.
That message is that this can happen to any ordinary Australian. The system I believed in is broken and needs reform and change. It is also a message that happiness can be found, and life can be lived after tragedy and loss.
The relationships and friendships who were involved in my release are very special people. They are loved and cherished always,
We all have a story. Mine turned out to be quite the journey, and I have been extremely fortunate not to have had to travel it alone.
Co-Hosts
Nina Cullen
Nina Cullen is a Newcastle writer and reader. Her prize-winning writing has appeared in Australia and overseas in publications including Australian Book Review, The Big Issue Fiction Edition, Meniscus, Island, Sleepers Almanac, Taste – Fresh New Writing, Imagining Ourselves, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Guardian. She is also part of the Newcastle Writer’s Festival Story Hunter program, taking creative writing into primary schools in the Newcastle/Hunter region. You can read her monthly Bedside Bookstack reviews at ninacullen.com and say hi on both Instagram and X at @ninakcullen.
Katherine McLean
Katherine is the Director of Hunter Writer’s Centre. Katherine has over 20 year’s experience in leadership positions in arts and non-profit organisations, working across artistic disciplines such as theatre, puppetry, community cultural development, and digital storytelling. She has a great love for story and often spells it with a capital ‘S’ to give it the importance it deserves.
Nick Wasiliev
Nick Wasiliev is an author, freelance journalist, podcaster and content creator. hosts the literary podcast ‘Date with a Debut’ on Words & Nerds, and his debut contemporary novel When Men Cry was published in 2020. He lives in Newcastle (Muloobinba) with his partner and is currently completing his next two novels.
Program Partners
