Anna Krien and Helen Garner: Night Games

Read our write-up of this event in our Notes. It’s also been blogged about by James Douglas at Meanjin and WH Chong at Crikey’s culture mulcher.

In this very special event, two generations of Australian reportage royalty come together, as the world- renowned Helen Garner interviews Anna Krien, one of the brightest writers of her generation, about her new book, Night Games: Sex, Power and Sport.

Anna Krien was shortlisted for just about every literary prize in the country for her groundbreaking debut about Tasmania’s logging industry, Into the Woods – described by Chloe Hooper as ‘an intimate, urgent book pulsing with truth’.

Night Games is another balanced and fearless work of investigative reportage, as Krien ventures into the murky world of football culture, as it relates to women.

In the tradition of Garner’s The First Stone, this is a closely observed look at sex, consent and power. At its centre is Krien’s account of the rape trial of a footballer.

What does a young footballer do to cut loose? At night, some play what they think of as pranks, or games – involving women. These games sometimes involve consensual sex, but sometimes they don’t … and sometimes they fall into a grey area.

This is the world of Sam Newman, Ricky Nixon, Matty Johns, the Cronulla Sharks. A world where women are there to service men, or to bring them together. A world of prolonged adolescence.