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St George's College and The Westerly Centre will present the inaugural annual Randolph Stow Lecture by Gabrielle Carey on Tuesday 20 September. The lecture title is 'Getting to know Randolph Stow: towards a portrait of the artist as a young man' .

In 2009, a year before his death, Gabrielle Carey wrote to Randolph Stow asking for permission to visit him in Harwich, England. He promptly turned down the offer, describing himself as ‘rather an unsavoury old bachelor’ who ‘preferred to be left alone’. This only increased Carey’s curiosity in a writer who had been a favourite ever since the age of eight when her mother had handed her, with restrained, yet distinct ceremony a copy of Midnite: a story of a wild colonial boy .

Gabrielle Carey will speak about Randolph Stow from the point of view of a reader, a scholar and a writer as well as from the perspective of the daughter of a dear friend, born from several generations of family friendships spanning Geraldton to the Swan Valley. What do we really know of this famously reclusive and most enigmatic of writers? Carey has begun the task of trying to get to know Randolph Stow only after coming to terms with the possibility that her subject may have preferred to remain unknown and possibly, ultimately, unknowable.

Gabrielle Carey has a Masters in English and a Doctorate of Creative Arts. She is the author of eight books and is currently researching the life and work of Randolph Stow. She teaches writing at the University of Technology, Sydney

Date: Tuesday 20 September 2011.

Time: 5:30pm - 7pm.

Venue: St. George's College Chapel, St. George's College, Mounts Bay Road, Crawley.

Wine and cheese will be served after the lecture.

All welcome.

Further details from Westerly Centre events page .