About the Event
Join us in this session with Katherine Allum as she discusses her 2023 Fogarty Award winning novel The Skeleton House, in conversation with Kathy Heys.
The Mandurah Readers’ and Writers’ Festival is an annual adult literature event presented by City of Mandurah Library Services. In 2025 it will be held from 16 – 18 January at the Seashells Resort Mandurah. The aim of the festival is to foster a love of reading and literature and encourage creativity in our community. This year the festival brings together an array of established and emerging storytellers from across Western Australia. The free to attend three-day festival includes author talks, and panel discussions.
Katherine Allum
Katherine Allum is an award-winning fiction author. Her debut novel, The Skeleton House, won the 2023 Fogarty Literary Award. American-born, she grew up in four different states, but has strongest ties to Portland, Oregon and regional southwest Nevada. After spending several years in the UK, where she completed a Master of Arts at City, University of London, she now lives in Perth with her husband. She does her best story plotting while swimming.
The Skeleton House
Full of simmering tensions, Katherine Allum's award-winning debut novel, The Skeleton House, pulls back the layers on a seemingly perfect family, exposing the complexities of marriage and motherhood when you are fighting to keep your own identity, no matter the cost. Meg's life is woven into the fabric of St Stephens. It's a tapestry made of two precious children, a hidden truth and a husband whose ideas of a perfect wife do not match her own. When Meg puts her foot down on a third kid, gets a job and is empowered by the same book group that was meant to keep her in her place, her marriage begins to disintegrate. Set in a tiny Mormon community, this is a novel about resilience and courage - the fierceness of mother-love and the power that comes with never forgetting who you really are.
Kathy Heys
Kathy Heys graduated from UWA with a degree in English Literature and a Graduate Diploma of Education and embarked on a career teaching in public schools. She is the Head of English at Coodanup College, a position she has held for eight years. Highlights of Kathy’s reading journey include meeting Markus Zusak and visiting Jane Austen’s house. Kathy is also currently studying Creative Writing at Curtin University.
What to Expect:
11.00am: In Conversation
11:45am: Q & A
12 noon: Book signing
Tea & Coffee provided.
Festival Bookseller is Dymocks Busselton
Places are limited. Bookings required. Book Now!
