The Good Looking Bookseller & the Ugly Society: Bill Sutton and the People's Bookshop

Event Details

Date:

Wednesday, 26 September 2018

Time:

2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

Room:

Terrace Room, Level 6

UQ Location:

Sir Llew Edwards Building (St Lucia)

URL:

Event category(s):

Full Description:: Bill Sutton was a legendary figure in left wing politics in Queensland as a prominent member of the Communist Party during the 1960s and 1970s, and as a stalwart of the People's Bookshop, Fortitude Valley for over twenty three years, being the manager between 1966 and 1977. A former shearer and meat worker with a love of literature, his enthusiasm, friendships and hard work maintained the shop through the dark days of the Bjelke-Petersen era, the Vietnam War, and the stagnation of the Soviet Union in the 1970s. He made the bookshop a friendly meeting place for Brisbane left wingers and a local cultural and political icon that promoted Australian writers.

Join Dr Phillip Edmonds as he shares some of Bill's relatively unknown story.

The talk will be followed by afternoon tea.

About Dr Phillip Edmonds

Dr Phillip Edmonds has had a long association with literary magazines and small press publishing. He has published two magazines, Contempa in the 1970s and more recently Wet ink between 2005 and 2012. His Tilting at Windmills: the literary magazine in Australia 1968- 2012 was published in 2015 to critical acclaim. Phillip has recently retired from teaching Australian literature at the University of Adelaide and has returned to writing fiction with his most recent collection of short stories, The Soapbox, published by Arcadia. He now lives in Queensland.