AustLit

'Don Watson talks with Martin Flanagan about the updated edition of his classic essay, On Indignation. This is a live recording from our event.' (Production summary)

'Martin Flanagan, journalist at the Age, has often written of the great Wonders of Australian Sport, his love of the AFL, of the importance of Aboriginal players in the highest echelons of Australian sport. A few years ago he threw himself at the mysterious and distressed figure of Tom Wills - our early Colonial cricket celebrity, who put together the Aboriginal Cricket Team set for Great Britain in 1868 - and helped write the original Code for Australian Rules. A hero for several original clubs - Melbourne, Collingwood and Richmond for example. Yet things fall apart, as things have often done for our sporting stars...

'So Flanagan went deeper: "I dared myself to actually picture Tom Wills in the various situations I knew him to have been in during his life and backed my fancy. It was like entering a creative delirium. Pictures appeared before me which I wrote down in scenes. If I do the same thing in ten years' time, I may come up with a different story but I doubt that will happen. I doubt the energy that accompanied the writing of this treatment will ever return."

'And so we have his TOM WILLS PICTURE SHOW, shedding light on a most complex character... ' (Publication summary)

Martin Flanagan shares how listening has been an essential part of his life from when he started hitchhiking at fourteen through to writing a book about Aboriginal footballer and activist Michael Long (publication blurb)

'In 1995, Aboriginal footballer Michael Long gave the AFL its ‘Mandela moment'. He quietly revolutionised Australian sport by refusing to let a racial insult pass during the Anzac Day match between Essendon and Collingwood. When the overwhelmingly white football public backed a black man against a white institution (the AFL), the culture of the game flipped and the AFL became a leader in Australian race relations. A decade later, he again impacted on the nation when he set out to walk from Melbourne to Canberra to confront the Howard government over Aboriginal issues.

'This is a portrait of a shy black kid from Darwin who became one of the most notable figures in the history of Australian sport, of a footballer who tore apart the 1993 grand final within seven minutes of the start, of a man known as a joker who is a serious social and political thinker. It is also the story of a white sportswriter who is taken to his limits, and a long way beyond, seeking to understand a man who can only be understood through his Aboriginality.

'Funny, incisive and revealing, The Short Long Book is a compelling portrait of a man who could be described as the soul of the game, as seen by Australia's greatest sportswriter.' (Publication summary)