Adjunct Professor Robin Hemley to conclude Present Tense 2017

Present Tense 2017 will conclude with Professor Hemley's lecture Faking It: The Problem with Authenticity and Sincerity in the Memoir, on Tuesday 5 December at the RMIT Design Hub.

Supported by RMIT’s non/fictionLab, Present Tense is an annual series of events and lectures with an exciting and distinct collection of writers and artists. This year has been no exception with speakers like Kate Holden, Graeme Simision, Khalid Warsame, Sam Van Zweden and Sam Cooney included in the program. 

Professor Hemley has published eleven books of fiction and nonfiction. He has received numerous awards and recognition for his work including three Pushcart Prizes and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is currently the Director of the Writing Program at Yale-NUS, Singapore, and Professor Emeritus at The University of Iowa where he was previously director of the Nonficition Writing Program. Professor Hemley is the founder and current president of the international NonfictioNOW Conference. He co-chaired the Melbourne and Flagstaff conferences alongside RMIT’s non/ficitionLab Director and Associate Professor David Carlin.    

Faking It: The Problem with Authenticity and Sincerity in the Memoir will engage with critical discussion about the genre of memoir. 

Are memoir and autobiography always the same, or does memoir belong to neither nonfiction nor fiction? What is the autobiographical pact and was is the authenticity effect? This final instalment of Present Tense will explore the minefield of reader expectation and authorial deceit. 

The event will take place on Tuesday 5 December 2017, at the RMIT Design Hub. Level 3 Lecture Theatre, corner Swanston and Victoria Street. This talk is free but registration is essential, RSVP via Eventbrite.

Story: Loni Jeffs