Michelle de Kretser talks to Toby Lichtig

One of Australia’s most celebrated writers bends fiction, essay and memoir to tell the story of a young woman, her relationship and her fascination with Virginia Woolf. Set in 1986, Michelle de Kretser’s Theory & Practice follows a woman who arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda she meets artists, activists, students – and Kit, who claims to be in a ‘deconstructed’ relationship. Meanwhile, a dismaying discovery throws her work on ‘the Woolfmother’ into disarray.

De Kretser, who has won multiple awards including the 2023 Folio Prize, talks to Toby Lichtig, fiction and politics editor of the Times Literary Supplement, about a book that examines what happens when life smashes into art.