Naked Ambition
Moderator: Monica Dux • Robert Gott and Steve Lewis
You do not have to look hard to find absurdity in Australian politics. This is the country where a deputy prime minister issued a televised death warrant for Johnny Depp’s toy poodles, and a state politician had to publicly deny interfering with a quokka. So why are political satires so few and far between?
Robert Gott’s new novel, Naked Ambition, is a rare exception – a cheeky little tale of political vanity. He joins Steve Lewis, co-author of The Marmalade Files, to talk all things farcical and wry. Perhaps these literary jokers have an answer for why we take ourselves so seriously?
Artist
ROBERT GOTT is the author of 95 books of non-fiction for children, and eight historical crime novels (set in Australia in the 1940s) for adults. Two of these, Amongst the Dead and The Holiday Murders have been shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction. He is the creator of the cartoon The Adventures of Naked Man, which ran weekly for 19 years in ‘The Age’ and appeared also in three newspapers in New Zealand. His latest novel is Naked Ambition, a comedy about politics, religion and the Archibald Prize.
Artist
STEVE LEWIS is the driving force behind the Canberra Writers Festival and a best-selling author whose novels inspired the global smash TV hit Secret City. A former senior journalist in the Canberra press gallery, Steve now works as a political and media consultant and is Vice President of the National Press Club. Steve is determined to put Canberra on the global map as a top destination for high-quality and high-rating political drama.
Moderator
MONICA DUX is the author of two memoirs: Lapsed: losing your religion is harder than it looks, and Things I Didn’t Expect (when I was expecting). She is the co-author of The Great Feminist Denial, and editor of the anthology Mothermorphosis. Monica was a founding board member of the Stella Prize and the Feminist Writers Festival. From 2013 until 2022 she was a columnist for The Saturday Age. She is currently working on a third memoir and doing a PhD in Creative Practice at RMIT.