Margaret Taft discusses Leo and Mina Fink on Book Chat
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Leo and Mina Fink
Margaret Taft
The Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation and Monash University Publishing are delighted to invite you to the launch of Leo and Mina Fink: For the Greater Good by Margaret Taft
To be launched by Michael Gawenda AM
‘An inspiring biography of a remarkable couple who dedicated their lives to restoring the forsaken and broken.’ Arnold Zable
‘This is a fascinating and inspirational Australian story.’ Books+Publishing
Dr Margaret Taft is a research associate at the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University. For the past 12 years her research has focused on the reconstruction of Jewish immigrant life in pre-war and post-war 20th-century Australia. Her particular interest lies with the Yiddish speakers from Eastern Europe whose personal agency, leadership and cultural identity transformed what had been a predominantly Anglo Jewish community.
Margaret is an experienced author, teacher, lecturer and public speaker. Her publications include From Victim to Survivor: The Emergence and Development of the Holocaust Witness 1941–1949 and A Second Chance: The Making of Yiddish Melbourne, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Victorian Community History Awards. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, her early years were spent in the culturally rich post-war immigrant community of Northcote.
Michael Gawenda AM is one of Australia’s best-known journalists and authors. In a journalism career spanning four decades, Michael has been a political reporter, a foreign correspondent based in London and in Washington, a columnist, a feature writer, a senior editor at Time Magazine and the Editor and Editor in Chief of The Age in Melbourne from 1997 to 2004.
He has won numerous journalism awards including three Walkley awards, the Australian equivalent of the American Pulitzer prizes. Michael Gawenda was the inaugural Director of the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism and is now an honorary research fellow at the Centre.
His most recent book is The Powerbroker: Mark Leibler, an Australian Jewish Life.
*Monash University continues to be guided by the health advice of the Victorian Government. All attendees must wear a face mask indoors in accordance with Victorian government requirements. Attendees must be fully vaccinated and need to show their vaccination status to the Covid Marshall on arrival.
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Leo and Mina Fink
Margaret Taft
Monash University Publishing is proud to announce that Cathy Perkin’s The Shelf Life of Zora Cross has been highly commended in the 2021 National Biography Award.
Be sure to visit the book page to see more rave reviews and information.
The National Biography Award, supported by the Nelson Meers Foundation, celebrates excellence in biography, autobiography and memoir writing.
With a prize pool of $42,000 it is the nation’s richest prize for Australian biographical writing and memoir.
The Award was established in 1996 by Dr Geoffrey Cains and generously supported by the late Michael Crouch AC to encourage the highest standards of writing in biographical writing and to promote public interest in the genre.
On 6 August 2018 the State Library announced that the Nelson Meers Foundation would be supporting the Award moving forward. The Nelson Meers Foundation has generously increased the value of the prize for each of the shortlisted authors to $2,000. The Nelson Meers Foundation’s key objective is to foster innovative artistic and cultural expression, and to encourage greater engagement with the diversity, complexity and richness of our cultural sector. They support organisations and projects that utilise the arts to create positive social change, promote individual wellbeing, community cohesion and cultural tolerance.
In recognition of the long standing support from the late Michael Crouch AC the Nelson Meers Foundation will also fund an additional prize in his name for a first published biography/memoir by an Australian writer.
The Award’s growth and success recognises and reflects the continuing interest in stories about people with extraordinary lives.
