NIGHT, MA - Elizabeth Knox

Twelve years in the making, Night, Ma is Elizabeth Knox’s intimate account of how she and her family contended with a series of calamities in rapid succession. With Kim Hill guiding the conversation, Elizabeth will dive deep on the process of bringing this daring, revealing and compassionate memoir into the world. Between 2008 and 2012, Elizabeth had to grapple with her sister’s psychotic break, her brother-in-law being killed in Raratonga and the decline and death of her mother, following her motor neuron disease diagnosis. To tell the story, Elizabeth realised she had to go back to the beginning, and she had to be radically honest. The result is a masterpiece of a memoir that captivates the reader and reminds us that, with the actual daily work of love, it is possible to endure. ‘Armed with inimitable wit, the consolation of cats and a forensic gaze that spares no one, least of all herself, Knox interrogates the act of caring; the ties that burn and bind, that somehow we survive.’ – Diana Wichtel ‘The mood swoops from elegiac to confrontational to grittily immediate to almost visionary, without any lapse of control. There’s even room for comedy.’ – David Hall ‘An unforgettable record of love and pain, as wide and deeps as the ocean and as mighty. There is such life in this, such wit and goodness.’ – Noelle McCarthy