Ailsa Piper: Woollahra Writers Festival

Ailsa's Piper's marvellous, poignant and beautifully crafted memoir is called For Life: A Memoir of Living and Dying and Flying. It opens with the very sudden death of Ailsa's husband of 30 years and closes with the not unexpected death of her beloved 92 year old father.

For Life was one of the books of 2024 for me so it was a deep delight to get to be in conversation with her about it all for the Woollahra Writers Festival in Sydney on Sunday March 30th. We spoke about what grief does to a person's sense of self and how it altered Ailsa. But at its core the book is about how we can be fully in life and for life while we're living. Even if we're living alongside great sadness or loss or watching the people closest to us at the end of their lives. She's an incredibly thoughtful, generous speaker, thinker and writer and it was a moving and memorable conversation.