In conversation with popular authors Brooke Dunnell and Tess Woods.

Join with Brooke and Tess in a wonderful discussion of Brooke’s latest novel Last Best Chance (released April 2024). Tess will be asking Brooke about her inspirations for the novel, her writing experiences, her highlights, and garnering her advice on approaching that 'daunting' second novel. A relaxed Q&A session will follow so come along and ask whatever you’d like to know about all things writing from two successful, and beloved, local authors. You will also be first to hear all about the new genre fiction festival being held 19 October 2024, from Festival Director, Tess Woods. Will your favourite local & interstate authors be there? Potentially!

Copies of Last Best Chance are available for purchase on the day.

This event has been enabled by Writing WA’s Love to Read Local Week with support from the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund. PCWC are delighted to be part of Love to Read Local week and thank the Copyright Agency for sponsorship of Brooke and Tess's appearance, and for both Writing WA and the Copyright Agency for supporting local authors and writing in WA. Great job guys!!!

Love to Read Local week runs June 2- 9, 2024. To find out about other events head to:

Love To Read Local (writingwa.org)

Tickets: $5 PCWC and WUWA Members. $10 non-members. + small eventbrite fee.

Last Best Chance: When Rachel, a forty-something single woman, finds herself running out of options on her path to motherhood, she seeks treatment at a fertility clinic in Central Europe. Telling half-truths to her family and the clinic’s medical team, Rachel questions how far she will go to become a mother, even though she struggles to articulate her desire to become one.

Meanwhile, expat Jess loves her new life with Viktor despite their struggle to make ends meet and her confusion about her life’s purpose. Viktor and his friends live their lives passionately while Jess just seems to be living.

With the city preparing for a green-energy expo, Jess sees the opportunity to ignite a career dream, while Rachel fears that it might jeopardise her dream of having a child. Will a chance encounter between the two women give each what she desires?

Brooke Dunnell is the author of the novels Last Best Chance and The Glass House, which won the 2021 Fogarty Literary Award and was published in 2022 by Fremantle Press. Her short fiction collection, Female(s and) Dogs, was a finalist for the 2020 Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award and shortlisted for the 2021 Woollahra Digital Literary Prize. Her short fiction has been widely published in journals and anthologies including New Australian Fiction 2021, the Big Issue fiction edition, Best Australian Stories, Westerly and Meanjin, and she was a Westerly Mid-Career Fellow for 2023. A regular facilitator of writing workshops, Brooke also works as a mentor of emerging writers, fiction manuscript assessor and judge of creative writing competitions. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from UWA.

Tess Woods once had a simple life until her compulsion to write made-up stories complicated everything. She’s now an award winning and best selling author of contemporary fiction. Her novels have been published across North America and sold into Europe for translation. Her fourth novel, The Venice Hotel, is due for release with Penguin Random House this coming September. Tess also works as a physiotherapist in private practice and she's obsessed with the little red street library in her front garden. Her favourite thing to do is to curl up with a good book and a cup of tea, ignore the book, forget the tea’s there and doom scroll social media instead.

Host or Publisher Peter Cowan Writers Centre Inc.