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Ideas Festival 19-22 May 2011

You are here: Home / Big love: Will monogamy continue to prosper?

Big love: Will monogamy continue to prosper?

By suzanne on 6 April, 2011

In a society where opportunities for indiscretion are presented at every turn and the popularity of marriage is declining, why does monogamy remain so popular? Is monogamy simply the best of a bad set of options? Our guests, newly-married Israeli-Australian author Lee Kofman and self-described lesbian, ex-Mormon comedian Sue-Ann Post, draw upon research and personal experience in relationships past and present to examine why we’re holding onto monogamy so tightly. Has the time come to reconsider how we arrange our life partnerships? Lee is also featured in the May edition of the Griffith REVIEW.

Lee Kofman
Lee Kofman, the bilingual author of three fiction books (in Hebrew), emigrated from Russia to Israel in 1985, and to Australia in 2000. Since 2002 her short fiction, non-fiction and poetry in English appeared in Australia, Scotland, UK and USA. She is the recipient of an Australian Council grant 2004, the Varuna Eric Dark Flagship Fellowship 2005, Emerging Writer-in-Residence in Katharine Susanna Pritchard Writers’ Centre 2007 and several other writing residencies. She holds MA of Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne and teaches creative writing at various community settings.

Sue-Ann Post
Sue-Ann Post is famous for her one woman comedy shows across Australia, the UK, USA and New Zealand and has won the Melbourne Comedy Festival’s Barry Award for Best Show.  Sue-Ann’s most recent book, The Confession of an Unrepentant Lesbian Ex-Mormon (ABC Books) was based on her documentary film A Lost Tribe (ABC TV/Pony Films).  It is an exploration of the renegade gay and lesbian ex-Mormon community of Salt Lake City.

Sue-Ann was a regular columnist for The Age and was nominated for a Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Print Media Award. She has also appeared in numerous television programs, including Compass, Kath and Kim and Good News Week.  She worked as a guest sumo wrestler with The Jim Rose Circus and once spent an evening handcuffed to American comedian Rich Hall.

Further reading:

Want to learn a little more before Lee and Sue-Ann’s presentation? They’ve suggested the following resources as a starting point:
Harris Paul, ‘Forget monogamy and swinging. We’re seriously polyamorous’, The Observer, 13th November 2005
Perel Esther  2007, Mating in Captivity, Harper Paperbacks
Phillips Adam (1996), Monogamy, Faber & Faber, London
Potter Alicia, ‘Free love grows up’, The Boston Phoenix, 15-22 October 1998
Ryan Christopher & Jetha Cacilda 2010, Sex at Dawn, Scribe, Carlton North
Weiss Phillip, ‘The affairs of men: the trouble with sex & marriage’, New York Magazine, 18.5.08
Foster Barbara M., Foster Michael & Hadady Letha 1997, Three in Love: Ménages a Trois from Ancient to Modern Times, Harper One, San Francisco

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Posted in Saturday, Sessions | Tagged Cayla Dengate, free, Griffith Review, happiness, Lee Kofman, marriage, monogamy, relationships, Sue-Ann Post

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