Stella Day Out Ballarat | Katia Ariel ‘The Swift Dark Tide’ in conversation with Kelly Gardiner
Minerva Space
Stella Day Out is a free one-day literary festival that celebrates and promotes the outstanding contributions of women and non-binary writers to Australian literature.
The Swift Dark Tide by Katia Ariel
In conversation
Join Katia Ariel for an intimate conversation about her 2024 Stella shortlisted debut The Swift Dark Tide and her second novel Ferryman: The Life and Deathwork of Ephraim Finch. Moving between love and loss, memory and myth, Ariel’s work navigates the deep waters of human connection with lyricism and courage.
The Swift Dark Tide
What happens when, in the middle of a happy heterosexual marriage, a woman falls in love with another woman?
The Swift Dark Tide is a story of selfhood and desire, of careful listening to an ungovernable heart.
Part memoir, part love letter, The Swift Dark Tide is also a chronicle of life by the sea, journeying between Melbourne’s St Kilda and the Black Sea town of Odessa. Katia Ariel introduces us to a lineage of soulful, strident women and beautifully nuanced men. She invites us into home and heart to witness love, loss and joy, motherhood, daughterhood and the urgent wildness of the body.
Ferryman: The life and deathwork of Ephraim Finch
Ferryman: The Life and Deathwork of Ephraim Finch is a profoundly moving exploration of life, loss, and legacy. Blending biography, memoir, and cultural history, Katia Ariel brings to life the remarkable story of Ephraim Finch OAM—a deathworker, community builder, and guardian of cultural memory.
Author Katia Ariel
Katia (she/her) is an award-winning author, book editor and educator from Melbourne/Naarm. She was born in Odessa, Ukraine. Her memoir, The Swift Dark Tide, shortlisted for the Stella Prize in 2024 and won the 2024 Society of Women Writers NSW Non-fiction Prize.
Katia’s work has appeared in journals such as Womankind, Antithesis and Archer. Katia teaches creative writing and editing, and lives with her family by the sea. Her second book, Ferryman: The Life and Deathwork of Ephraim Finch, was published by Wild Dingo Press in June 2025.
Katia will be in conversation with Kelly Gardiner
Author Kelly Gardiner
Kelly Gardiner writes historical fiction, fantasy, and crime fiction for all ages. Her new crime novel, Miss Caroline Bingley, Private Detective, is inspired by Jane Austen and co-authored with Sharmini Kumar.
Kelly’s recent series is The Firewatcher Chronicles and her other books include 1917, shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Young People’s History Prize; Act of Faith and The Sultan’s Eyes, both shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards; and The Swashbuckler Triology.
Goddess, her novel based on the life of the seventeenth-century sword-fighting, cross-dressing opera star, Mademoiselle de Maupin, is being adapted for the screen.
Kelly is a former journalist and community worker, taught creative writing at La Trobe University for many years, and is now writing full-time and running writing retreats and masterclasses.
We are proud to be hosting this series at the BMI.
This event takes place on Wadawurrung Country. Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute acknowledges the Wadawurrung People of the Kulin Nation as the first inhabitants and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we work, learn and create. Always Was, Always Will Be, Aboriginal Land.
