EVENTS
Jaclyn regularly moderates events at writers festivals, literary organisations like The Wheeler Centre and Writers Victoria, as well as bookshops. She gives author talks about gardening and making pasta at libraries, community centres and food stores. Jaclyn also runs gardening workshops for children. She is regularly on ABC Radio reviewing books and making reading recommendations.
Veronica Sullivan, Festival Director,
Melbourne Writers Festival
“Jaclyn Crupi is one of my favourite people to program. Whether speaking with debut local writers or high-profile international guests, the hallmarks of Jaclyn’s interviewing style are her genuine warmth and passion for all things literary and/or culinary. Jaclyn invariably brings impeccable readerly acumen, wise and curious engagement with books, and infectious enthusiasm to every event she hosts.”
Jennifer Down, Miles-Franklin Award winning author of Bodies of Light
“Jaclyn is a shrewd and empathetic reader – traits that make her an excellent interviewer. Whether in conversation with Jaclyn myself, or watching her speak with another writer, I always feel I’m in the safe hands of someone who wants to share her passion and her intellectual curiosity with the reading public. She knows my books better, I suspect, than I do.”
Natalie Paull, Beatrix Bakes
“It’s an immense delight to be interviewed by Jaclyn. As soon as you are ushered through the discussion doorway with her generously flattering and impeccably researched introduction, the chat is like you are sitting with a close friend! Jaclyn makes you feel comfortable being yourself, encourages a giggle (or several) and gives you room to explore deeper emotions. She is a confident and charismatic conduit of conversation. ”
Sarah Krasnostein, multi-award winning author of The Trauma Cleaner and The Believer
“The depth of her reading and the breadth of her thinking make Jaclyn a rare and wonderful interviewer. Our conversation back in 2018 remains, for me, a highlight of my writing career.”
Upcoming Events
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BOOK CHAT
Wednesday 24 June, 6pm
BRUNSWICK LIBRARY
Writer, book lover and host extraordinaire Jaclyn Crupi returns to Brunswick Library for a chat about our favourite books of the year.Find out what Jaclyn's been reading, meet other readers and bring along some recommendations to share.
If you're in a reading slump, don't fear! This is the perfect event to inspire you to get back to reading.
This event is part of our Warm Winter Reads program which encourages people to beat the winter blues by curling up with a book. You can learn more about the Warm Winter Read here.
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Eat the Book: Home Food
Thursday 25 June, 6pm
BRUNSWICK KITCHENJoin us at Brunswick Kitchen for a simply elegant evening with Elizabeth Hewson of Saturday Night Pasta. Elizabeth will be demonstrating elements from the recipes featured in Home Food and discussing her approach to cooking, food and developing perfectly imperfect recipes with Brunswick Bound’s Jaclyn Crupi.
Home Food delivers simple, comforting, sometimes nostalgic family eating - from weeknight ease to weekend pottering.
Food columnist and recipe writer Elizabeth Hewson's approach is all about what cooking should be, so it can be nourishing and still enjoyable - less pressure, more ease. These are perfectly imperfect recipes that don't chase trends, viral moments, or complicated techniques.
Including plenty of veg-forward recipes, plenty of tips and tricks for making the most of your precious moments in the kitchen, and delivered with the signature Hewson elegant ease, this is the book for when dinner needs to just be dinner.
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Author Talk and Pasta-Making Demonstration
Tuesday 30 June, 11am
CARRUM DOWNSAccording to Jaclyn Crupi – a proud Italian-Australian pasta maker and devotee – pasta is love, pasta is life. Pasta can be a quick and simple meal or a culinary masterpiece, but in essence it is about generosity, comfort and the beauty to be found in simplicity. Her book Pasta Love is a celebration of pasta and the people who make it.
Join Jaclyn to learn how to make fresh pasta at home and how to improve your dried pasta dishes (unlock the secrets of starchy salty pasta cooking water). Hear stories of the incredible pasta nonne (Italian grandmothers) Jaclyn has been making pasta with and learn their pasta-making ways. Jaclyn will demonstrate how to make a semola rimacinata flour and water pasta dough and then shape it into cavatelli, orecchiette, fusilli al ferretto, lorighittas and many more pasta shapes. So if you’re keen to give pasta making a go, or you just love all things pasta, this is the event for you.
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New Releases Round-Up (& Industry Goss)
Wednesday 1 July, 6:30pm
SUBSTACKNew Release Roundup + Industry Fireside Chat with Jaclyn Crupi & Bri Lee
Allow us to help you cut through the noise and never-ending lists, and bring your attention to the best of book world each month.
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The Winter Productive Garden
Wednesday 8 July, 2pm
FRANKSTON LIBRARYWinter is a wonderful time in the productive garden. The soil and plants might be at rest but that doesn't mean you have to be. It's time to get stuck into some winter gardening jobs including soil improvement, making liquid fertilisers, creating a hot compost system, making seed tape, overwintering summer vegetables, setting up a simple greenhouse, caring for garden tools and preserving some winter fruit and vegetables. Winter gardening sets up successful and productive spring and summer in the garden! Jaclyn Crupi learnt about gardening from her frugal and practical nonnos and is ready to pass on their wisdom and sage advice so you too can Garden Like a Nonno.
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Pasta Love
Thursday 16 July, 6pm
STORIES BY THE SEAJaclyn Crupi will also be in the bookshop on Thursday 16th July demonstrating how to make pasta from simple ingredients at home. If you’ve had the pleasure of attending an event with Jaclyn you’ll know how incredibly generous she is in sharing knowledge! It’s the perfect way to spend a cosy winter eve, glass of bubbles in hand.
Tickets are free. Bookings required. -
Body of Work: Helen Garner
Thursday 6 August, 6pm
THE EDGE, FED SQHelen Garner, as one of Australia’s most significant and renowned writers, needs little in the way of introduction. From her groundbreaking debut novel Monkey Grip (1977) to her latest, co-authored non-fiction work The Mushroom Tapes (2025, with Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein) she continues to set the standard for fearless investigation into what makes us – and her – tick.
Touching on everything from her award-winning How to End A Story: Collected Diaries 1978–1998 (2025) to non-fiction favourite Joe Cinque’s Consolation (2004) and novels such as The Spare Room (2008), this event will be a celebration of Garner’s immense contribution to Australian letters and life across five decades.
This event is presented as part of Body of Work – a free, in-conversation series with some of Australia’s greatest living literary icons, presented by Fed Square and curated by author and bookseller Jaclyn Crupi.
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Warm Winter Read Ambassador
Tuesday 11 August, 6pm
SANDRINGHAM LIBRARYCome along for a cosy and inspiring chat with Warm Winter Read ambassador Jaclyn Crupi — a much-loved book champion, storyteller and all-round curious creative.
Jaclyn will share the books she’s chosen for Warm Winter Read, chat about her own writing adventures, and explore some of the unexpected delights of the Library of Things. There may even be a pasta-rolling demonstration along the way, with Jaclyn showing how to use the pasta machine — because books, conversation and a little hands-on fun make a pretty lovely combination.
With a long career in publishing and bookselling, Jaclyn brings warmth, insight and a genuine love of connecting people with stories. She is the author of many books for children and adults, including Garden Like a Nonno, which was shortlisted for an Indie Book Award, Pasta Love, Planting for native birds, bees and butterflies and The ABC Kids Guide to Loving the Planet, winner of the Environment Award for Children’s Literature (Non Fiction). Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, SBS Voices, The Canberra Times, PIP Magazine and Frankie. Her latest book is Planting for Native Birds, Bees and Butterflies.
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Author Talk and Propagation Demo
Thursday 3 September, 6.30pm
BENTLEIGH LIBRARYWant to help the native wildlife in your area but not sure how to start? Are you keen to grow more native plants but have a small budget? Would you like to attract native birds, bees and butterflies to your outdoor spaces?
Countless Australian species of birds, bees and butterflies are in decline or threatened with extinction, but you can help. Writer and gardener Jaclyn Crupi shows us that protecting and fostering precious native wildlife starts in our own backyards. The first step: start planting! And choose native plants where possible. This alone presents endless opportunities for habitat creation – sometimes it’s the smallest actions that make the biggest difference. Providing a well-placed dish of water on a hot day, building and installing a simple insect hotel or allowing leaf litter to stay where it falls are among the many other super simple ways you can make your garden more attractive to native birds, bees and butterflies, and in turn benefit all species. Loads of practical advice for gardeners and novices alike.
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Eat the Book: Natalie Paull
Saturday 5 September, 10.30am
BRUNSWICK MECHANICS INSTITUTESweet Heart is a collection of recipes to satisfy every sweet craving from the legendary baker and author behind Beatrix Bakes.
This unmissable collection serves up classics and inspired flavour twists, and includes everything from Natalie's most straightforward recipes – many can be whipped up simply with hand beaters – to treats for those in the mood for a baking adventure. These are recipes so heart-burstingly good, they will make you weep with joy.
Featuring a concise 'bake-tionary' and top tips derived from decades of baking wisdom, along with Nat's classic Adaptrix advice so you can mix and match to your dessert desire's delight, this gorgeously photographed and illustrated collection is one to hold close always. -
Body of Work: Charlotte Wood
Thursday 24 September, 6pm
THE EDGE, FED SQAward-winning author Charlotte Wood is the author of seven works of fiction and three non-fiction books, and has been celebrated for her stylistic originality, psychological depth and embodied prose.
From her debut Pieces of a Girl to her Booker Prize-shortlisted Stone Yard Devotional, her works of fiction have reflected on ideas of agency, control and chaos, climate catastrophe, female rage and grief.
This in-conversation event will be a close study of the creative risks Charlotte Wood has taken with each new project over her nearly 30-year writing career – from her Stella Prize-winning dystopian novel The Natural Way of Things to her works of non-fiction such as Love & Hunger: Thoughts on the Gift of Food.
This event is presented as part of Body of Work – a free, in-conversation series with some of Australia’s greatest living literary icons, presented by Fed Square and curated by author and bookseller Jaclyn Crupi.
PAST EVENT
New York Times-bestselling author Sloane Crosley was live in conversation with Jaclyn Crupi exploring the sharp comic edges of reality, writing the surreal and the fear of running into your ex.
Jaclyn in conversation with Sloane Crosley
Jaclyn has four author talks based on her book Garden Like a Nonno: Soil and Seeds, The Winter Productive Garden, The Autumn Productive Garden and The Spring Productive Garden. In each talk she shares wisdom and gardening knowledge taught to her by her grandfathers.
PAST EVENT
Jaclyn in conversation with Stephanie Alexander
Hear Stephanie Alexander reflect on her unparalleled five-decade career as a cook, writer and restaurateur, and the legacy she has built for generations of professionals and amateurs in kitchens around the country.
PAST EVENT
Jaclyn moderated several panels at the inaugural Sorrento Writers Festival and interviewed Chris Hammer, Sofie Laguna, Megan Rogers, Andre Dao, Saman Shad, Pirooz Jafari, Armando Lucas Correa, Joelle Gergis, Sam Vincent and Simon Holmes a Court.
Sorrento Writers Festival
PAST EVENT
Over a seasonal lunch prepared with Indigenous Australian ingredients, a panel of culinary superstars met at Big Esso to discuss their approaches to cooking and sharing food, and the intersections and impact of multiculturalism, immigration and First Nations cuisine on Australian food culture. Inspired by Griffith Review: A Matter of Taste, the event featured Mabu Mabu owner and head chef Nornie Bero and author and broadcaster Alice Zaslavsky with host Jaclyn Crupi.
On the Table: A Matter of Taste
PAST EVENT
Super Bloom: Jaclyn in conversation with Jac Semmler
Jaclyn Crupi visits Heartland, the home garden of Jac Semmler, author of Super Bloom: a field guide to flowers for every gardener to talk gardening, beauty, the book and of course maximum flowers in a special one off podcast.
PAST EVENT
Jaclyn in conversation with Anna Krien and Favel Parrett
For October’s Double Booked Club, we’ll hear from two acclaimed Australian authors, whose new works of fiction take readers to distant corners of the globe … and back again.
PAST EVENT
Jaclyn has programmed and hosted many events at Hill of Content Bookshop
The Writers on the Hill event program began in 2018 and has gone from strength to strength. Authors interviewed include Sarah Krasnostein, Helen Goh, Chloe Hooper, Laura Elizabeth Woollett, Jennifer Down, Paul Kelly, Alice Robinson, Guy Grossi, Jane Lopes, Charlotte Wood, David Holmgren, Kirsten Bradley, Nick Ratar, Belinda Jeffery, Natalie Paull, Scott Pickett, Lesley Harding and Kendrah Morgan.
Jaclyn was interviewed by The Age journalist Cara Waters at Basils Farm as part of Queenscliffe Writers Festival
PAST EVENT
This lunch event sold out in record time. Diners enjoyed Italian dishes, some of them from recipes in Jaclyn’s books, and good conversation about the Italian art of living well.
PAST EVENT
Soil and Seeds
The Winter Productive Garden
The Autumn Productive Garden
The Spring Productive Garden
