In our first Book+Author event of the year, Dr Geraldine Fela joins Dr Yves Rees in conversation about her book Critical Care: Nurses on the Front Line of Australia’s AIDS crisis. Join us as we delve into Dr Fela’s research in our brand new venue for 2025, the intimate downstairs salon at Bard’s Apocothery.

HIV and AIDS devastated communities across Australia in the 1980s and 1990s. In the midst of this profound health crisis, nurses provided crucial care to those living with and dying from the virus. They negotiated homophobia and complex family dynamics as well as defending the rights of their patients. Bringing together stories from across the country, historian Geraldine Fela documents the extraordinary care, compassion and solidarity shown by HIV and AIDS nurses. Critical Care unearths the important and unexamined history of nurses and nursing unions as caregivers and political agents who helped shape Australia’s response to HIV and AIDS.

‘Drawing on the frontline experience of nurses, Fela has written an insightful and moving history of the tragedy and triumphs of Australia’s response to the AIDS epidemic.’ – Dennis Altman, Vice Chancellor’s Fellow, La Trobe University.