Mark Raphael Baker: His Literary and Intellectual Legacy

Mark Raphael Baker was a Holocaust scholar, an inspiring teacher and the critically acclaimed author of The Fiftieth Gate and Thirty Days. He was also a much-loved member of the Melbourne and Sydney Jewish Communities. In this session, panellists who knew Mark well, will speak on aspects of his life and work and Michelle Lesh and Raimond Gaita will read from A Season of Death, Mark’s posthumous memoir, forthcoming.

Artists

Raimond Gaita

Raimond Gaita is Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at King’s College London and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.The University of Antwerp awarded him the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa “for his exceptional contribution to contemporary moral philosophy and for his singular contribution the role of the intellectual in today’s academic world”….

Michelle Lesh

Michelle Lesh is a Senior Fellow at Melbourne Law School. She worked at the United Nations as an international lawyer, and for many years in Israel as a legal advisor at governmental, inter-governmental and non-governmental levels. She is on the board of Australian Red Cross International Humanitarian Law Advisory Committee, on the International Council of…

Sarah Krasnostein

Sarah Krasnostein is a multi-award winning writer and critic. She is the best-selling author of The Trauma Cleaner, The Believer, the Quarterly Essay, ‘Not Waving, Drowning‘ and ‘On Peter Carey‘. She holds a doctorate in criminal law and is admitted to legal practice in Australia and America. Her awards include the Victorian Prize for Literature,…

Foong Ling Kong

Foong Ling Kong is Publisher at Melbourne University Publishing. Over a two-decade career, she has worked in-house at Penguin, Hardie Grant and Allen & Unwin. She was Chair of the Feminist Writers Festival, on the boards of the Stella Prize and Overland, and managing editor of Anne Summers Reports. She spent the last seven years…

Krystiyna Duszniak

Krystyna Duszniak is the owner of Lost Histories, a Polish-Jewish research bureau. She has an MA in History from the University of Melbourne, where she was a student of Mark Baker’s and later went on to be his research assistant for The Fiftieth Gate. Lost Histories was born thanks to Mark sending everyone Krystyna’s way…

Arnold Zable

Arnold Zable is an acclaimed writer, novelist, much-loved storyteller, and recipient of an Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. His books include Jewels and Ashes, Cafe Scheherazade, The Fig Tree, Scraps of Heaven, Sea of Many Returns, Violin Lessons, The Fighter, The Watermill, and forthcoming, The Glass Horse of Venice, beautifully illustrated by…

David Slucki

David Slucki is the Loti Smorgon Associate Professor in Contemporary Jewish Life and Culture, and the Director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University. He is the author of Sing This at My Funeral: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons (2019), and The International Jewish Labor Bund after 1945: Towards a Global…