One of Australia’s best emerging women writers presents a talk based on her book "Double Entry"
'How numbers came to rule the world - or Leonardo da Vinci, a Renaissance monk and the merchants of Venice'
What does accounting – rumoured to be the most boring subject on earth – have to do with Venice, a city which has mesmerised poets and lovers throughout the ages?
This question takes us to the heart of Renaissance Italy, into the life of Franciscan monk, magician and mathematician Fra Luca Pacioli, who taught Leonardo da Vinci mathematics and was probably his lover. It takes us to the ruins of Mesopotamia where writing was invented (by accountants) – and to the pottery works of Josiah Wedgwood, Roosevelt’s New Deal and Wall Street circa 2008.
The secret life of accounting and accountants is not only riveting, but it turns out accountants might be the superheroes of our times – because in 2013 they alone wield the power to save the planet.
Jane Gleeson-White is the author of Double Entry:How the merchants of Venice shaped the modern world - and how their invention could make or break the planet (2011), Australian Classics (2007) and Classics (2005). She is the fiction editor of Overland literary journal and a PhD student in creative writing at the University of New South Wales. Jane has also edited many leading works of Australian literature including The Slap and Dead Europe by Christos Tsiolkas, Jamaica and A Private Man by Malcolm Knox, The Submerged Cathedral by Charlotte Wood, Isabelle the Navigatorand Candy by Luke Davies and Far From a Still Life: Margaret Olley by Meg Stewart.
For Double Entry, Jane was the 2012 winner of The Nib, the prestigious Waverley Library Award for Literature. Following the sucess of this book, Jane received commissions to write for The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Bloombert and to give public lectures to Columbia University, London School of Economics and the BBC - among others.
Jane is recognised as one of Australia’s best emerging women writers and gave the prestigious keynote to the 2012 Emerging Writers Festival in Sydney and [alongside Geordie Williamson] she keynoted a 2012 Stella Prize event entitled ‘Australia’s Sleeping Beauties: Reviving Australia’s Forgotten Women Writers.'
Jane has degrees in economics and literature and was an intern at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice where she studied Modern and Renaissance Art.
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