Helen Garner felt so ashamed reading over her early journals that she set them alight. As she has written: “There was nothing for it. This shit had to go." 

That the inner workings of a mind so great have been incinerated comes as an enormous loss to all of us who have devoured the author's work. But that Garner has decided to publish the rest of them – across multiple volumes no less – is a voyeuristic thrill.

In a special Sydney Writers Festival edition of Guardian Australia's Bookclub, Helen Garner will be joining the next book club to talk about the second volume of her diaries, One Day I’ll Remember This, which tracks a particular tumultuous decade of her life: it begins with a love affair in 1987, and ends with the 1995 publication of the First Stone, her most controversial work.

In conversation with Michael Williams – and with you – the author of Monkey Grip, Joe Cinque’s Consolation and This House of Grief will be discussing her work and her life, and how the process of diarising can make an impact on both.