Nina Funnell to release book behind the #LetHerSpeak campaign

Nina Funnell has signed a book deal that will take readers behind the scenes of the internationally-acclaimed #LetHerSpeak movement.

The work of rape survivors across Australia to reclaim their voices and overturn the series of archaic victim gag-laws that have silenced sexual assault survivors for decades is the subject of a new book to be released in 2022.

HarperCollins Publishers Australia announced on Monday it has acquired world rights to a new book by Walkley Award-winning investigative journalist Nina Funnell, who created and drove news.com.au’s groundbreaking #LetHerSpeak and #LetUsSpeak campaigns – which produced sweeping law reforms across Victoria, Tasmania and the Northern Territory and brought Grace Tame into the public spotlight.

A survivor herself, Funnell will take readers behind the scenes of the internationally acclaimed movement, offering a personal account of the dramatic events that unfolded.

But it will also examine the social, cultural and systemic barriers that survivors continue to confront as they attempt to hold offenders and institutions to account and the tensions around Australia’s #MeToo movement regarding media ethics, defamation law and the public and private backlash that whistleblowers endure as they attempt to create change.

Funnell’s career began in her 20s as a consent trainer of NRL players. As a journalist, she has specialised in reporting on sexual violence in some of Australia’s most protected and powerful institutions.

Her investigations into exclusive private boys’ schools and elite residential colleges at prestigious universities have prompted police investigations and wide-scale institutional reviews. From there, she has traced misogynistic attitudes and behaviours through the pipeline to the upper echelons of our nation’s legal, banking and political fraternities.

Nina Funnell. Picture: Supplied

“This is a book about power, violence and the politics of finding one’s voice,” Funnell said.

“It’s a book about change – and the price we are willing to pay to achieve it. I’m honoured to be working with Catherine Milne and HarperCollins on this project.”

Publisher Catherine Milne said Funnell’s book will “inspire, infuriate, and ignite action as it challenges Australia’s rape culture and the toxic and powerful elements which conspire to protect it”.

“I am in awe at what Nina Funnell has achieved, the battles she has fought, the campaigns she has mounted – and won,” Milne added.

“She both confronts the heart of darkness in our society and she shines the brightest light into that darkness, pointing us towards what needs to be done. I am deeply honoured to be helping to bring this inspiring, vital and necessary book into the world.”

Funnell is a finalist in the Walkley Foundation’s Mid-Year awards for journalism for her work on the #LetHerSpeak campaign in two categories: the June Andrews Award for Freelance Journalist of the Year and the June Andrews Award for Women’s Leadership in Media.

Funnell’s book will be published by HarperCollins in 2022.

Originally published as Nina Funnell to release book behind the #LetHerSpeak campaign