CQU academic and author Dr Ann-Marie Priest will give a talk entitled 'Reinventing Love for the 21st Century' in her role as headline speaker for the Whole Woman Festival on March 8-9 at Kingscliff on the Tweed Coast.

Dr Priest is on the festival agenda on March 8, which is International Women's Day.

"I'll be talking about how women's experiences and expectations of love have changed and what that might mean for how we live out our love relationships in the future. In this, I'll be drawing on the lives and work of women writers," she said.

The conference program preview of Dr Priest's talk explains that:

"Despite falling rates of marriage and rising rates of divorce, women in the twenty-first century are more idealistic about love than ever. Not only do we have high hopes of love but, thanks to the dramatic social changes of the past 50 years, we also have more freedom to realise those hopes. The result is that each of us in our own lives is exploring new ways of achieving emotional connection, sexual satisfaction and personal fulfilment through love. Collectively, we are part of a profound social transformation whose form can as yet be glimpsed only in our individual biographies. Ann-Marie will look at several well-known literary women whose lives and writings suggest some of the ways in which love is being reinvented for a new era."

Dr  Priest is the author of Great Writers, Great Loves: The Reinvention of Love in the Twentieth Century.

Festival details are available at: http://www.wholewoman.com.au/