Issue Details: First known date: 2021... 2021 ‘Alien of Exceptional Ability’ Recalling Hazel Rowley Ten Years After Her Death
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'The biographer Hazel Rowley enjoyed the fact that her green card – permitting her to work in America – classified her as an ‘Alien of exceptional ability’. This is close to perfect: her own biography in a few words. If not exactly an alien, she was usefully and often shrewdly awry in a variety of situations: in the academic world of the 1990s, in tense Parisian literary circles, and in the fraught environment of American race relations. It helped that she was Australian, and a relative outsider. The people she sought information from were less likely to categorise her and more inclined to talk. Her books – the major biographies of Christina Stead (1993) and Richard Wright (2001), Tête-à-tête: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre (2005), and Franklin and Eleanor: An extraordinary marriage (2010) – are certainly evidence of exceptional ability, as well as obsession and tenacity.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Book Review no. 434 August 2021 22604690 2021 periodical issue

    'The August issue offers readers a feast of fiction, along with the magazine’s usual probing commentary and criticism. The issue features all three stories shortlisted for the Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, as well as reviews of new books by Rachel Cusk, Tony Birch, Bill Birtles and ABR Rising Star Sarah Walker. In non-fiction, Stephen Bennetts highlights one of the overlooked contexts for the debate over Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu, while Michael Dwyer recounts Australian journalists’ enduring fascination with China. The risks of border crossing are also weighed by Elisabeth Holdsworth and Seumas Spark in their reviews of recent books on the history of transportation. Brenda Walker and Jim Davidson pay tributes to the achievements of Hazel Rowley and Robin Boyd, respectively, and there are poems by Joan Fleming, John Kinsella, and Laurie Duggan – as well as plenty more!'(Publication summary)

    2021
    pg. 15
Last amended 13 Aug 2021 05:50:57
15 https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/archive/2021/august-2021-no-434/966-august-2021-no-434/8082-brenda-walker-reviews-life-as-art-the-biographical-writing-of-hazel-rowley-edited-by-della-rowley-and-lynn-buchanan ‘Alien of Exceptional Ability’ Recalling Hazel Rowley Ten Years After Her Deathsmall AustLit logo Australian Book Review
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