'The work of Australian writer Inez Baranay is read in the light of Stephen Orgel’s assertion that ‘If readers construct books, books also construct readers,’ and a parallel remark by Elizabeth Webby, that the ‘life/fiction opposition is too simple: the values people act upon in life may, in fact, be derived from novels they have read.’ While making some reference to Baranay’s career as a whole, our focus is the 2019 novel Turn Left at Venus (2019), a structurally complex book about a (fictional) writer of science fiction whose most renowned work is titled Turn Left At Venus. The essay argues that, in reflecting on the making of literary values among those in the book industry, in scholarly environs, and general readers (particularly fans), reading Turn Left at Venus prompts questions about the role of gender, sexuality, cultural and linguistic difference, travel, and genre, as they shape the valuing of books and writers in Australia.'(Publication abstract)
'This article examines serial representations of Indigenous peoples in colonial periodical fiction to explore settler anxieties around colonisation and the fragile nature of settler belonging. It builds upon Elizabeth Sheehan’s work on seriality to consider the extent to which the serial (re)production of representations of Indigenous peoples in colonial texts works both to support and unsettle settler colonial subject formations and identities. Focusing mainly on the 1880 Christmas Supplement of The Queenslander, this study explores how two interdependent modes of seriality—continuity and subject formation—can be productively traced within a single issue of a periodical (Sheehan 2018). By reading across the contents of a periodical we can explore the strategies settler periodical fiction utilised to sublimate and ‘contain’ Indigenous presence while simultaneously noting where such containment fails or is unsettled by the fragile nature of settler fantasies around colonisation. The ‘operations of affect’ (Dillane 2016) at work in these texts are also discussed in this study to consider how they work to reinforce or undermine narratives of settler belonging for these texts’ colonial readership, with particular attention paid to the role of settler sorrow and ‘sympathy’ for the plight of Indigenous peoples in this era.' (Publication abstract)
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