'An illuminating essay on the bestselling Noongar writer and author of the Miles Franklin Award–winning novels Benang and That Deadman Dance
''I value Kim Scott's fiction so highly because I feel that his approach is to put the flags aside. That Deadman Dance asks us not to consider who we were so much as who we could be, collectively, in the future.'
'Noongar writer Kim Scott has won the Miles Franklin Award twice for his novels. In this moving essay, Tony Birch shows how Scott uses fiction as a pathway to truth. We meet a writer who 'inhabits a range of guises, faces he wears to interrogate the complex and messy frontier history of colonial encounters'. The result is 'new stories' for the nation. This, says Birch, is the work that Kim Scott has been doing for many years.' (Publication summary)
'Ranging over Tony Birch’s career, Ruby Lowe’s review explores the distinct tonalities of Birch’s fiction and criticism, attuned as they are to what he calls the ‘quiet moment of triumph’ that is survival in the face of invasion and settlement.' (Introduction)
Archival Poetics
2024
28321362
2024
single work
podcast
'In this latest instalment of Black Inc.’s ‘Writers on Writers’ series, we have the intriguing prospect of Tony Birch reflecting on the work of Kim Scott. While most of the previous twelve books in this series have featured a generational gap, Birch and Scott, both born in 1957, are almost exact contemporaries. This is also the first book in the series in which an Indigenous writer is considering the work of another Indigenous writer. It will not be giving too much away to say that Birch’s assessment of Scott’s oeuvre is based in admiration. There is no sting in the tail or smiling twist of the knife.' (Introduction)
'In this latest instalment of Black Inc.’s ‘Writers on Writers’ series, we have the intriguing prospect of Tony Birch reflecting on the work of Kim Scott. While most of the previous twelve books in this series have featured a generational gap, Birch and Scott, both born in 1957, are almost exact contemporaries. This is also the first book in the series in which an Indigenous writer is considering the work of another Indigenous writer. It will not be giving too much away to say that Birch’s assessment of Scott’s oeuvre is based in admiration. There is no sting in the tail or smiling twist of the knife.' (Introduction)
Archival Poetics
2024
28321362
2024
single work
podcast
'Ranging over Tony Birch’s career, Ruby Lowe’s review explores the distinct tonalities of Birch’s fiction and criticism, attuned as they are to what he calls the ‘quiet moment of triumph’ that is survival in the face of invasion and settlement.' (Introduction)
