Contemporary Australian Writing (2103HUM)
Semester 1 / 2013

Texts

y separately published work icon The Casuals Sally Breen , Pymble : Fourth Estate , 2011 Z1797418 2011 single work autobiography (taught in 3 units) '"Three things happened at the dawn of the 1990s that would change everything about how we had lived before. We graduated high school, Microsoft shipped Windows 3.0 and America started the Gulf War. We became adults in the 1990s. The start of the world gone mega. Gone global. Gone mad. We became The Casuals and this is our story."

'The Casuals is the story of the life and times of one young woman′s journey through the last two decades of the 20th century; from her pop-fuelled adolescence in the 1980s to a full-blown grunge ride in the 1990s, Sally Breen is the girl your mother warned you about. A charged and heady exploration of sex, drugs and pop culture, it is also a meditation on loss, death and grief as the author struggles to reconcile her place in a chaotic world. Sally Breen gives voice to her generation; those somehow smashed in between all the Xers and Ys -- maybe lost, maybe beat, but most of all casual.' (From the publisher's website.)
y separately published work icon Swallow the Air Dust on Waterglass Tara June Winch , 2003 St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2006 Z1265164 2003 selected work short story (taught in 33 units)

Swallow the Air follows the life of 15-year-old May Gibson, an Aboriginal girl from New South Wales whose mother commits suicide. May and her brother go to live with their aunt, but eventually May travels further afield, first to Redfern's Block in Sydney, then to the Northern Territory, and finally into central New South Wales. She travels to escape, but also in pursuit of a sense of her own history, family, and identity.

y separately published work icon I Dream of Magda Stefan Laszczuk , 2007 Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2008 Z1426510 2007 single work novel (taught in 6 units)

'''Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

'Tolstoy wasn't thinking specifically of the Harrison family when he wrote those words, but maybe he should have been. George Harrison is twenty-eight and afraid of the dark. His father is dead and his mother lives in la-la land. Reeling from a broken heart, and still coping with the trauma of a childhood home invasion, George works in a dead-end job in a bowling alley and finds rare solace in the giant painting of an alien that sits outside his room. His brother Matthew isn't much better off. After losing the love of his life in a traumatic car accident, he's retreated into a private world of sleep where he dreams about falling in love with comedienne Magda Szubanski.

'Matthew and George are each stuck in their own little messed-up world, with no idea how to get out, and neither of them is sure whether their unhappy family will ever finally pull together, or simply just fall apart.' (Publisher's blurb)

y separately published work icon A Night at the Pink Poodle Matthew Condon , Milsons Point : Arrow Books , 1995 Z565230 1995 single work novel (taught in 8 units)
y separately published work icon Young Poets : An Australian Anthology John Leonard (editor), St Kilda : John Leonard Press , 2011 Z1838810 2011 anthology poetry (taught in 2 units)
The Breen, Campbell, Condon, Cormick, Laszczuk and Winch books are available at the Gold Coast campus bookshop.

Description

This course examines recent Australian writing in novel, short story, and poetry forms. It focuses on new writers and recent issues. As well as analyzing writing techniques, it provides an introduction to critical reading of contemporary texts. Incompatible: 2103ART Contemporary Australian Writing.

The course aims to:

  • examine the current context for writing in several sustained forms (e.g. the novel and poetry, the short story collection, etc.) in Australia;
  • investigate trends, issues and literary concerns in contemporary fiction and poetry publishing in Australia;
  • critically analyse current literary modes and modern techniques in text production;
  • explore some social and cultural issues as pursued by recent writers (including gender, race and sub-culture concerns, urban dilemmas, the position of the writer in society and culture, etc.);
  • provide an environment where students can enjoy reading texts while developing their own creative writing and critical capabilities.

Assessment

Class participation - guided discussion with peers 10%

Workshop presentation - presentation - technical or professional 30%

Essay 1 or Creative response 1 - written assignment 30%

Essay 2 or Creative response 2 - written assignment 30%

Supplementary Texts

Breen, Sally The Casuals (Fourth Estate, 2011);

Campbell, Elizabeth et al Young Poets: An Australian Anthology (John Leonard Press, 2011);

Condon, Matthew A Night at the Pink Poodle (Random House, 2008);

Cormick, Craig A Funny Thing Happened at 27,000 Feet (Ginninderra, 2006);

Laszczuk, Stefan I Dream of Magda (Allen & Unwin, 2008);

Winch, Tara June Swallow the Air (UQP, 2006);

The Breen, Campbell, Condon, Cormick, Laszczuk and Winch books are available at the Gold Coast campus bookshop.

Other Details

Offered in: 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012
Current Campus: Gold Coast
Levels: Undergraduate
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