The Casuals
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."
Swallow the Air
Dust on Waterglass
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.
I Dream of Magda
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)
Dirt Music
Sydney
:
Picador
,
2001
Z918096
2001
single work
novel
(taught in 15 units)
'Georgie Jutland is a mess. At forty, with her career in ruins, she finds herself stranded in White Point with a fisherman she doesn't love and two kids whose dead mother she can never replace. Her days have fallen into domestic tedium and social isolation. Her nights are a blur of vodka and pointless loitering in cyberspace. Leached of all confidence, Georgie has lost her way; she barely recognises herself.
'One morning, in the boozy pre-dawn gloom, she looks up from the computer screen to see a shadow lurking on the beach below, and a dangerous new element enters her life. Luther Fox, the local poacher. Jinx. Outcast...' (From the publisher's website.)
A Night at the Pink Poodle
Milsons Point
:
Arrow Books
,
1995
Z565230
1995
single work
novel
(taught in 8 units)
In this course you examine the current context for writing in several sustained forms (e.g. the novel, poetry, and the short story collection) in Australia. While investigating the kinds of literary writing that are successful nationally, you will identify trends, issues and literary concerns in contemporary fiction and poetry publishing, and critically analyse literary modes and modern techniques used in text production today.
While drawing your attention to social and cultural issues pursued by recent writers (including gender, race and sub-culture concerns, urban dilemmas, the position of the writer in society and culture, etc.), the course provides an environment where you can enjoy reading texts while developing your own creative writing and critical capabilities.
Workshop Presentation During Semester30%
Essay 1 or Creative Response 1 30%
Essay 2 or Creative Response 1 30%
Students should make an effort to read as many Australian creative writing magazines as possible such as Wet Ink, Australian Book Review, Griffith REVIEW, Overland, Heat, Meanjin, Westerly, along with Queensland Writers Centre and other Writers Centres' publications and The Australian Author so as to become familiar with current debates about Australian writing. Many of these are on-line.
Queensland Writers Centre publishes The Australian Writers Marketplace: Every Contact you will ever need to succeed in the writing business (2009, Brisbane). This is the best source of information about publishing creative writing in Australia. A new edition appears each year.
Reviews, information and commentary can be found at various Australian websites. Be careful to fully reference all quoting from on-line and other sources.
