The Turning
Sydney
:
Picador
,
2004
Z1146280
2004
selected work
short story
(taught in 12 units)
The Turning comprises seventeen overlapping stories of second thoughts and mid-life regret set in the brooding small-town world of coastal Western Australia. Here are turnings of all kinds - changes of heart, nasty surprises, slow awakenings, sudden detours - where people struggle against the terrible weight of the past and challenge the lives they've made for themselves.
These elegiac stories examine the darkness and frailty of ordinary people and celebrate the moments when the light shines through.
On Passion
Carlton
:
Melbourne University Press
,
2010
Z1670588
2010
single work
essay
(taught in 1 units)
'In this book celebrated Australian poet Dorothy Porter delves headfirst into the passions, both literary and earthly. We discover the young Dorothy's drug of choice was none other than romantic love while musing that some of the most deeply passionate experiences of her life happened between the covers of a book.' (Publisher's blurb)
Yours Truly : Cathartic Confessions, Passionate Declarations and Vivid Recollections from Women of Letters
Michaela McGuire
(editor),
Marieke Hardy
(editor),
Crows Nest
:
Allen and Unwin
,
2013
6690847
2013
selected work
correspondence
(taught in 1 units)
'What dark gastronomic slip does Annabel Crabb have to confess to an unsuspecting guest?
'How did Mary Anderson change the life of Frank Woodley – despite the fact the two of them have never met?
'How did a plate of steak teach Missy Higgins a firm lesson about not being too hard on herself?
'The act of letter writing allows us to slow down and truly connect, with a person, a subject, an idea. At their hugely popular Women of Letters events, Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire encourage and allow our best and brightest to lay bare their sins and secrets, loves and loathings, memories and plans. Collected here for the first time, these dispatches from Australia's favourite people are warm, wonderful and astoundingly honest.' (Publisher's blurb)
Uncanny Australia : Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation
Carlton South
:
Melbourne University Press
,
1998
Z816735
1998
selected work
criticism
(taught in 1 units)
'Aboriginal claims for sacredness in modern Australia may seem like minor events, but they have radically disturbed the nation's image of itself. Minorities appear to have too much influence; majorities suddenly feel embattled. What once seemed familiar can now seem disconcertingly unfamiliar, a condition Ken Gelder and Jane M. Jacobs diagnose as 'uncanny'. In Uncanny Australia Gelder and Jacobs show how Aboriginal claims for sacredness radiate out to affect the fortunes, and misfortunes, of the modern nation. They look at Coronation Hill, Hindmarsh Island, Uluru and the repatriation of sacred objects; they examine secret business in public places, promiscuous sacred sites, ghosts and bunyips, cartographic nostalgia, reconciliation and democracy, postcolonial racism and New Age enchantments. "Uncanny Australia" offers a new way of understanding how the Aboriginal sacred inhabits the modern nation.' (Source: TROVE)
'The fourth and final of the 2011 Boyer Lectures with prize-winning Australian journalist and novelist Geraldine Brooks. In today's lecture we'll hear about the exact moment she thinks she became a novelist, and about the significance of literature in answering the large questions of who we are and how we should live.'
Source: ABC Radio National website, http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/
Sighted: 12/12/2011
Sydney
Sydney
:
NewSouth Publishing
,
2010
Z1729705
2010
single work
prose
(taught in 3 units)
'Sydney has always been the sexiest and most gaudy of our cities. In this book, the third in a series in which leading Australian authors write about their hometowns, novelist Delia Falconer conjures up its sandstone, humidity, and jacarandas. But she goes beyond these to find a far more complex city: beautiful, violent, half-wild, and at times deeply spiritual. It is a slightly unreal place, haunted by a past that it has never quite grasped, or come to terms with. Here, in her first non-fiction book, she proves herself an adept memoirist. She twines the stories of the people that have made Sydney the twenty-first century city it is today. Mad clergymen, amateur astronomers, Indigenous weather experts, crims and victims, photographers and artists: their stories are surprising, funny, and moving.' (From the publisher's website.)
Having Cried Wolf
Mulgrave
:
Affirm Press
,
2010
Z1724642
2010
selected work
short story
(taught in 5 units)
'Small towns harbour secrets. Rising, receding and returning like the tides lapping the fictional coastal town of Kinsale, the stories in this collection revolve around Alice and Grace, friends since childhood, who grow to live vastly different lives.
Weaving in and around these women is a lattice of interconnecting stories drawing in their husbands, families, neighbours and strangers, each linked to one another by fate or circumstance. Having Cried Wolf is a contemplative and affecting collection - one that marks the arrival of an original literary talent.' (From the publisher's website.)
In this class students are encouraged to consider the intersectional environments (natural, urban, cultural, historical etc.) that they interact with and within, and how their sensibilities differ living away from home to contemplate how a sense of place can be conveyed through writing. We will engage with a diverse range of readings – featuring many Australian authors – and discuss technical elements and affective poetics to learn how to ‘read as a writer’. Weeks are devoted to crafting the short story and poetry. Students will complete weekly ‘microfiction’ homework exercises based upon images they take or find, and participate in in-class writing exercises, all of which will contribute to the writing journal submitted with the final work. The class emphasises the importance of embodied interaction with the city through a field trip using ‘The Disappearing’ – a downloadable app featuring over 100 site-specific poems spanning a ‘poetic map’ of Sydney, created by The Red Room Company. Students will think about the possibilities of marrying new technologies with writing as they navigate using poems as landmarks. Students workshop their drafts during the course, learning how to effectively communicate critical feedback and how to be receptive to constructive critique. This takes the form of a discussion in-class and students are required to submit written critical feedback on their classmates’ drafts in an online forum. At the end of the course students will have the opportunity to showcase their work at a reading night to the rest of the NYU Sydney student body and invited faculty.
