y separately published work icon Australian Women’s Book Review periodical issue   review   peer reviewed assertion
Issue Details: First known date: 2014... vol. 26 no. 1/2 2014 of Australian Women's Book Review est. 1989 Australian Women’s Book Review
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Contents

* Contents derived from the , 2014 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Review : Courting Blakness : Recalibrating Knowledge in the Sandstone University, Yamini Krishna , single work review
— Review of Courting Blakness : Recalibrating Knowledge in the Sandstone University 2015 selected work criticism ;

'The book Courting Blakness: Recalibrating Knowledge in the Sandstone University comes as a part of the art project ‘Courting Blakness,’ curated by the artist Fiona Foley, a Badtjala artist and Adjunct Professor at The University of Queensland, and brings together works by Ryan Presley, Archie Moore, Rea, Natalie Harkin, Karla Dickens, Christian Thompson, Megan Cope and Michael Cook. The art works, the live discussions, the website documenting the project, and finally the book – which reflects upon the art works, artists, the historical context of the work and the university space, are all integral parts of the project. The project invited these artists to reflect on identity, Aboriginality, the Australian nation, Western education, and architecture in the space of The University of Queensland. The book is a collection of essays, reflections and conversations fostered by the Courting Blakness project. ' (Author's introduction)

(p. 32-36)
Memory in a Curiously Conservative Queensland, Marcus Breen , single work review
— Review of Bite Your Tongue Francesca Rendle-Short , 2008 single work novel ;
'CAN full disclosure be fully rendered? The short answer is no. The longer, more engaging answer is that it is impossible to answer that question when the relationship with an author is embedded in one’s own experience. In fact, the measure of disclosure is indicated by the way gaps in a narrative are filled in with literary devices that hint at the emotional truth of the people in question. In this case, Francesca Rendle-Short and I share a connection in the fundamentalist Protestant history of Brisbane’s 1960s-1970s that cannot be boiled down to a single perspective.' (Author's introduction)
Life Writing as Conundrum, Suzanne Dixon , single work review
— Review of Letters to Huldah Jill Hellyer , 2013 single work correspondence ;
'JILL Hellyer's autobiography (1924-2012) provides plenty of “talking points” for a reviewer. Inter alia, it covers her crucial role in the fledgling Australian Society of Authors (ASA), her own writing, her dreadful marriage to an overbearing older man, her horrific struggles with one son's mental illness and another's physical handicap, the belated revelation of her daughter's sexual abuse, her years as a mental health activist, and her friendships. But only the most determined reader is likely to appreciate them. The book presents itself as a puzzle, as an obstacle course that perhaps mirrors Jill Hellyer's own life experiences. Consider the front cover, a posed photograph of the young Jill Hellyer, with the title Letters to Huldah over a subsidiary heading categorising the book as biography. Hmm, letters and biography, thinks the reader, who then finds it is not a biography of “Huldah.” On the back of the dustjacket along with any other editorial help, and without spelling it out, the vague blurb hints that the book is autobiography. The 120-word, prefatory “Author's note” (a reductive summary of the life of Huldah Sneddon, 1906-2006) yields the bare fact that Huldah was once Jill Hellyer's English teacher. ' (Author's introduction)
Thrilled Even Without An Audience : Thoughts About Poetic Engagement, Ynes Sanz , single work review
— Review of Indigo Morning : Selected Poems Rachael Munro , 2013 selected work poetry ; Home by Dark Pamela Brown , 2013 selected work poetry ; Café Poet Ray R. Tyndale , 2013 selected work poetry ;
The Plague of Love, Emily Yu Zong , single work review
— Review of Locust Girl : A Lovesong Merlinda Bobis , 2015 single work novel ;
'SO questions the Locust Girl, Amedea, after her friend Beenabe’s rejoicing exclamation that she has learned to take love by providing sexual comfort to the Kingdom builders. Representing the converted likes of herself, Beenabe has to make compromises between her refuge in the Kingdoms and the cost that shelter demands, and between her cultivated loyalty to this new home and the numbing of her past memories. But love, as Amedea discovers through her friend’s sacrifice, can be taken without making it, and can be given without receiving it. Love is, indeed, a plague.' (Author's introduction)
Coming up for Air, Alison Cotes , single work review
— Review of Dreams of Flight Jena Woodhouse , 2014 selected work short story ;
'DREAMS of flight. A flight towards or a flight from? Dreams of hope or of despair? This rich but immediately accessible collection of short stories leaves it up to the reader to decide the answers. But the metaphor of flight is more intricate than the simple idea of birds allows, although there are many of them in these stories with different fates. Another underlying image is that of water in all its aspects. From sea, to lake, to stream, water can trap us or give us freedom, especially when it’s combined with air, such as the experiences of the young photographer in the story “Stalking the Light,” “She is here, now, in the impressions of the moment, with the solitary canoeist whose craft draws a long chevron on the rose-tinted surface of the water below; with the cohort of ibis silhouetted against the forget-me-not blue unveiled by dispersing cloud above; with the kingfishers and herons and magpies who frequent the early-morning river bank: here, now in the strengthening light.”' (Author's introduction)
You Don’t Need to Be a Weatherwoman To Know Which Way the Wind Blows, Christina Ealing-Godbold , single work review
— Review of Thea Astley : Inventing Her Own Weather Karen Lamb , 2015 single work biography ;
'KAREN Lamb has produced an excellent piece of “life writing” in her biography of the Queensland author, Thea Astley. Astley, a successful Australian author by any standards, has contributed 16 published works and many articles to Australian literature, winning the Miles Franklin Award four times. Thea Astley was an All Hallows School girl from Brisbane, a graduate of The University of Queensland, and a Queensland school teacher for the first few years of her career, combining the roles of wife and mother, teacher, academic and prolific author, in what appeared to be a seamless fashion. Karen Lamb, in her carefully researched work, opens the door to the private life of Astley and allows the reader to follow her career and life journey, including the juggling of roles and commitments.' (Author's introduction)
Gwen Harwood’s Competing Identities, Ann-Marie Priest , single work review
— Review of Behind the Masks : Gwen Harwood Remembered by Her Friends 2015 anthology biography ;
'IT is twenty years this December since the renowned Australian poet Gwen Harwood died at the age of seventy-five. She was at the height of her fame and had confidently expected to live to an advanced age—or so she told various correspondents. To be diagnosed with terminal cancer at the beginning of 1995 was a blow. “I can’t remember the medical terminology but it was basically Good Night Sweetheart,” she wrote to a friend. “Oh well, shit eh? as they say in the Blessed City.” ' (Author's introduction)
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