Cirrus@Austlit

'It is perhaps ironic that the first Australian Literary Award would be initiated and funded by an Australian woman writer of remarkable élan, and the first recipient of the award would be the dominant and redoubtable Australian male author Patrick White. Miles Franklin (1879–1954) maybe regarded as Australia’s first feminist woman writer, a pioneering figure, who not only broke the silence but also pushed against the boundaries and borders not without controversy in many cases. Spanning more than a century of activist writing Miles Franklin, Katherine Susannah Pritchard, Jean Devanny, Eleanor Dark and Germaine Greer can be assessed as intrepid voices of Australian women’s writing. Remarkable too is their commitment to and disenchantment with Marxist ideology as supporters and members of the Australian Communist Party.'

Source: Abstract.

'This volume explores the subterfuges, strategies, and choices that Australian women writers have navigated in order to challenge patriarchal stereotypes and assert themselves as writers of substance. Contextualized within the pioneering efforts of white, Aboriginal, and immigrant Australian women in initiating an alternative literary tradition, the text captures a wide range of multiracial Australian women authors’ insightful reflections on crucial issues such as war and silent mourning, emergence of a Australian national heroine, racial purity and Aboriginal motherhood, communism and activism, feminist rivalry, sexual transgressions, autobiography and art of letter writing, city space and female subjectivity, lesbianism, gender implications of spatial categories, placement and displacement, dwelling and travel, location and dislocation and female body politics. Claiming Space for Australian Women’s Writing tracks Australian women authors’ varied journeys across cultural, political and racial borders in the canter of contemporary political discourse.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.