Joss Hedley Joss Hedley i(A113401 works by) (a.k.a. Jocelyn Hedley)
Gender: Female
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1 Joss Hedley Joss Hedley , 2008 single work column
— Appears in: Reading Time : The Journal of the Children's Book Council of Australia , August vol. 52 no. 3 2008; (p. 10 - 36)
1 Her Dramatic Career Joss Hedley , 2008 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 23-24 August 2008; (p. 16-17)
Jocelyn Hedley examines Miles Franklin's career as a playwright, focussing particularly on Franklin's play 'The Survivors'.
1 6 y separately published work icon The Wish Kin Joss Hedley , Sydney : Pan Macmillan Australia , 2008 Z1469813 2008 single work novel young adult

'Fourteen-year-old Colm Bell and his 11-year-old sister Lydia wake to the smell of smoke and the sound of gunfire - raiders are attacking their home. They grab their backpacks - prepacked for such an emergency - and head to the tunnel and the hills, following the escape route they have practised every day for their young lives. They don't look back.

'This is a futuristic novel set in Australia when the earth has been plundered and natural resources depleted. Society has broken down completely, and small groups of people live in suspicion, desperately hording their meagre supplies.

'Colm and Lydia are part of a generation of children who have never seen rain. As they wander through this Mad Max landscape, moving north to where they hope to meet up with their father, they hear of a great underground fire that is slowly incinerating the earth. They learn of the Wish Kin - people who are said to have the power to heal the earth at an event called the Rekindling. And they are captured by the Clan - a sinister group determined to rule the land and its people.' (Publisher's blurb)

1 y separately published work icon The Unpublished Plays of Miles Franklin Joss Hedley , Sydney : 2007 16913171 2007 single work thesis

'With the publication of her novel, My Brilliant Career, in 1901, Miles Franklin became the darling of the Sydney literati. Great things were expected of the little girl from the bush. But five years later, nothing had eventuated; her talent, Miles thought, was barely recognised in Australia. In the hope of gaining greater writing opportunities, she shipped to Chicago where she became involved in social reform. It was hard work and ill paid, and though she bewailed the fact that it sapped her writing energy, she nonetheless felt a commitment to the cause such that she remained for almost a decade. In her spare time, though, she continued to write – and not just prose. More and more she wrote for the theatre, attempting to push into a world of which she had always dreamed. Blessed with a beautiful singing voice, she had long desired to be on the stage. This was impossible, though; her voice, she believed, had been ruined by bad training in her youth. To write for the stage, then, though a poor substitute, was at least in the field of her original ideal. Miles’ plays, though, are not remembered today, and are little thought of in scholarship, are considered, in fact, to have failed. This gives the false impression that they were always little thought of. Her correspondence, however, reveals that at least five of the plays were produced, indicating a certain level of success. Miles Franklin’s theatrical work, then, is surely worthy of further examination. This thesis looks at five of the plays in the light of Miles’ life and in the light of the society in which she found herself. In turn, it uses the plays to reveal something of the nature of the playwright herself and to show that Miles Franklin’s theatrical writing did not fail as once thought. In addition, it provides a complete bibliography of the plays (inclusive of locations), lists the duplications as they appear under alternate titles and provides synopses of a large number. This will make up for a gap in Miles Franklin scholarship and will facilitate other scholars in accessing the plays. This thesis, then, is an introduction to a new facet of Miles Franklin scholarship.'

Source: Abstract.

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