Cirrus@Austlit

'This issue of Antipodes includes essays about several works written by the leading Waanyi author Alexis Wright (1950–). Wright's growing canon is continuing to make a major impression on both Australian literature and the global canon. Wright's novels have won numerous awards, including Australia's highest literary award, the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award. She won the award in 2006 for her breakthrough novel Carpentaria, and in 2013 her novel The Swan Book was shortlisted for the award. In 2018, her latest contribution, Tracker, a five-hundredplus-page tribute to the Indigenous Australian activist Leigh Bruce, won the Stella Prize, an award specifically for female authors that is also in honor of Stella Maria Sarah "Miles" Franklin. In addition to the accolades Wright has received for her work, her books are often published by international publishing houses (Carpentaria with Atria Press, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, for example) or Australian publishers with international distribution. Wright has also published in other literary genres including short stories and essays. Several of Wright's works have also been written primarily for a French audience, as was the case with Croire en l'incroyable and Le pacte du serpent arc-en ciel, the subject of several essays included here.' (Introduction)

'Emerging in the second half of the twentieth century from the traditions of the oldest living cultures on earth - the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia - the Indigenous Australian novel makes a unique contribution to the history of the novel in its contemporary phase...' (Introduction) 

'Since the mid-1980s there has been a sharp rise in the number of literary publications by Indigenous Australians and in the readership and impact of those works. One contemporary Aboriginal Australian author who continues to make a contribution to both the Australian and the global canon is Kim Scott (1957-). Scott has won many awards, including Australia's highest, the prestigious Miles Franklin Award, for his novels Benang (2000) and That Deadman Dance(2011). Scott has also published in other literary genres, including poetry, the short story, children's literature, and he has written and worked professionally on Indigenous health issues. Despite Scott's national and international acclaim, there is currently no comprehensive critical companion that contextualizes his work for scholars, students, and general readers. A Companion to the Works of Kim Scott fills this void by providing a collection of twelve original essays focusing on Scott's novels, short stories, poetry, and his work with the Wirlomin Noongar language project and Indigenous health. The companion also includes an original interview with the author.' (Publication summary)

Ellen van Neerven, a member of the Yugambeh People from Southeast Queensland, is the prize-winning author of Heat and Light (2014) She completed her bachelor of arts at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) She currently works at the State library of Queensland as part of the black&white Indigenous writing aid editing project, and she is the editor of the digital collection Writing Black: New Indigenous Writing from Australia.' (Introduction)

'This interview took place on the Claflin University campus in Orangeburg, South Carolina, USA, on Wednesday, 16 September 2015. Students from Dr Belinda Wheeler's GNST 303/ ENGL 303 Introduction to Gender Studies class interviewed Dr Leane. Students read Purple Threads and Dr Wheeler's earlier interview with Dr Leane in preparation for this interview.

'The participants in the interview were as follows: Dr Jeanine Leane, Dr Belinda Wheeler, Ms Kimberly Broughton, Ms Jennifer Clark, Mr Malcolm Jones, Ms Nidja Muldrow, and Mr Damon Williams.'

Source: Abstract.

'Australian Aboriginal literature, once relegated to the margins of Australian literary studies, now receives both national and international attention. Not only has the number of published texts by contemporary Australian Aboriginals risen sharply, but scholars and publishers have also recently begun recovering earlier published and unpublished Indigenous works. Writing by Australian Aboriginals is making a decisive impression in fiction, autobiography, biography, poetry, film, drama, and music, and has recently been anthologized in Oceana and North America. Until now, however, there has been no comprehensive critical companion that contextualizes the Aboriginal canon for scholars, researchers, students, and general readers. This international collection of eleven original essays fills this gap by discussing crucial aspects of Australian Aboriginal literature and tracing the development of Aboriginal literacy from the oral tradition up until today, contextualizing the work of Aboriginal artists and writers and exploring aspects of Aboriginal life writing such as obstacles toward publishing, questions of editorial control (or the lack thereof), intergenerational and interracial collaborations combining oral history and life writing, and the pros and cons of translation into European languages. ' (Publication summary))