Francesca Rendle-Short Francesca Rendle-Short i(A14957 works by)
Born: Established: 1960 Sheffield, South Yorkshire,
c
England,
c
c
United Kingdom (UK),
c
Western Europe, Europe,
;
Gender: Female
Arrived in Australia: 1961
Heritage: British
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Works By

Preview all
1 Water Syntax Francesca Rendle-Short , 2023 single work short story
— Appears in: Languages of Water 2023;
1 To Write Water Francesca Rendle-Short , David Carlin , 2023 single work essay
— Appears in: Languages of Water 2023;
1 “Very Communitas” : Testing a Hypothesis in Creative Writing, Methodologically Francesca Rendle-Short , Michelle Aung Thin , David Carlin , Melody Ellis , Lily Rose Tope , 2023 single work essay
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , October vol. 27 no. 2 2023;
'This paper examines the concept of communitas in practice (as a loanword from cultural anthropology and social sciences), what it is and what it can offer creative writing, to test whether it might apply to different creative practice settings. Specifically for this essay, the setting is WrICE (Writers Immersion and Cultural Exchange program) and the research project examining WrICE as the object of its enquiry (Australian Research Council Discovery Project entitled “Connecting Asia-Pacific Literary Cultures: Grounds, Encounter and Exchange”). If we think of communitas in the way anthropologist and poet Edith “Edie” Turner likes to describe it as (un)structured ritual, a condition for creativity, a space where the intensity of feeling or joy can arise (2012), how might a communitas unfolding look and feel as we practice creative writing? How might we think about communitas and what would it mean to do communitas as creative writing method, as drawing-as-method? Also, how might communitas be performed on the page in an academic context such as this: can we as researchers enact or embody communitas?' (Publication abstract) 
1 Finding Communitas : Encounter, Unfolding, and Creative Writing Francesca Rendle-Short , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , vol. 25 no. 2 2021;
'Anthropologist and poet Edith Turner (2012) sets out a narration of communitas to demonstrate its endless variations through fieldwork, how it appears often unexpectedly, and how it is a felt sense; “a collective satori” or sudden enlightenment. She calls communitas “togetherness itself”. This paper outlines the discovery and experience of communitas as it applies to creative writing in several different creative writing and research settings: 1) the genesis and makings of an interdisciplinary creative practice research group within a university setting 2) a durational creative exploration of writing and walking (not-walking), and 3) a performative “un-panel” exploring nonfiction as queer encounter. It borrows the concept of communitas as a loanword from the field of anthropology and ritual studies (Victor Turner, 1969; Edith Turner, 2012) and identifies generative characteristics of communitas for creative writing purposes. It investigates the development of the idea of togetherness itself through a feminist and queer sensibility in relation to Hélène Cixous’s non-acquisitional space and jouissance, and the communitastica of joy. This paper offers a way of thinking about the gift of communitas, including the elements needed to allow it to happen within creative writing, hand in hand with a sense of joy, jouissance and possibility.' (Publication abstract)
1 Kin-as-Ethics : Experiments in Un/authorised Queer Essay Practice Peta Murray , Francesca Rendle-Short , 2021 single work essay
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , October 2021;

Author's note: INSTRUCTIONS TO THE READER:

  • The different parts of this intervention into the essay may be read in any order in homage to Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus (1980).
  • It may also be diverting for the reader to apply alphabetical and/or numerical filters so as to read each author’s entries as discrete components, thus 1,2,3,4 etc (Francesca Rendle-Short) and A,B,C,D etc (Peta Murray).
  • A randomising instrument may also be applied for the experience of the essay willy-nilly.
  • The reader need feel no obligation to keep paragraphs or indeed sentences intact.

 

1 ‘Caterpillars of the Commonwealth’ : Dangerous Books in Australia Francesca Rendle-Short , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Routledge Companion to Australian Literature 2020; (p. 63-74)

'This chapter examines a particular time in Australia’s history of literature and reading, during the 1970s, when protecting ‘community standards’ was paramount. Small but highly vocal groups in the community challenged the reading and study of literature: they thought certain books should be banned from educational libraries, by government censors, and from the English curriculum. This is a study that brings together the concerns of these minority pressure groups as well as an examination of the way in which these groups were successful in making their protest heard enough to influence public discourse. It does so in keeping with the publication trends of the day and in the style or form in which these groups published their views – in newsletters and pamphlets made up of bits and pieces of interest and notes threaded together in ‘toggle and weave.’'

Source: Abstract

1 We Thought We Knew What Summer Was Susan Ballard , Hannah Brasier, , Sholto Buck , David Carlin , Sophie Langley , Joshua Lobb , Brigid Magner , Catherine McKinnon , Rose Michael , Peta Murray , Francesca Rendle-Short , Lucinda Strahan , Stayci Taylor , 2020 single work prose poetry
— Appears in: Axon : Creative Explorations , December vol. 10 no. 2 2020;
1 When Your Practice Is the Research : A Symposia-led Model for the Creative Writing PhD Michelle Aung Thin , David Carlin , Alvin Pang , Francesca Rendle-Short , Jessica Wilkinson , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , October vol. 24 no. 2 2020;
'With PhDs in creative writing becoming more valued and valuable in both local and international contexts, the question of models that are fit for purpose has never been more pressing. This paper discusses a case study of an approach to PhD pedagogy underway with writers from across the Asia-Pacific. It is a model of advanced practice-led research in creative writing, which helps established and mid-career writers to deepen their oeuvres and careers. The model poses the question: What if a PhD in creative writing focused its site of research on a practitioner’s ongoing practice as a writer? How might this deepen the practitioner’s engagement with the processes of and contexts for writing, and enable shifts in and for their future writing practice? This paper invites educators and writers to reconsider how a PhD by practice in creative writing contributes new knowledge – on literary approaches, forms, genres and cultures – to the discipline, at the same time as it provides a writer with insights to transform their practice. Faculty and student perspectives of a transcultural, multidisciplinary, low-residency program, based in Vietnam and Australia, reveal how this unconventional approach is making a difference to PhD pedagogy and creative practice research.'

 (Publication abstract)

 
1 ‘Tissue of Making’ in Practice-led Research : Practi-care, Prepositional Thinking and a Grammar of Creativity Francesca Rendle-Short , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , October vol. 24 no. 2 2020;
'This paper, as essay, elaborates on Barbara Bolt’s notion of the ‘double articulation’ of practice-led research and its relationship to knowledge, and also draws on the work of Ross Gibson and the insider-outsider view of the artist-researcher; the restlessness of narrative acknowledgement. It builds on ideas of practice, where the primary focus of practice-led research is ‘to advance knowledge about practice, or to advance knowledge within practice’ (Candy & Edmonds 2018: 65). Where this leads is to a definition of a prepositional mode of articulating knowledge through practice, where the relations between are key, the abouts, the withins, the ofs; how the different parts of the process or ‘tissue of making’ (to use Bolt’s term) connect with, interrelate, link, belong, resist. It does this by mapping a series of iterative creative works that have been created and/or made over time through the workings of a specific practice. It traces intersecting lines of thought as a way to explore the processual nature of research; the space of, and value in thinking prepositionally; and the syntax or grammar of creativity.' 

 (Publication abstract)

1 y separately published work icon The Near and the Far Volume 2 : More Stories from the Asia-Pacific Region David Carlin (editor), Francesca Rendle-Short (editor), Brunswick : Scribe , 2019 17110930 2019 anthology short story

'A dynamic cross-cultural collection of innovative writing from the Asia-Pacific region

'In the outer suburbs of Perth, Australia, a seven-year-old discovers ballroom dancing. In Jakarta, Indonesia, a poet tries to move on with his life after splitting up with his boyfriend. In the Philippines’ Quezon City, a nurse reflects on her late mother while caring for a dying woman. And in the Uva province of Sri Lanka, a 30-panel mural tells the story of a boy who refuses to speak a word.

'This vibrant collection features writers who have forged connections across cultures and generations, with contributors from Australia, Papua New Guinea, South Korea, Vietnam, and China, among others. Through sharing perspectives and ideas in the Writers Immersion and Cultural Exchange program, they have created exciting new work that reveals the value of genuine dialogue and mutual respect.

'Spanning fiction, non-fiction, and poetry from the Asia-Pacific’s finest writers — including Christos Tsiolkas, Alice Pung, Norman Erikson Pasaribu, Han Yujoo, Ellen van Neerven, and Ali Cobby Eckermann — The Near and The Far, Volume II invites readers on a unique and unforgettable journey.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 Towards Poetic Address : Anne Carson Slag i "I can’t get to sleep. Anne Carson is in my head. I think I’m talking to her in", Francesca Rendle-Short , 2019 single work poetry
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , July 2019;
1 Across Speak And/or Waywardness Martina Copley , Francesca Rendle-Short , 2018 single work prose
— Appears in: Axon : Creative Explorations , May vol. 8 no. 1 2018;

'DRAMATIS PERSONAE: YOU AND I

'CHORUS: all singing, all dancing

'forays into the world and back again; 1stly, a single gesture opens up the space of commentary inviting the incidental live onstage. Two. a drafterly undercurrent streams thought to words and 3, well 3 is a dark work in the wings, lightningscript and love at first sight.'  (Introduction)

1 [Review Essay] All the Beginnings : A Queer Autobiography of the Body Francesca Rendle-Short , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: Life Writing , vol. 14 no. 4 2017; (p. 565-568)

'All the Beginnings opens with ink and fish, tattoos and peeling skin. With body. And assertion. Author and tattooist are turning a body into ‘something new, that is old, that is new’ (2). Beginnings and ends and new beginnings. The ink, the body, this text says: ‘I see you, and, I am here’ (3).' (Introduction)

1 y separately published work icon Press : 100 Love Letters Francesca Rendle-Short (editor), Laurel Flores Fantauzzo (editor), Quezon City : University of the Philippines Press , 2017 11968879 2017 anthology correspondence short story poetry
1 Essay (Queer). The. Essay. Queer. And. All. That. Francesca Rendle-Short , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , no. 39 2017;
'What is this thing we call/name essay, and what is its relationship to queer? This paper claims that the joy of essay (and queer) is that there are no answers necessarily – the pleasure or jouissance is in what the search might bring and where it might take you; how the search is, or might be expressed. Essay (queer) elevates all that is tangential, oblique, unspoken, transitory, ambiguous, unsettled, peculiar, strange. Maggie Nelson sets the scene with an exposition of language, experience, and reasons for keeping on writing, giving us her why-I-write moment. What follows in this paper, with examples, is a consideration of etymologies, form, unconventions, and desire. In shaping a view, the approach taken ruptures the so-called borders between scholarly and creative to present a fluid, free-forming thing that does what Nelson suggests is ‘never as certain, but always as possible’ (2015: 142). It takes pleasure in Hélène Cixous’s imund or ‘not unclean’ idea of writing (1993).' (Introduction)
1 #STREATstories : Mapping a Creative Collaboration Francesca Rendle-Short , Michelle Aung Thin , Ronnie Scott , Stayci Taylor , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : Journal of Writing and Writing Courses , April vol. 21 no. 1 2017;
'#STREATstories is a storytelling project focused on the artistic activities and interventions of a social enterprise that successfully supports homeless and disadvantaged young people in Melbourne’s inner city. The project explores an ‘applied creative writing’ approach to creative fieldwork, critical perspectives and imaginative inquiry for researchers keen to employ their writing/research skills and interests to matters of social injustice and inequity. This paper goes ‘behind the scenes’ to uncover the orientation of four collaborators on this creative research project, all of whom come from very different creative practices, and examine what informs their approach – what and how they do what they do as co-creators and what brings them into this collaborative space. Areas of approach and interest range across ideas of friendship and ‘lovence’, the ‘intimacy of failure’, notions of ‘giving’ voice, and the ‘collaboration’ between artists and materials. The four contributors to this paper explore how these various interests influence the process of collaboration and co-creation as they negotiate ‘that simple but enigmatic step, joining hand, eye and mind’ (Carter 2004: xiii). ' (Publication abstract)
1 6 y separately published work icon The Near and the Far : New Stories from the Asia-Pacific Region David Carlin (editor), Francesca Rendle-Short (editor), Brunswick : Scribe , 2016 9885194 2016 anthology short story

'An ex-journalist on a sweltering night in Kuala Lumpur, raging in a city on the edge of meltdown; a young woman in present-day Iowa, reflecting on her two mothers in a Singapore of long ago; in Queensland’s Border Ranges, a boy prone to getting lost having six tiny bells pinned to his chest.

'All of these people are in the midst of change - divided by time and space, but living in a world of shrinking distances and disappearing differences.

'It’s what happens when you take award-winning writers from Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Myanmar, Malaysia, and Hong Kong, put them in a room together, and see what they create. This book is the result of the Writers Immersion and Cultural Exchange program: a unique experiment dedicated to collaboration, immersion, and cultural exchange. It’s a document emerging from two years of residencies, workshops, and ongoing dialogues - a map of art and adventure, ideas and heart.

'Featuring fiction, nonfiction, and essays from Cate Kennedy, Melissa Lucashenko, Maxine Beneba Clarke, Omar Musa, and many more, The Near and the Far is a book that bridges the gaps between Asia, Australia, and the world. Every day is a border crossing, and every story is a threshold. This collection invites readers to grab their passports and step beyond.' (Publication summary)

1 1:25,000 Francesca Rendle-Short , 2016 single work short story
— Appears in: The Near and the Far : New Stories from the Asia-Pacific Region 2016; (p. 210-228)
1 Introduction David Carlin , Francesca Rendle-Short , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Near and the Far : New Stories from the Asia-Pacific Region 2016; (p. 5-9)
'For centuries Macassan traders zigzagged across the waters between the Indonesian islands and Australia, fishing for trepang, or sea cucumber, and exchanging goods and culture with Australia's Aboriginal nations — songs and stories, art and language. Among all the thousands of communities in South-East Asia and Australia, there has been a constant to and fro of people, animals, plants, and objects, exotic, precious, and mundane. Borders have been made and remade, foreign armies suffered and driven out. In this most hybridised of regions, everything is interlaced, whether on the surface or below. We share the same winds and the same ocean currents. ' (Introduction)
1 Sub Rosa Francesca Rendle-Short , 2016 single work prose
— Appears in: The Lifted Brow , September no. 31 2016; (p. 76-80)
' Her 'queer' identify as queer queer as in fuck you Genderqueer queer rights Queer does nothing...' (Publication abstract)
X