Rod Jones Rod Jones i(A18109 works by)
Born: Established: 1953 Melbourne, Victoria, ;
Gender: Male
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BiographyHistory

Rod Jones was born and educated in Melbourne, studying history and English at the University of Melbourne. After graduating in 1976, he worked as a teacher in schools and universities. Since the late 1980s he has worked as a writer full-time with the support of several grants from the Australia Council.

Jones' first novel Julia Paradise (1988) won the SA Festival Award. The exploration of psychic experience in this novel was extended in Prince of the Lilies (1991) in which he employs archaeology and psychoanalysis to explore notions of reality in a Greek setting. Jones' third novel Billy Sunday (1995) examines the psychic crisis at the end of the North American frontier period when the United States emerged into the modern age. Jones returned to a Mediterranean setting with Night Pictures (1997) in which he examines the sexual and psychological motivations of a tumultuous relationship between two lovers in Venice.

Jones' fiction has won many awards, including an NBC Banjo Award for Billy Sunday. He was awarded a prestigious two year writing fellowship from the Australia Council in 2001.

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon The Mothers Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2015 8362047 2015 single work novel historical fiction

'That’s what life is about, at the bottom of things, she thought: women keeping babies.

'In 1917, while the world is at war, Alma and her children are living in a sleep-out at the back of Mrs Lovett’s house in working-class Footscray. When Alma falls pregnant, her daughter Molly is born in secret. As Molly grows up, there is a man who sometimes follows her on her way to school.

'Anna meets Neil in 1952 at her parents’ shack at Cockatoo. She later enters a Salvation Army home for unmarried mothers, but is determined to keep her baby.

'Fitzroy, 1975. Student life. Things are different now, aren’t they? Cathy and David are living together, determined not to get married. Against the background of the tumultuous events of the sacking of the Whitlam government, a new chapter is added to the family’s story.

'The Mothers is a book about secrets. It interweaves the intimate lives of three generations of Australian women who learn that it’s the stories we can’t tell that continue to shape us and make us who we are.' (Publication summary)

2016 highly commended Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Prize for Fiction
y separately published work icon Swan Bay : A Novel of Destiny, Desire and Death Milsons Point : Random House Australia , 2003 Z1008401 2003 single work novel
2004 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
y separately published work icon Nightpictures Milsons Point : Knopf , 1997 Z426359 1997 single work novel

"We all live secret lives. During the day, we're hardly aware of them. We don't let ourselves see them. Only in the night do they come into their own, our secrets, the pictures running through our heads. Not language. Pictures. Pictures that make us tense up and groan out loud. Nightpictures.

"Sailor drifts through Venice. He is haunted by nightpictures, his most precious memories, that leave him fearful, shuddering, close to ejaculation.

"His affair with Dieppe is meant to be 'pure l'erotisme'. No kisses, definitely no falling in love.

"Dieppe has memories that haunt her, too. As their sexual relationship plays itself out amid the crumbling walls of Dieppe's shabby apartment, the verbal and sexual collide. Stories become confessions, and sex a kind of absolution.

"But some stories should never be told...

"Explicit, provocative and disturbing, Nightpictures is Rod Jones' most commanding work to date." (Publication summary)

1998 shortlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
Last amended 30 Sep 2008 11:30:30
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