Jen Craig Jen Craig i(A30431 works by)
Born: Established: 1964 ;
Gender: Female
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Works By

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1 Figuring-out Basin Jen Craig , 2023 single work essay
— Appears in: Overland , Winter no. 251 2023; (p. 22-38) 'When a novel invites me, as does the title section opening of Scott McCulloch's debut novel Basin — "Figure in Terminal Landscape" — to approach it as I might a piece of visual art or dance or theatre, or even as a piece of music, my whole heart gladdens Yes, and yes! Because this is what happens for me anyway when 1 read a novel, as I have always thought, since it will always be the thingness of the work and how that thingness affects (or not) my being in the world that tells me whether I am likely to keep that novel by me always or not. And so the felt experience of it first, and only later the thoughts. and between one and the other, often a long, slow crawling out into the air — or so I have had to remind my-self. because how else to account for all the difficulty, all the impossibility of working, of writing or even of thinking about this otherwise brilliantly realised novel Basin — all of the long non-writing then (or rather useless writing) that followed my experience of first reading it some time last year? Flow much easier it would have been, as I can only say now, just to have felt what it was like to read this novel — okay, to have felt it with all its force — but then to have wriggled on quick, either into the thoughts and words that most resembled others I have thought or written before — or else into the bliss of some sort of conferred permission to not have to think, to nor have to put into words this damnedest thing that — to stay as close to the truth of it all as I can — led to thoughts not so much about the novel itself but rather to ones that were saying over and over maybe this is it, maybe I will die where this experience of reading Basin finishes in me, wordless, stuck forever as it is inside.' (Introduction) 
 
1 8 y separately published work icon Wall Jen Craig , Glebe : Puncher and Wattmann , 2023 25674071 2023 single work novel 'A woman returns to Australia to clear out her father's house, with an eye to transforming the contents into an art installation in the tradition of the revered Chinese artist, Song Dong. What she hasn't reckoned with is the tangle of jealousies, resentments, and familial complications that she had thought, in leaving the country, she had put behind her - a tangle that ensnares her before she even arrives.' (Publication summary)
1 3 y separately published work icon Panthers and the Museum of Fire Jen Craig , Strawberry Hills : Spineless Wonders , 2015 8354803 2015 single work novel

'Panthers & the Museum of Fire is a novella about walking, memory and writing. The narrator walks from Glebe to a central Sydney cafe to return a manuscript by a recently-dead writer. While she walks, the reader enters the narrator's entire world: life with family and neighbours, narrow misses with cars, her singular friendships, dinner conversations and work. We learn of her adolescent desire for maturity and acceptance through a brush with religion, her anorexia, the exercise of that power when she was powerless in every other aspect of her life.' (Publication summary)
1 Jen Craig Reviews The Darkest Little Room by Patrick Holland Jen Craig , 2012 single work review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , November no. 12 2012;
— Review of The Darkest Little Room Patrick Holland , 2012 single work novel
1 1 y separately published work icon Since the Accident Jen Craig , Port Adelaide : Ginninderra Press , 2009 Z1627446 2009 single work novel 'In a suburban Sydney pub, a woman tells her younger sister the story of how her life has changed since a serious car accident. She speaks of the blossoming of romance, the rediscovery of her long-dormant creativity: her ability to draw. And yet an exhibition comes to nothing, a lover is abandoned. She leaves everything behind. In the driving monologue of her own narrative, the younger sister attempts to make sense of her life and the events and thoughts that have obsessed the elder since the accident.' (Publisher's blurb)
1 y separately published work icon Since the Accident Jen Craig , Sydney : 2007 Z1627458 2007 single work thesis
1 The Umbrella Jen Craig , 2005 single work short story
— Appears in: Heat , no. 9 (New Series) 2005; (p. 215-225)
1 No-Man's-Land Jen Craig , 1994 single work short story
— Appears in: Redoubt , no. 19 1994; (p. 29-33)
1 Zeytin Agaci: A Sprig of Olive Jen Craig , 1993 single work short story
— Appears in: Southerly , March vol. 53 no. 1 1993; (p. 182-185)
1 For the Nth Time Jen Craig , 1993 single work short story
— Appears in: Shrieks : A Horror Anthology 1993; (p. 112-118)
1 The Real Thing Jen Craig , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: Southerly , March vol. 52 no. 1 1992; (p. 152-156)
— Review of The Tax Inspector Peter Carey , 1991 single work novel
1 Blue White and a Manuscript Jen Craig , 1989 single work short story
— Appears in: Southerly , March vol. 49 no. 1 1989; (p. 96-97)
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