Jenny Blackford Jenny Blackford i(A35917 works by)
Born: Established: 1957 Sydney, New South Wales, ;
Gender: Female
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.

BiographyHistory

Born in Sydney, Jenny Blackford attended Swansea High School and Newcastle High School (NSW). She studied Classics (Greek and Latin), German, and Sanskrit at the University of Newcastle (NSW). After beginning a Ph.D. on comparative ancient religions, she worked for several years for IBM, as a systems engineer.

Blackford published numerous speculative-fiction short stories and poems in anthologies and magazines, before being commissioned in 2009 by Hadley Rille Books to write The Priestess and the Slave, a novella set in Athens and Delphi during the fifth century BCE. The novel forms part of the publishing house's "Archaeology" series of archaeologically correct historical novels.

Most Referenced Works

Personal Awards

2020 highly commended Ipswich Poetry Feast Awards Joy Chambers & Reg Grundy Award – Open Age Other Poetry for Reserves of Coping
2017 highly commended W. B. Yeats Poetry Prize for Australia for 'All the Dead People'.
2016 third place Scarlet Stiletto Awards Best Crime Short Story For 'Cooking up a Murder'.

Awards for Works

Snow i "Ten years into the long slow forgetting", 2019 single work poetry
— Appears in: FourW New Writing , no. 30 2019; (p. 17)
2019 shortlisted The Booranga Prize The Booranga Prize for Poetry
y separately published work icon The Girl in the Mirror Armidale : Eagle Books , 2019 14172337 2019 single work children's fiction children's mystery fantasy

'The girls at Maddy’s new school look through her as if she is invisible, and say mean things behind her back. The only person who has tried to talk to her is Gareth, who is new too. And he’s good at maths. Talking to him would mean social death. But then strange things happen in old inner-city terrace house Maddy’s family has moved into. She hears spooky noises on the stairs and sees strange faces in the mirror – first a ghastly white face, then a girl in a weird old-fashioned dress. They’re ghosts! The house is haunted!

'The girl in the mirror – Clarissa – starts to talk to Maddy. Maddy’s bedroom was Clarissa’s room back in the 1890s, and it’s the same mirror on the wall – though Clarissa is a Young Lady, so she has to call it a Looking Glass. The spook on the stairs is Clarissa’s brother Bertie, who died of whooping cough when he was six years old. Clarissa and Maddy get on really well – but then Clarissa disappears, and Maddy has strange visions of a huge, evil thing like a giant spider looming over her.

'Maddy’s baby brother gets seriously ill with whooping cough. Even in the hospital, the doctors are helpless.

'Meanwhile, back in the 1890s, the girl in the mirror is having problems of her own. Clarissa’s mother has been in a decline since Clarissa’s poisonous Aunt Lily was widowed, and she moved into their house. Aunt Lily makes a Strengthening Tonic for Mother every week, from plants in the garden. But what if the Tonic that Aunt Lily makes for Clarissa’s mother is actually making her sicker? What if she wants to get Clarissa’s mother out of the way forever?  The two girls have to use all their intelligence and verve to fight against Aunt Lily’s plots, each in her own time, with help from Clarissa’s ghostly brother Bertie—but will they succeed?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

2020 winner Davitt Award Best Children's Novel
Cooking up a Murder 2017 single work short story crime
— Appears in: Award Winning Australian Writing 2017 2017; (p. 82-96)
2016 winner Scarlet Stiletto Awards Best Crime Short Story
Last amended 26 Oct 2020 08:57:35
Other mentions of "" in AustLit:
    X