Bernadette Brennan Bernadette Brennan i(A53903 works by)
Gender: Female
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BiographyHistory

Bernadette Brennan has taught Australian Literature and Australian Studies at the University of Sydney. She is a literary critic, academic and researcher of contemporary Australian writing, and has been a judge for the Miles Franklin Award.

In 2018, Bernadette won the inaugural Fellowship for Non-Fiction Writing (Copyright Agency Cultural Fund).

Most Referenced Works

Personal Awards

2024 recipient National Library of Australia Fellowships Supported by the Ray Mathew and Eva Kollsman Trust for Research in Australian Literature for 'Researching Drusilla Modjeska: Feminism, Empire and the Pacific'.
2018 winner Cultural Fund Fellowships Fellowship for Non-Fiction Writing

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Leaping into Waterfalls : The Enigmatic Gillian Mears Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2021 22584811 2021 single work biography

'Leaping into Waterfalls explores the rich, tumultuous life of Gillian Mears, one of Australia's most significant writers of the last forty years.

'Gillian Mears appeared to many to be a shy woman from Grafton, but her lived and imaginative lives were rich with adventure, risk and often transgressive passion. In her award-winning and acclaimed novels and short stories, Mears wrote fearlessly of the dark undercurrents of country and family life, always probing the depths and complexity of human desire.

'Mears' sensuality and sexuality were the driving forces of her life and writing. As an adult, she was plagued by ill health yet remained steadfast in her quest to be independent and free; while recovering from open-heart surgery, she traversed the country alone in a de-commissioned ambulance. By her midforties, multiple sclerosis had confined her to a wheelchair. Undaunted, she continued to write and publish until her death five years later in 2016.

'Mears amassed an extensive collection of diaries, letters, manuscripts, photographs, recordings and ephemera, and deposited it with the Mitchell Library. She was a prolific correspondent with significant figures of the cultural landscape-Gerald Murnane, David Malouf, Tim Winton, Elizabeth Jolley, Helen Garner, Drusilla Modjeska, Kate Grenville and Marr Grounds. This meticulous and moving biography reads Mears' life and work within that broader cultural community to celebrate her truly extraordinary achievements and adventures.' (Publication summary)

2022 longlisted Mark and Evette Moran Nib Award for Literature
2022 winner The Age Book of the Year Award Non-Fiction Prize
2022 winner National Biography Award
2022 winner ASAL Awards The Australian Historical Association Awards Magarey Medal for Biography
2022 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction
y separately published work icon A Writing Life : Helen Garner and Her Work Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2017 10604838 2017 single work biography

'Helen Garner is one of Australia’s most important and most admired writers. She is revered for her fearless honesty in the pursuit of her craft.

'But Garner also courts controversy, not least because she refuses to be constrained by the rules of literary form. She has never been afraid to write herself into her nonfiction, and many of her own experiences help to shape her fiction. But who is the ‘I’ in Helen Garner’s work?

'Bernadette Brennan’s A Writing Life is the first full-length study of Garner’s forty years of work, a literary portrait that maps all of her books against the different stages of her life.

'Brennan has had access to previously unavailable papers in Garner’s archive, and she provides a lively and rigorous reading of the books, journals and correspondence of one of Australia’s most beloved women of letters.' (Publication summary)

2018 winner CHASS Australia Prizes Australia Book Prize
2018 shortlisted National Biography Award
2018 shortlisted ASAL Awards The Australian Historical Association Awards Magarey Medal for Biography
2018 shortlisted Mascara Avant-garde Awards Non-Fiction
2018 longlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) Australian Biography of the Year
2018 longlisted The Stella Prize
y separately published work icon Ethical Investigations : Essays on Australian Literature and Poetics Sydney : Vagabond Press , 2008 Z1583921 2008 selected work criticism
2009 winner ASAL Awards Walter McRae Russell Award
Last amended 11 Apr 2019 11:17:13
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