'This elegant and disturbing novel follows a young girl's coming-of-age in the Adelaide Hills just after the turn of the century. Thea Hodge, aged twelve, knows that young ladies should be pretty, demure and nice, but what is she to make of the mysterious and sensual Rina, the exotic sisters Love and Mercy, and her own sister Meg, whose plans for marriage and conformity go horribly wrong?'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'This chapter explores Barbara Hanrahan’s notion that sexuality “can manifest itself in all sorts of ways” disrupts the naturalised binary logic that governs cultural intelligibility about what constitutes “real” sex and what remains unimaginable and unspeakable. It also highlights a preoccupation in her writing with non-normative sexual desires and identities that is akin to the critical concerns of queer epistemologies. The chapter takes Hanrahan’s contestation of normative thinking about sexuality as a starting point to critically examine the queerness of her “fantastic novels”. By reading Hanrahan’s fiction queerly we are offered a valuable critique that challenges the normalising power of heterosexuality and its claims to be the only intelligible and “natural” way to organise desire.'
Source: Abstract.
'The University of Queensland Press was transformed from a merely scholarly into a creative independent Australian publisher partly through the agency of the American publisher Frank Thompson. In the explosive days of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and with Australians' complex fascination with United States, Thompson embodied the democratic challenge to the old British dominated regime on campus and in publishing circles. This paper will explore pivotal books published by UQP notably Thomas Shapcott's Contemporary American and Australian Poetry in 1976; UQP's development of the American market with the distribution of UQP literary fiction and the establishment of an American office; and co-publishing with American publishers and editing Australian books for American readers in a different hemisphere. Thompson's own assessment of his successes and failures will be contextualised in terms of political developments and those issues long associated with Australian literature - environmental representation and expatriatism.' (Author's abstract)
'The University of Queensland Press was transformed from a merely scholarly into a creative independent Australian publisher partly through the agency of the American publisher Frank Thompson. In the explosive days of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and with Australians' complex fascination with United States, Thompson embodied the democratic challenge to the old British dominated regime on campus and in publishing circles. This paper will explore pivotal books published by UQP notably Thomas Shapcott's Contemporary American and Australian Poetry in 1976; UQP's development of the American market with the distribution of UQP literary fiction and the establishment of an American office; and co-publishing with American publishers and editing Australian books for American readers in a different hemisphere. Thompson's own assessment of his successes and failures will be contextualised in terms of political developments and those issues long associated with Australian literature - environmental representation and expatriatism.' (Author's abstract)
