AustLit
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Notes
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Other material in this issue includes:
- An Interview with Dame Margaret Drabble by Nick Turner
- An Interview with Zoe Baribairns by Nick Turner
- An Interview with Poet and Novelist Marlon L. Flick by Christopher Ward
- In Conversation with Shyamala Gogu, Dalit Feminist Writer, Poet and Activist from Telangana by Eligedi Rajkumar
- A Kind of Craziness : Susanna Moore on Women, Writing, Sex and Feminism by Maya Linden
- Writing a Life Between Gender Lines : Conversations with A. Revathi about Her Autobiography The Truth About Me : A Hijra Life Story by Gayathri Prabhu
- When Patriarchy Strikes : Exclusive Interview with Qaisra Shahraz by Yasser Arafath P.K.
- Peter Stansky, Historian and Writer in Conversation : George Orwell and the Spanish Civil War by Darryl Burrows
- 'Setting Off Fireworks over a Mysterious City' : An Interview with Kathleen Winter by James Bailey
Contents
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Winged Words : An Interview with Claire Corbett,
single work
interview
'When We Have Wings by Claire Corbett is an interesting and unusual novel from an Australian writer. Interesting because it is so beautifully written and thoughtful. Unusual because it is set in a future where climate change and genetic engineering have brought great changes – and some people have been given the ability to fly. The reality of what it would mean to fly is powerfully explored through the stories of Zeke, a private detective, and Peri, the flier he has been sent to find. She has run away, taking with her the child that she used to mind for a rich couple – the job that made it possible for this country girl to be given wings. Published by Allen & Unwin in July 2011, When We Have Wings has since been published in the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, and Spain. It is Claire’s first. novel. ' (Author's introduction)
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An Interview with Bill Gammage,
single work
interview
'Bill Gammage is a historian and Adjunct Professor in the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University. He taught history at the University of Papua New Guinea, the University of Adelaide and the ANU. His books include The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the First World War (Canberra: ANU Press, 1974), Narrandera Shire (Narrendera: Narrandera Shire Council, 1986), The Sky Travellers: Journeys in New Guinea 1938–1939 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1998) and The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2011). I met Bill at his office at the ANU on a coolish morning in October 2013 and started our interview by describing how I had first encountered his work through his role as military advisor on the film Gallipoli (1981), directed by Peter Weir. I recorded our interview and the following transcript matches the recording with very little intervention. I cut some tangential asides, and Bill and I occasionally added words in square brackets to clarify the discussion where words were implied rather than said. But what follows is our conversation – unedited. ' (Author's introduction)
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An Interview with Marion Halligan,
single work
interview
This interview was conducted at Marion Halligan’s Canberra home in 2011. It is an Informal discussion around her work in particular three of her novels which feature an artist protagonist who is struggling to come to terms with the experiences of loss, grief and bereavement. (From author's introduction)
- In Conversation with Rob Harle, single work interview
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In Conversation with Hanna Kent,
single work
interview
'Hannah Kent has enjoyed enormous international success with her first novel, Burial Rites, a reimagining of the life and death of Agnes Magnusdottir, the last woman to be executed in Iceland for murder. Published in Australia in May 2013, the book has also been published in the UK and in the USA, and in over twenty other countries. Jennifer Lawrence will play Agnes in the forthcoming movie to be directed by Gary Ross, the director of The Hunger Games.
Hannah was born in Adelaide in 1985 and grew up in the Adelaide Hills where her family still lives. Hannah completed her BCW (Hons) in 2008 at Flinders University, where she is currently completing her PhD. Burial Rites is the creative component of that doctoral thesis and Ruth Starke, who interviews Hannah below, is her principal supervisor. ' (Publication abstract)
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Jane Montgomery Griffiths’ Theatrical Poetics,
single work
interview
As scholar of the Classics and drama studies, Jane Montgomery Griffiths has devoted much of her artistic practice to interpreting the voices of women who have either been censored or misinterpreted throughout history. Montgomery Griffiths has been celebrated for her writing of, and solo performances in, productions such as Razing Hypatia and Sappho in 9 Fragments. With her experience of theatrically exploring female desire, sexuality and intellectual contribution, it is understandable that Montgomery Griffiths was attracted to Dorothy Porter’s verse novel Wild Surmise written in the Sapphic tradition with lyrics mediating on desire, exploration and loss.
'In the program notes to the production of Wild Surmise, Montgomery Griffiths writes that the ‘project started with the act of falling in love – falling in love with characters, falling in love with a book, falling in love through the act of reading.’ Love is one of the central themes of Porter’s Wild Surmise and it was carried onto the stage with Montgomery Griffiths’ performance as Alex, an astrobiologist infatuated with discovering life on one of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons, Europa. This moon is both the subject of astrobiological study and the intergalactic symbol of desire for Alex who is gravitating away from her literary academic husband Daniel, played by Humphrey Bower, and into an affair with the astrophysicist Phoebe.
'Directed by Marion Potts and staged at the Malthouse Theatre from 9 November to 2 December 2012, the production of Wild Surmise was culturally significant as it embraced the oral tradition of poetry and allowed for new audiences to be exposed to Porter’s dynamic poetics...' (Publication abstract)
