AustLit logo

AustLit

Threasa Meads Threasa Meads i(A118097 works by)
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.

Works By

Preview all
1 Liminal Interventions in the Regional Creative Writing Classroom Threasa Meads , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , June no. 54 2019; 'The vast region of Gippsland in south-eastern Victoria is home to approximately 270,000 people, with many experiencing complex and entrenched disadvantage. Most of my students are first in family, and very few aspire to a career in writing, or even consider themselves creative; however, they are, on the whole, hungry for knowledge, bright, and engaged. Many have responded with startling creativity and enthusiasm to specific exercises designed to foster writing practice and reading as a writer, and most have flourished in a structured workshop environment that affirms workshop method and process as a learned skill. Drawing on personal reflection, anecdote, case study and research, including regional teaching and learning scholarship, Sally Kift’s ‘Transition Pedagogy’, Janelle Adsit’s ‘Threshold Concepts’ and Victor Turner’s ‘Liminal’, this paper reflects on some of the strategies employed in Federation University Australia’s first-year introductory creative writing course to conquer resistance to the notion of being creative, facilitate creative writing practice, and foster a culture of creative writing production.' (Publication abstract)
1 We Might as Well Call It a Boat Threasa Meads , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , no. 39 2017;
1 How to Map a Rainbow Threasa Meads , 2016 single work essay prose
— Appears in: Still Point Arts Quarterly , Spring no. 21 2016; (p. 74-87)
1 y separately published work icon Mothsong : A Liminal Autobiography Threasa Meads , Los Angeles : Rare Bird Books , 2016 9698519 2016 single work single work autobiography

'A spiral, a magical realist labyrinth, a lyric essay, a mirror-maze, and a mandala, Mothsong celebrates art’s capacity to facilitate and map posttraumatic growth. It is a testimony of healing from child abuse that peers into the chrysalis. Through poetic prose, visual image, ekphrasis, and intuitive enquiry, the author carries the lamp of art into the magical realist labyrinth of the wounded soul to unveil the terrifying and the sacred. In the spaces between a heartbeat, the stories of Lolah—who represents the author from the age of sixteen to the present—and January—her younger self—are entwined with the silken threads of “You” and other voices to sing a song of transformation.

'Mothsong creates a new myth for the moth as a symbol of the soul’s urge to heal, and in so doing, goes far beyond elevating the beauty within darkness.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.
1 Bad Fruit Threasa Meads , 2012 single work single work autobiography
— Appears in: LINQ , December no. 39 2012; (p. 18-23)
1 When One Cries, the Other Tastes Salt Threasa Meads , 2010 single work short story horror
— Appears in: Antipodean SF , April no. 142 2010;
1 1 y separately published work icon Nobody : A Liminal Autobiography Threasa Meads , 2008 Los Angeles : Rare Bird Books , 2016 Z1529274 2008 single work single work autobiography

'Nobody is a highly stylized memoir that employs the choose-your-own-adventure structure to illustrate the complexity of navigating trauma for both author and reader. Nobody invites you to closely share a young girl’s brave journey of growing up in Australia in the eighties in a violent and abusive world. It transgresses the boundaries of literary traumatic representation to weave moments of sweetness and humor through a narrative where unexpected threads of beauty and darkness intersect, emphasizing the horrors of her environment. In conflating the labyrinth and maze, Nobody offers glimpses of the threads and juxtapositions that emerge when struggling to cope with traumatic memory.

'Nobody’s second-person narration and choose-your-own-adventure form work seamlessly together with word and image to powerfully convey the intimate exchange that the author had with her fragmented selves while writing, and reveals the claustrophobia and confusion of PTSD.

'Nobody challenges readers to cross the threshold: it forces them to examine their position as voyeuristic consumers of trauma and asks them to recognize their essential role as participant-witnesses. Through facilitating readers’ uncomfortable engagement with the text, Nobody challenges them to see the threads of complicity connecting individuals and communities to the ongoing issues of domestic violence and child sexual abuse.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.
X