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Maria Papas Maria Papas i(A130008 works by)
Gender: Female
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Works By

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1 y separately published work icon Skimming Stones Maria Papas , Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 2021 21845892 2021 single work novel

'Grace first met her lover, Nate, as a teenager, their bond forged in the corridors and waiting rooms where siblings of cancer patients sit on the sidelines. Now an adult, for Grace, nursing is a comforting world of science and certainty. But the paediatric ward is also a place of miracles and heartbreak and, when faced with a dramatic emergency, Grace is confronted with memories of her sister’s illness. Heading south to Lake Clifton and the haunts of her childhood, Grace discovers that a stone cast across a lake sends out ripples long after the stone has gone.' (Publication summary)
1 Incoherence/coherence in Narratives of Illness or Trauma : On the Necessity of Challenging Conventional Narrative Structures Maria Papas , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , April vol. 24 no. 1 2020; 'Informed by my own experience of bearing witness to and being made vulnerable by a life threatening event in a loved one, this essay draws on philosophical, psychological and narratological underpinnings to investigate the gap that exists between conventional narrative structures and the narratives employed by those with lived experience of trauma or critical illness. Overall, I argue that writers and other creative artists have a responsibility to represent trauma or illness in ways that resist the temporal unification, neat closures and trajectories that often present such events as disruptions to be overcome. Following this line of thinking I argue that narrative coherence is not dependent on the cohesion of a whole. Instead it relies on the shared understandings and the process of recognition that forms between the teller and recipient of a story. In other words, coherence is dependent on the recipient’s ability to read structural characteristics such as fragmentation, discontinuity, irresolution and uncertainty not as aberrations to narrative stability, but as potential signifiers of the trauma itself. As such I suggest creative professionals can do more to experiment with the language of trauma. I conclude with a personal reflection that illustrates how knowledge of this language allows for coherence even in the most fraught narratives.'

 (Publication abstract)

 
1 Fish Maria Papas , 2015 single work short story
— Appears in: Review of Australian Fiction , vol. 15 no. 3 2015;
1 A Buried Spring Maria Papas , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: Axon : Creative Explorations , March vol. 3 no. 1 2013; 'This essay explores the relationship between grief and personal expression. I use Sigmund Freud’s conceptualisations of the German word heimlich as a way to understand the ambiguity of a grief that has been buried and the narratives of self that ensued. I argue that writing and other forms of personal expression allow us to bring these ambiguities closer to us, to examine them and then to properly let them go. This is the story of how grief shook my family. The more theoretical aspects of this essay were drawn from research which formed part of my Master’s thesis at Curtin University of Technology.' (Publication abstract)
1 Forgiving the Dead: Writing as Release Maria Papas , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Emerging Writer : An Insider's Guide to Your Writing Journey 2012; (p. 53-58)
1 My Sweet Canary Maria Papas , 2012 single work essay
— Appears in: Griffith Review , Winter no. 36 2012; (p. 105-117)
1 Silence Maria Papas , 2008 single work short story
— Appears in: Lines in the Sand : New Writing from Western Australia 2008; (p. 101-106)
1 Love Letter Maria Papas , 2006 single work short story
— Appears in: Page Seventeen , no. 3 2006; (p. 75-79)
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