AustLit logo

AustLit

Sally Breen Sally Breen i(A80350 works by)
Born: Established: 1974 Sydney, New South Wales, ;
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 Away from the Edge : On the Road Where Stories Meet Sally Breen , 2021 single work essay
— Appears in: Griffith Review , no. 74 2021;
1 Sea City Sally Breen , Aaron Chapman , 2021 single work prose
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue , 65 2021;
1 We Get There in the End : Return to the Dirt Pulls Back the Curtain on Life and Death in a Funeral Home Sally Breen , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: The Conversation , 25 October 2021;
— Review of Return to the Dirt Steve Pirie , 2021 single work drama

'I head to the world premiere of Return to the Dirt by Steve Pirie without reading the press materials. I like to go in uninfluenced, and that’s hard these days, to avoid the trickle down effects of hype even for a play at the Queensland Theatre Company in the Netflix age.' (Introduction)
1 Don't You Know You've Got Legs? A Gold Coast Surf Culture Manifesto Sally Breen , 2021 single work prose essay
— Appears in: Lines to the Horizon : Australian Surf Writing 2021; (p. 83-115)
1 Brazen Hussies : A New Film Captures the Heady, Turbulent Power of Australia’s Women’s Liberation Movement Sally Breen , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: The Conversation , 6 October 2020;
— Review of Brazen Hussies Catherine Dwyer , 2020 single work film/TV

'The moment feminist author Kate Jennings took to the microphone at a moratorium on the front lawn of Sydney University in 1970 is presented as a galvanising catalyst of Australia’s women’s liberation movement in Catherine Dwyer’s documentary film Brazen Hussies.'
1 Empire Sally Breen , 2019 single work prose
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , October no. 56 2019; 'In a Californian spiritualist’s home in Mexico I am instructed to be grateful for things. Sunlight. Creativity. My strong body. Words written in the guidebook in the guesthouse where she’s running from her country and her grief, a trauma the yellow highlighted passages in Living Now and Buddhist Enlightenment and Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet in her bookshelf cannot relieve. I am grateful for Amaretto flavoured tequila. That assholes sometimes lose. I’m grateful my body is not hostage to anything – a person, a drug, a past – cravings and desire so etched in they strip the fat. I am grateful I saw the middle aged ex-pat woman with the pinched face and skinny arms eating an enormous mound of ice cream alone in a noisy restaurant after the second sitting – for how sad she was or maybe angry and how the ice cream didn’t seem to make any difference. I am grateful for stray dogs who sit on my feet in cafes and how I let them, trying not to think about fleas and ticks and tiny spiders and the dust of San Miguel crawling up my legs and lodging deep inside me. I am grateful the waiters let it go and let me take photos but chase the dogs out after I’ve paid but before I’ve left the building. I am grateful I don’t experience the world from a thousand-dollar hotel rooms and still argue about stray margaritas on the bill. I am glad the set of my shoulders and the tone and volume of my voice is not a certain kind of American … or Australian … or German. I’m grateful for Mexican children, born into an endless sea. Sleeping in the front seats of pick-ups while their dads sell mangoes and coconut strips to tourists, curling into their grandmother’s laps on street corners sucking on blankets casually as if they are the children of that New York family I visited on 5th Avenue propped up on a bulbous white couch watching Netflix.' (Introduction)
1 Friday Essay : Thrills, Booze and Athleisure Gear - Writing on the Road Sally Breen , 2019 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 25 October 2019;
1 Captivity Sally Breen , 2017 single work short story
— Appears in: Meniscus , June vol. 5 no. 1 2017; (p. 47-54)
1 Once Upon a Time Was Last Night Sally Breen , 2017 single work prose
— Appears in: Etropic , vol. 16 no. 2 2017;
1 Ideas and Realities : Creative Writing in Asia Today Sally Breen , Sanaz Fotouhi , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , October no. 47 2017;

'When it comes to addressing creative writing as a topic of inquiry, the craft and the written product are usually held in two different realms. Often a collection brings together a body of writing – as essays or short stories – to celebrate and highlight finished and polished pieces of work. The process of how the final pieces came into being, often, is irrelevant. With the exception of studies produced at the postgraduate level usually, the process, pedagogical concerns, inspirations, and the discipline of creative writing are dealt with separately in studies and collections that address each specifically.' (Introduction)
1 1 y separately published work icon TEXT Special Issue Website Series Ideas and Realities : Creative Writing in Asia Today no. 47 October Sanaz Fotouhi (editor), Sally Breen (editor), 2017 12948054 2017 periodical issue

'This special edition of TEXT draws from the pool of participants from the Asia Pacific Writers & Translators’ (APWT) 9 th annual gathering in Guangzhou, China in November 2016. The issue compiles a selection of essays about the craft, pedagogy of creative writing and translation, alongside creative outputs in the form of fiction and personal essay. Inspired by the theme ‘Ideas and Realities: Creative Writing in Asia Today’, the conference brought together over 120 established and emerging practitioners and creative writing academics from the Asia Pacific region and beyond.' (Sanaz Fotouhi and Sally Breen)
1 A Rock & Roll Writers Festival Brings a Much-needed Spark to Australia’s Literary Scene Sally Breen , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: The Conversation , 4 April 2017;

'You could be forgiven for thinking that the last thing Australia’s cultural arena needs is another bloody writers festival. Today’s big city festivals and their regional counterparts use the same formats, are expensive, predictable, safe and reek of easy privilege. It’s a space that has required reinvigoration for some time.

'Enter A Rock & Roll Writers Festival, at The Old Museum in Brisbane on April 1 and 2. It’s the kind of festival that fills your goodie bag with candy and mini-bar-sized bottles of Jack Daniels to kick in the tone. A festival that set out to celebrate the synergy between music and words and creativity and has managed to do that very well.'

(Introduction)
1 Lights Out Sally Breen , 2015 single work short story
— Appears in: Bareknuckle Poet , June 2015;
1 This Is Not the End : Immortal Stories Sally Breen , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Griffith Review , Summer no. 46 2014; (p. 10-12)
1 Sarah and the Man Eater Sally Breen , 2014 single work short story
— Appears in: Review of Australian Fiction , vol. 11 no. 4 2014;
1 Sound the Alarm Sally Breen , 2013 single work short story
— Appears in: Griffith Review , April no. 40 2013; (p. 165-174)
1 5 y separately published work icon Atomic City Sally Breen , Sydney : HarperCollins Australia , 2013 Z1930806 2013 single work novel 'Jade, on the run from her past, arrives on the Gold Coast to forge a new identity and make her fortune. She recruits ′The Dealer′, a croupier with a shady past, to be her grifting partner and they embark on a series of scams targeting fellow swindlers -- Anthony, a self-important businessman, and PJ, an international conman.

Jade creates new selves and lodges herself deeper and deeper into the underbelly of Surfers Paradise. The Dealer soon realises he has more than met his match and wonders what exactly this mysterious, all-consuming femme fatale′s motivations are. Set in the dark shadows of the Gold Coast′s glittering high-rise strip, Atomic City is a wild rollercoaster ride of a story - a neo-noir tale of identity theft, subterfuge and new beginnings.' (Publisher's blurb)
1 Judges Comments : Wet Ink Short Story Prize David Sornig , Sally Breen , 2012 single work column
— Appears in: Wet Ink , no. 27 2012; (p. 1)
1 Sunny Lodge Sally Breen , 2011 single work short story
— Appears in: Griffith Review , Summer no. 34 2011; (p. 205-214)
1 4 y separately published work icon The Casuals Sally Breen , Pymble : Fourth Estate , 2011 Z1797418 2011 single work autobiography (taught in 3 units) '"Three things happened at the dawn of the 1990s that would change everything about how we had lived before. We graduated high school, Microsoft shipped Windows 3.0 and America started the Gulf War. We became adults in the 1990s. The start of the world gone mega. Gone global. Gone mad. We became The Casuals and this is our story."

'The Casuals is the story of the life and times of one young woman′s journey through the last two decades of the 20th century; from her pop-fuelled adolescence in the 1980s to a full-blown grunge ride in the 1990s, Sally Breen is the girl your mother warned you about. A charged and heady exploration of sex, drugs and pop culture, it is also a meditation on loss, death and grief as the author struggles to reconcile her place in a chaotic world. Sally Breen gives voice to her generation; those somehow smashed in between all the Xers and Ys -- maybe lost, maybe beat, but most of all casual.' (From the publisher's website.)
X