Tania Aebi

Bernadette Brennan

The author shares her two-year journey sailing around the world on a twenty-six-foot sloop.

Maiden Voyage

Helen Garner and Her Work

Writing Life

Featuring 25 of the greatest Australian writing names from UQP's past and present, this unique publishing project will showcase specially commissioned fiction, non-fiction and poetry by Australia's finest writers on themes such as legacy, country, vision and hope. Participating authors include- - Ali Alizadeh - Venero Armanno - Larissa Behrendt - Lily Brett - Gabrielle Carey - Peter Carey - Matthew Condon - David Brooks - Karen Foxlee - KBri GYslason - Rodney Hall - Steven Herrick - Sarah Holland-Batt - Nicholas Jose - Mireille Juchau - Julie Koh - Melissa Lucashenko - Patti Miller - David Malouf - James Moloney - Jaya Savige - Josephine Rowe - Peter Skrzynecki - Samuel Wagan Watson - Ellen van Neerven

A Celebration of Australian Writing

Reading the Landscape

Gillian Mears appeared to many to be a shy woman from Grafton, but her lived and imaginative lives were rich with adventure, risk and often transgressive passion. In her award-winning and acclaimed novels and short stories, Mears wrote fearlessly of the dark undercurrents of country and family life, always probing the depths and complexity of human desire. Mears' sensuality and sexuality were the driving forces of her life and writing. As an adult, she was plagued by ill health yet remained steadfast in her quest to be independent and free; while recovering from open-heart surgery, she traversed the country alone in a de-commissioned ambulance. By her mid-forties, multiple sclerosis had confined her to a wheelchair. Undaunted, she continued to write and publish until her death five years later in 2016. Mears amassed an extensive collection of diaries, letters, manuscripts, photographs, recordings and ephemera, and deposited it with the Mitchell Library. She was a prolific correspondent with significant figures of the cultural landscape-Gerald Murnane, David Malouf, Tim Winton, Elizabeth Jolley, Helen Garner, Drusilla Modjeska, Kate Grenville and Marr Grounds. This meticulous and moving biography reads Mears' life and work within that broader cultural community to celebrate her truly extraordinary achievements and adventures.

The enigmatic Gillian Mears

Leaping into Waterfalls

‘This is literary critique and biography at its finest. Australian Financial Review Helen Garner is one of Australia’s most important and most admired writers. She is revered for her fearless honesty in the pursuit of her craft. But Garner also courts controversy, not least because she refuses to be constrained by the rules of literary form. She has never been afraid to write herself into her nonfiction, and many of her own experiences help to shape her fiction. But who is the ‘I’ in Helen Garner’s work? Bernadette Brennan’s A Writing Life is the first full-length study of Garner’s forty years of work, a literary portrait that maps all of her books against the different stages of her life. Brennan has had access to previously unavailable papers in Garner’s archive, and she provides a lively and rigorous reading of the books, journals and correspondence of one of Australia’s most beloved women of letters. Garner has always been a boundary-crosser. Refusing the constrictions of literary genre she has sought to write across and craft her own versions of them. She readily admits to a ‘me’ character in all her work. That character is a carefully constructed self. In her fiction, she unsettles her readers’ assumptions about protagonists by creating ‘Helen’ characters, most blatantly in ‘Little Helen’s Sunday Afternoon’, ‘Habe Dank’ and The Spare Room. In so doing, she demonstrates the complexity of a constructed fictional self. Dr Bernadette Brennan is an academic and researcher in contemporary Australian writing, literature and ethics. She is the author of a number of publications, including a monograph on Brian Castro and two edited collections: Just Words?: Australian Authors Writing for Justice (UQP 2008), and Ethical Investigations: Essays on Australian Literature and Poetics (Vagabond 2008). She lives in Sydney. ‘Billed as “the first full-length study of Garner’s 40 years of work, a literary portrait that maps all of her books against the different stages of her life”. Well, who wouldn’t want to read that?’ Australian ‘Brennan’s depiction of Garner’s fearless approach to the very difficult subjects of The First Stone, Joe Cinque’s Consolation and This House of Grief is beautifully modulated and a real triumph. She has captured and interpreted an important writer and her work beautifully.’ Books + Publishing ‘Brennan has produced a literary portrait that more than does its subject justice. It is not a biography; Garner was quite clear that she didn’t want that, but because Garner is so often present in her own writing, it’s inevitable that her life is reflected in the discussion of her works. This helps put her works in context, and a picture emerges of an amazing writer...Bernadette Brennan has done us all a great favour in delivering this immensely enjoyable book.’ Mark Rubbo, Readings ‘Brennan is an astute and sensitive reader of Garner’s work.’ Big Issue ‘The writing is clear, measured, and graceful throughout...The readings of the fiction are astute and straightforward, tracing Garner’s development from the allegedly unstructured Monkey Grip, which in fact offers a formal equivalent to the push-me pull-you vagaries of love and junk, through the perfection of The Children’s Bach and the experiments in voice and style in Postcards from Surfers, to the late-style bareness and hardness of The Spare Room.’ Sydney Morning Herald 'This book offers an illuminating discussion of Garner’s boundary crossing work. Its own magic lies in bringing elements of memoir and criticism into an absorbing conversation that begins with a rich contextualisation of Garner’s work, and extends into the literary and ethical questions with which Brennan has long been concerned.’ Australian ‘Absorbing, informative and engaging read.’ Conversation ‘Brennan examines both assumptions by tracing Garner’s steps to becoming a full-time writer in a style that is both thoughtful and readable.’ Australian Book Review ‘Bernadette Brennan brings a calm eye and an easy grace to her descriptions of Garner’s life, literature and impact on Australia’s cultural and socio-political landscape...She draws a more complex picture of one of our best known and most skilled writers than we’ve enjoyed in a full-length volume before.’ A Bigger Brighter World ‘Probably my favourite book so far [this year]. A marvellous tribute to one of Australia’s great writers.’ Mark Rubbo, The Best Books We’ve Read This Year (So Far) 2017, Readings ‘Bernadette Brennan’s first full-length study of Helen Garner’s work, A Writing Life, has inspired me to pile Garner’s books on my bedside table, and to look at each of them again with fresh eyes.’ The Best Books We’ve Read This Year (So Far) 2017, Readings ‘A remarkably shrewd study of Garner’s work knitted with a tender representation of her personal life.’ Mascara Literary Review 'Brennan performs a kind of call for literature, its criticism as well as creation.' Sydney Review of Books

Bernadette Brennan

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