Drusilla Modjeska

In 1968 Papua New Guinea is on the brink of independence, and everything is about to change. Amidst the turmoil filmmaker Leonard arrives from England with his Dutch wife, Rika, to study and film an isolated village high in the mountains. Drusilla Modjeska's sweeping novel takes us deep into this fascinating, complex country, whose culture and people cannot escape the march of modernity that threatens to overwhelm them. It is a riveting story of love, loss, grief and betrayal.

The Mountain

Portrays Australian artists Stella Bowen, who became a bohemian and the mistress of Ford Maddox Ford, and Grace Cossington Smith, a spinster who was among Australia's first modernists, and explores the interaction of life, love, and art.

Stravinsky's Lunch

Winner of the Australian Booksellers' Award, this novel blurs together memories and fiction as an octogenarian narrates the legend of the silver hands to a woman in her twenties, who in turn passes on the tale to a man who claims it as his own.

The Orchard

Amanda Lohrey

Robert Dessaix

Secrets

Exiles At Home traces the lives of a generation of Australia's women writers through letters, diaries, notebooks and the memories of their contemporaries. 'Invaluable to all readers seriously interested in the history of Australian literature.' - Weekend AustralianAt the end of the 1920s Christina Stead had left Australia and was poised to write Seven Poor Men of Sydney. In London Miles Franklin was producing her first Brent of Bin Bin book and would soon return to Australia. Katharine Susannah Prichard was enlarging her view of black and white in outback Australia, and the team writing under the name M. Barnard Eldershaw had published its first novel and won the Bulletin prize. Gathering these writers into a network by her support and criticism was the influential Nettie Palmer. In the mid-1930s these women and other writers such as Eleanor Dark, Jean Devanny, Dymphna Cusack and Betty Roland faced the impact of fascism and another war. the platform and the writing desk had different and often conflicting appeals; and the Depression underlined the already precarious existence of the woman writer. this immensely readable work by one of Australia's most respected writers of today is a fascinating insight into the lives of these significant literary figures, and into the creative process itself.'It is a great pleasure to read, to follow her skilful and discerning negotiations between the writers' views of themselves and each other, and the questions which she brings to them from the present day, questions 'about writing, about cultural and ideological struggle, about feminism and fiction, about the contradictions of class and gender'. As the first ever book-length study of Australian women writers, Exiles at Home sets a high standard.' - Meanjin

Australian Women Writers 1925-1945

Exiles at Home

'There used to be a tradition that when a cabinet-maker finished his apprenticeship, he'd make a miniature chest, or cabinet, as a gift for his master... Unlike cabinet-makers, writers rarely have a single teacher, and when they bow to those they've learned from, it'd be no tribute to make a perfect example of their work, even if it were possible.' The desire to write. The art of memoir. Finding a place to write. First love. The Englishness problem. A love of art. Fiction today... With her customary elegance and deftness, Drusilla Modjeska explores these issues and more in a liberating new collection of essays. Some have been previously published, most are new; but all offer a fresh and personal perspective on writing and life by one of Australia's most popular authors.

Timepieces

Richly textured, combining memoir with literary criticism, in Second Half First Drusilla Modjeska looks back on the experiences of the past thirty years which have shaped her writing, her reading and the way she has lived.

Second Half First

An anthology of stories about sisters by some of Australia's leading women writers.

Sisters

'This is the most beautifully written book about the processes associated with the art of painting that I have read in a long, long time. . . The voice is Modjeska's authentic own: consistently passionate, intelligent, reflective and wise.'-Stephen Scheding, Sydney Morning HeraldStella Bowen and Grace Cossington Smith were born a year apart, in the antipodean autumns of 1893 and 1892 respectively. Beyond this fact their lives were very different. One was a good cook; the other was not. One left Australia on the eve of the First World War and lived the rest of her life in Europe; the other lived for decades in the same house on the outskirts of Sydney. For one Paris and famous names; for the other the quiet life of a provincial suburb. One went off to find a life of art; the art of the other grew out of the life she lived. The bohemian and the spinster. They are like mirror images of each other.Already a bestseller in hardback, "Stravinsky's Lunch" is both a continuation of Drusilla Modjeska's previous work and an exciting new departure, and explores the ways in which love, art, and life intersect.

Randolph Stow

Text Classics

Visitants

Beginning with the disastrous events of the night before her fortieth birthday, in Second Half First Drusilla Modjeska looks back on the experiences of the past thirty years that have shaped her writing, her reading and the way she has lived. From a childhood in England, and her parents' difficult marriage, to her time as a young newlywed living with her husband in Papua New Guinea; arriving as a single woman in Sydney in the 1970s and building close friendships with writers such as Helen Garner, with whom she lived in the bookish 'house on the corner', and the lovers who would - sometimes briefly - derail her, to returning to Papua thirty years later to found a literacy program, this new book by Drusilla Modjeska is an intensely personal and moving account of an examined life. In asking the candid questions that so many of us face - about love and independence, the death of a partner, growing older, the bonds of friendship and family - Drusilla Modjeska reassesses parts of her life, her work, the importance to her of writers such as Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir, among many others. The result is a memoir that is at once intellectually provocative and deeply honest; the book that readers of Poppy, The Orchard and Stravinsky's Lunch have been waiting for.

Biography tracing the author's search to unravel the mysteries of her mother's life. Working part-time in publishing, the author has written and editied several books, including TInner Cities: Australian women's memory of place'.

Poppy

New editor is Drusilla Modjeska, author of The Orchard, Stravinsky's Lunchand Timepieces. Past contributors include- Helen Garner, Inga Clendinnen, Robert Manne, Thomas Keneally, Richard Flanagan, Tim Flannery, M.J. Hyland, Barry Humphries, Peter Rose, Chloe Hooper, Gideon Haigh, Kate Jennings and many more. High profile extracts, reviews and feature interviews in weekend magazines and newspapers.

Drusilla Modjeska

Books

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