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‘Libussa’ by Johann Karl August Musäus

‘Libussa’ is one of the tales related/retold by Johann Karl August Musäus, and first translated into English by Thomas Carlyle. It was published in Carlyle’s three-volume publication Translations from the German (1827). The tale below is a transcription of Carlyle’s translation (not one of my own translations). The tale was part of Musäus’s 1728 … Continue reading

Author : nike

The women (wo)men don’t see

At a recent conference on excess and desire in twentieth- and twenty-first century women’s writing, one of the presenters quoted from Natalie Kon-Yu’s 2016 essay, in Overland, ‘A testicular hit-list of literary big cats‘. In particular, she quoted from the section in which Kon-Yu describes the depiction of Jake Whyte’s … Continue reading

Author : nike

Childhood paracosms (Alleston, Ejuxria, Farksolia, Nahum …)

  I’ll be presenting a paper on the life and work of Barbara Newhall Follett as part of the Forgotten Lives/Biographies symposium being held at USQ on April 28th this year. This paper developed out of a research interest that informed the writing of Dying In The First Person, in particular, children who have … Continue reading

Author : nike
Comments : 4 Comments

John Mystery and the Adventure Castle

The wonderful librarian at Monash University’s Rare Books (Stephen Perrin) has shared with me just a few of the many ‘John Mystery’ publications in the collection. John Mystery was an Australian children’s publishing phenomenon. He published hundreds of small, cheap books for children during the late 1930s and 1940s, for very … Continue reading

Author : nike
Comments : 22 Comments

Australian Fairy Tales and William (Billy) Hughes

Here’s a delightful little snippet from my recent sojourn in the Monash University Rare Books Collection. One of the books in their collection is Australian Fairy Tales, by Hume Cook, illustrated by Christian Yandell. The book was first published in 1925 and includes the following rather interesting Foreword by the RT. HON. W. … Continue reading

Author : nike

The Butterfly’s Ball & The Grasshopper’s Feast

For the past few weeks I’ve been in Melbourne, on research leave, working on two novels (the endgame of one, the beginnings of another), attending conferences and  so on. One of the most excellent things I’ve been doing is messing about in the Monash University’s Rare Books Collection, most specifically … Continue reading

Author : nike

Shorts (a summary of recent and upcoming publications)

Here’s a list of upcoming (short) publications you’ll see from me. I had a short story (The Nature of Things) published in Volume 13, Issue 5 of the Review of Australian Fiction, alongside a wonderful piece by Jessica White (When The World Shivered). This short story is a piece of … Continue reading

Author : nike
Comments : 2 Comments

Women Count (QLD, Vic & NSW Awards for fiction)

This is the second in a series of blog posts looking at gender and literary awards. In particular, these posts look at the gender of the authors of award-winning books, and the gender of the main or viewpoint character/s of those books. I’ve found this research quite exciting and interesting, because … Continue reading

Author : nike
Comments : One Comment

Uchronic, or queer in no time: wilful subjects in historical fiction

And one more. This is a draft abstract for a paper I hope to deliver at the annual conference of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP), in Melbourne this November. The conference title is: Writing the Ghost Train: Rewriting, Remaking, Rediscovering. Abstract: Uchronic, or queer in no time: wilful … Continue reading

Author : nike

Death and the m(AI)den

The following is the abstract for a paper I’m hoping to deliver at the upcoming inaugural conference of the Australasian Death Studies Network: Death, Dying, and the Undead: Contemporary Approaches and Practice. The conference (which I’ll be attending either way!) will be held at UCQ’s Noosa Campus on October 25 … Continue reading

Author : nike
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