Humanities and Social Sciences

English Program

Staff Profile

RESEARCH PROFILE

'Cultural historian with particular interests in life writing (memoir/biography/oral history/ethics), contemporary poetry, Australian literature, and writing and health intiatives.'

AREAS OF RESEARCH/SUPERVISION

• Creative writing (poetry)
• Biography
• Australian literature
• Australian and feminist theatre history
• Literary London
• Medical Humanities/Medicine and literature
• Love (in history and literature)

RECENT SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Books (authored)

• Marmalade Exile, Southern Cross University Press, Lismore, 2006 [poetry]
• Griefbox, Salt, Cambridge, 2001 [plays]
  

Books (edited)

• Making Waves: 10 years of the Byron Bay Writers Festival, (with Marele Day and Fay Knight), University of Queensland Press, 2006.
• Comings and Goings: Australia and Britain (with Carl Bridge), [special issue vol 17, no 2, Winter 2004 of Australian Studies], British Australian Studies Association, London, 2004.
• Playing Australia: Australian Theatre on the World Stage (with Elizabeth Schafer), Rodopi, Amsterdam/New York, 200

Book Chapters

• ‘David Williamson and the long grass of talent: an interview’, in Making Waves: 10 years of the Byron Bay Writers Festival, (with Marele Day and Fay Knight), University of Queensland Press, 2006.
• ‘Inez Bensusan, Suffrage Theatre’s Nice Colonial Girl’, in Elizabeth Schafer & Susan Bradley Smith (eds) Playing Australia: Australian Theatre on the World Stage, Rodopi, Amsterdam/New York, 2003
• ‘Rhetoric, Reconciliation and other National Pastimes: Showcasing Contemporary Australian Theatre in London’, in Elizabeth Schafer & Susan Bradley Smith (eds) Playing Australia: Australian Theatre on the World Stage, Rodopi, Amsterdam/New York, 2003
• ‘Communist Women Playwrights and the Sydney New Theatre’ in Xavier Pons (ed), Departures, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2001

Journal Articles

• ‘Miles Franklin’s Dramatic Ambitions, or, Why Stella really Came Home’, Antipodes, forthcoming 2007
• ‘Gendering Creativity and Accountability: Teaching “Writing for Performance”’, Writing in Education, No 37. Autumn 2005
• ‘The Politics of Skin: An Interview with Wesley Enoch’, Contemporary Theatre Review, Volume 14, Issue 3, 2004
• ‘Girl Meets Tractor: Socialist Desire in Katharine Susannah Prichard’s Suffrage Plays’, Overland, no 164, Spring 2001

Encyclopædia Entries

• ‘Australian Performing Group’, ‘Ruth Cracknell’, ‘Jack Davis’, ‘Alma De Groen’, ‘Dorothy Hewett’, ‘Jack Hibberd’, ‘La Mama Theatre’, ‘Ray Lawler’, ‘Louis Nowra’, ‘Stephen Sewell’, ‘Jim Sharman’, ‘David Williamson’, Oxford Encyclopaedia of Theatre and Performance, Dennis Kennedy (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2003

TEACHING

I teach primarily in the creative writing stream, offering an upper-level course in 'Writing Poetry', and an Honours seminar in 'Reading and Writing Memoir'. I supervise postgraduate students in areas such as creative non-fiction, Australian literary history and criticism, historical fiction, poetry, and lifewriting.

RECENT RESEARCH GRANTS

• ‘Enhancing GP Wellbeing Through The Medical Humanities: The Use of Reflective Writing in Medical Education and Practice’, with North Coast GP Training
• 'Beyond the Medical Record:Creative Writing for Doctors', with North Coast GP Training