THE SCHOOLS PROGRAM EDUCATION RESOURCE KIT he Stella Prize is a major new literary award celebrating Australian women’s writing. TAnd just as the prize itself seeks to recognise and support women writers, and bring more readers to their work, the new Stella Prize Schools Program aims to provide role models for girls, encourage the inclusion of more texts by Australian women on school syllabi, and promote wider reading of books by female authors among both girls and boys. This Stella Prize Schools Program Education Kit offers teaching notes on all the Stella Prize shortlisted books to date. These teaching notes, for Years 10 to 12, are divided into three broad themes – Identity, History and Place – and all of the notes include links to the Australian Curriculum. You’ll also find information on the Stella Prize and some of the issues the prize seeks to address, and a set of general questions that can be applied to any text. For Years 7 to 10, we have included an extensive list of great recent books by Australian women. For all year levels, there are reading questions, discussion ideas and extension activities, plus lots of useful links. The Stella Prize Schools Program speakers in schools project launches this year with a Victorian pilot featuring: Clare Wright, Carrie Tiffany, Cate Kennedy, Amy Espeseth, Tony Birch, Kirsty Murray, Bec Kavanagh, Louise Swinn, Myke Bartlett and Jacinta Halloran. Further details are on our website at: www.thestellaprize.com.au/resources/ schools-program/ To enquire about booking a Stella Prize Schools Program speaker, please contact the Stella Prize at [email protected] or Booked Out speakers agency: [email protected] / (03) 9824 0177. This Victorian pilot program was made possible by the generous support of the Readings Foundation and the Andyinc Foundation. Once further funding is secured, the speakers’ program will be offered in other states and territories, so stay tuned. And if you’d like to consider making a donation to the Stella Prize, visit www.thestellaprize.com.au Our warmest thanks for their support go to Mark Rubbo at the Readings Foundation, and to Kerry Gardner and Andrew Myer at the Andyinc Foundation; and, for all their hard work, to Bec Kavanagh, Nikki Lusk and Susan Miller (respectively, the writer, editor and designer of this education kit); as well as to Simon Clarke for the striking new Stella Prize Schools Program logo. We have been delighted by the early response to the Stella Prize Schools Program. We hope that this kit brings lively discussion, fresh ideas and a great deal of reading pleasure to your classroom. Let your students be inspired by Australian women’s writing, and help them – girls and boys alike – to build their own brilliant careers.

Best wishes,

Aviva Tuf field Executive Director, The Stella Prize Contents

Introduction 1 Identity 7 Cate Kennedy, Like a House on Fire 9 Anna Krien, Night Games 15 Margo Lanagan, Sea Hearts 19 Fiona McFarlane, The Night Guest 23 History 27 Clare Wright, The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka 29 Hannah Kent, Burial Rites 33 Kristina Olsson, Boy, Lost 37 Courtney Collins, The Burial 41 Place 45 Carrie Tiffany, Mateship with Birds 47 , Questions of Travel 51 Lisa Jacobson, The Sunlit Zone 55 , The Swan Book 59 Comparative essay questions 63 The Stella Prize for younger readers 65

TEACHING NOTES Reading the Stella Prize

‘I am living proof that a women-only prize can be career changing … Yes, a prize for women’s writing wouldn’t be necessary in an ideal world, but that isn’t the world we live in.’ Kate Grenville

his section is a basic resource that can be used across all secondary-school levels. TIt provides information about the Stella Prize and other literary prizes, as well as a set of general reading questions that can be applied to any text.

The appendix includes: financial independence and thus time to focus ✦✦ The Stella Prize on their writing ✦ ✦✦ Core values of the Stella Prize ✦ combat unconscious bias and generate cultural change so that women’s writing, stories and ✦✦ The Stella Prize books voices are valued as highly as those of men ✦✦ Relevant statistics The Stella Prize runs events and lectures at ✦✦ Women in time bookshops, festivals and universities around , ✦✦ References and compiles the annual Stella Count, tracking the THE STELLA PRIZE number of books by men and women reviewed in our major newspapers and literary magazines. About The Stella Prize is a major literary award celebrating Why have a prize just for women? Australian women’s writing. Women-only literary prizes can be seen as part and The prize is named after one of Australia’s iconic parcel of broader efforts to promote greater equality female authors, Stella Maria Sarah ‘Miles’ Franklin, between men and women. It was not much more than and was awarded for the first time in 2013. Both 100 years ago, in 1902, that women received the right nonfiction and fiction books by Australian women are to vote in Australia. While things have changed a lot eligible for entry. in the intervening years, many inequalities persist. Consider that: The Stella Prize seeks to: ✦✦ Australia voted in its first female prime ✦ ✦ recognise and celebrate Australian women minister only 4 years ago writers’ contribution to literature ✦✦ In the 100 highest-grossing films of 2013 ✦ ✦ bring more readers to books by women and in the US, females comprised just 30% of thus increase their sales all speaking characters and 15% of main ✦✦ provide role models for girls and opportunities protagonists1 for emerging female writers ✦✦ reward one writer with a $50,000 prize – money that buys a writer some measure of 1 http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/files/2013_It's_a_Man's_ World_Report.pdf

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ 1 Introduction

✦✦ Women still do more unpaid work2 in carer or a third of the time; the statistics for nonfiction are volunteer positions and are routinely paid less3 even worse. than men for doing the exact same work After the panel, a group of women met to discuss This inequality exists in literature as well. As the list what to do next. They decided to do something of statistics provided at the end of this section reveals, positive to raise the profile of women writers and women tend to win our major literary awards far address their under-representation in the literary less frequently than men, and their books are also world, and so plans for the Stella Prize were born. reviewed less often in our major newspapers and Two years later, in April 2013, the Stella Prize was literary journals. awarded for the first time to Carrie Tiffany for her This inequality isn’t stopping women from writing, novel Mateship with Birds. but prizes and reviews can make a huge difference to Why does gender inequality matter? a writer. They boost book sales and enhance a writer’s Entrenched gender inequality in the literary world reputation; they can provide much-needed financial is more than a problem just for female writers, or support, and often lead to other offers of paid work, even just for women and girls. In her TED talk4, including invitations to attend writers’ festivals both Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks about the danger within Australia and overseas. For a writer to have of a single story. By this she means the presentation a financially viable career and be taken seriously, of a person or group of people that is so narrow in its this fiscal and critical recognition can make all the vision that we are unable to distinguish their human difference. complexities from the single story that we have come In 1991 the all-male shortlist for the prestigious to associate with them. Maybe they’re poor. Maybe Man Booker Prize acted as the catalyst for the they’re black. Maybe they’re a woman. establishment of the Baileys Women’s Prize for The under-representation of women in the Australian Fiction (originally called the Orange Prize). A similar literary world means that: desire to address inequality in the literary world was the basis for the foundation of the Stella Prize. ✦✦ women and girls are likely to have access to fewer stories of where they have come The Stella Prize Story from and fewer images of what their future Dreams of the Stella Prize emerged in early 2011 might be out of a panel held on International Women’s Day. ✦✦ women and girls may feel that their The panel was partly a discussion about the under- experiences and views are less important than representation of women on the literary pages of the those of men and boys and, as a consequence, major Australian newspapers, both as reviewers and may be less inclined to share them as authors of the books reviewed. For example, in ✦✦ the story of what it means to be Australian 2011, 70% of the books reviewed in The Weekend that we tell ourselves, and the rest of the Australian’s books pages were written by men. world, is the story of only some of us The panel also discussed the under-representation of women as winners of literary prizes. In early 2011, Does inequality exist even in YA literature? The gender bias is there in YA (young adult) only 9 individual women had ever won the Miles literature, and it’s there in picture books. One large- Franklin Literary Award over its 54-year history. scale study5 showed that children’s books were almost This under-representation is evident across all the twice as likely to contain a male central character major prizes. Women have won the fiction division of the various state premiers’ literary awards about

2 www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/14/australian- 4 www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_ women-still-75-years-behind-on-pay-equality-says-oxfam single_story - t-1101468 3 www.crikey.com.au/2014/03/07/get-fact-do-men-make- 5 www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/8494392/Childrens- much-more-than-women-for-the-same-job/ books-are-sexist-and-enforce-gender-inequality.html

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ 2 Introduction than a female one and twice as likely to include a ✦✦ Is emotion displayed by the characters? Is showing male character’s name in their title as a female name. emotion seen as a weakness or a strength? Women writers often use initials or a pseudonym ✦✦ Is the book set in Australia or elsewhere? rather than their full or real name. JK Rowling ✦✦ Is the author Australian? is an obvious example here. And there are still compilations of ‘boy’ stories and ‘girl’ stories, and ✦✦ How is Australia portrayed in the book? books are often packaged in a way intended to appeal APPENDIX to specific genders. The Stella Prize The gender issues with the writers themselves aren’t as The Stella Prize is a major literary award celebrating obvious, however. Female writers easily outnumber Australian women’s writing. Both nonfiction and male writers in YA, and the major prizes in Australia fiction books by Australian women are eligible (Inky Awards and CBCA) and America (Printz and for entry. Newberry) show a fairly even split between male and The inaugural Stella Prize was awarded female winners over the last 10 years. Given the much in 2013 to Carrie Tiffany for her second novel, higher number of female YA writers, these results do Mateship with Birds. still suggest a bias in favour of male writers. The winner of the 2014 Stella Prize was Gender inequality might not be as obvious in fiction Clare Wright for her nonfiction book for young adults. But it can have a huge impact The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka. beyond the walls of school libraries. When you step out of high school, what kind of world do you want Why fiction and nonfiction? to see reflected back at you? One with complex, The Stella Prize is committed to recognising the authentic depictions of women, and one that offers best books by Australian women each year, both an equal number of opportunities to female writers? fiction and nonfiction. Our judging terms are that the Or one that reduces women to stereotypes, if it shows winning book be excellent, original and engaging. By them at all? raising the profile of women writers and celebrating their achievements, we hope to erode the self- GENERAL READING QUESTIONS perpetuating cycle of under-representation that ✦✦ How many male characters are in the book? confronts all women writers – not least nonfiction ✦✦ How many women are in the book? writers. We believe that the best way to achieve this ✦✦ What gender roles do they fulfil (e.g. wife, is to seek out and popularise excellence in women’s mother, servant etc.)? writing. We want the full range of women’s stories and women’s ideas to be valued and heard. We want ✦ ✦ What are the relationships between men and women’s commentary on politics and their historical women like? research rewarded. ✦ ✦ Is the author male or female? Do they go by their In recent years, the boundary between fiction and full name, initials or a pseudonym? nonfiction has become more permeable. Indeed, ✦✦ How is the book marketed (consider the cover, women’s writing is often distinguished by a refusal blurb etc.)? Is it pitched as a ‘boys’/men’s book’ or to fall into neat categories. We want to embrace a ‘girls’/women’s book’? this. Our decision to judge fiction and nonfiction together is informed by the tradition of Australian ✦✦ Has the book been nominated/shortlisted/won women writers who use both these techniques in any prizes? their work: , Drusilla Modjeska, Anna ✦✦ If love is mentioned in the book, how is it Funder, Chloe Hooper and Anna Krien, to name just discussed? a few. One of those authors, Stella Prize Ambassador Helen Garner, says: ‘I hope that the Stella Prize, with

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ 3 Introduction its graceful flexibility about genre, will encourage Shortlist women writers to work in the forms they feel truly at The Burial by Courtney Collins (Allen & Unwin) home in, instead of having to squeeze themselves into Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser (Allen & the old traditional corsets.’ Unwin) CORE VALUES The Sunlit Zone by Lisa Jacobson (Five Islands Press) Equality Like a House on Fire by Cate Kennedy (Scribe) Fairness Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin) Respect Celebration Longlist Inclusivity Floundering by Romy Ash (Text) Diversity Mazin Grace by Dylan Coleman (UQP) The People Smuggler by Robin de Crespigny THE BOOKS (Penguin) 2014 Sufficient Grace by Amy Espeseth (Scribe) The Mind of a Thief by Patti Miller (UQP) Winner The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka by Clare Wright (Text) An Opening by Stephanie Radok (Wakefield) Shortlist The Swan Book by Alexis Wright (Giramondo) Burial Rites by Hannah Kent (Picador) STATISTICS Night Games: Sex, Power and Sport by Anna Krien Literary Prizes – Australian Over its 57-year history, the Miles Franklin Literary (Black Inc.) Award been won only 16 times by a woman. And The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane (Penguin) if we look at other Australian literary prizes, the Boy, Lost: A Family Memoir by Kristina Olsson statistics are similarly skewed, with prizes being won (UQP) by women only about one-third of the time: ✦✦ the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction Longlist has been won by a woman 14 out of 34 times Letters to George Clooney by Debra Adelaide (Picador) ✦✦ the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Moving Among Strangers: and My Fiction has been won by a woman 9 out Family by Gabrielle Carey (UQP) of 29 times Mullumbimby by (UQP) ✦✦ the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for The Misogyny Factor by Anne Summers (NewSouth) Fiction (now defunct) was won by a woman only 5 out of 13 times Madeleine: A Life of Madeleine St John by Helen Trinca (Text) That’s just for fiction too – the statistics for nonfiction are even more skewed. All the Birds, Singing by (Random House) Literary Prizes – International With the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, 16 out of 46 2013 winners have been female, including Eleanor Catton Winner in 2013 and Hilary Mantel in 2012. In 1991, the all- Mateship with Birds by Carrie Tiffany (Picador) male Booker shortlist was the catalyst for the Orange Prize (established in 1996, and now called the Baileys

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ 4 Introduction

Women’s Prize for Fiction). By 1992, only 10% of 1903 Suffragettes movement founded in Britain Booker shortlistees had been women. 1914–18 World War I The Nobel Prize for Literature has had only 13 female 1918 British women over 30 granted the vote winners out of 106 awards, including Alice Munro (full suffrage was acheived in 1928) in 2013. 1920 Susan B Anthony Amendment accepted in Reviews – Australian – 2013 the United States, and women receive the Some statistics on the number of books by right to vote women reviewed in our major newspapers and literary journals in 2013: 1922 Founding of the Country Women’s Association in Australia Books by Books by 1933 Founding of the Australian Women’s Weekly Women Men 1939–42 World War II. Women finally able to enter Australian Financial 20% 80% Review the workforce in roles generally performed by men; this era included the formation of: The Weekend 35% 65% Australian – the Australian Women’s Land Army – the Australian Women’s Army Service The Monthly 41% 59% 1957 First Miles Franklin Literary Award The Age 42% 58% 1960 Mini skirts in fashion Sydney Morning Herald 43% 57% Australian Book Review 47% 53% 1961 The contraceptive pill introduced Books+Publishing 61% 39% 1963 Women began fighting to be given general admission into bars, rather than just entry into the ladies lounge Reviews – International – 2013 1976 First Reclaim the Night marches held in In Harper’s Magazine in 2013, 72% of the books Europe to protest violence and sexual assault reviewed were by male authors, 28% by female against women authors; this was an increase of 10% from 2012, 1979 Margaret Thatcher elected first female but still shows a significant disparity British prime minister In The Review of Books, 72% of the books 1984 The Deadly Awards established in Australia reviewed were by men, 22% by women (down from (not specific to women but have recognised 2012) the work of many Indigenous women In The New York Review of Books, 79% by men, writers) 21% by women (again down from 2012) 1988 Benazir Bhutto becomes the first woman In the Times Literary Supplement, 74% by men elected to lead a Muslim state (Pakistan) and 26% by women (on par with 2012) 1992 Orange Prize (now Baileys Women’s Prize) for Fiction established More statistics http://www.vidaweb.org/the-count-2013 2010 Julia Gillard sworn in as Australia’s first female prime minister ONLY RECENTLY: A TIMELINE 1902–3 Australian women get the vote (although Indigenous women do not receive the vote until 1962)

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REFERENCES Other sites of interest Gender, women and health Bechdel test (women in films) www.who.int/gender/whatisgender/en/ www.bechdeltest.com History of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction Finkbeiner test (on women in science) www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/about/history www.doublexscience.org/the-finkbeiner-test/ History of the Stella Prize The Stella Count www.thestellaprize.com.au/about-us/about-the- www.thestellaprize.com.au/resources/the-stella- stella-prize/ count/ History of the Miles Franklin Literary Award A Mighty Girl www.milesfranklin.com.au/about_history www.amightygirl.com/blog History of the Deadly Awards VIDA (Women in Literary Arts) www.deadlys.com.au/about/ www.vidaweb.org/ A brief history of women’s rights movements Pitch Bitch (designed to encourage women writers to www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/brief-history- submit their work) womens-rights-movements www.yeahpitchbitch.tumblr.com Australian women’s history forum timeline Feminist Frequency www.womenshistory.net.au/timeline/ http://www.feministfrequency.com Rosie Respect Women in wartime http://rosierespect.org.au Women in wartime www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian- The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media story/women-in-wartime http://seejane.org/education/ Roles for women in World War II www.ergo.slv.vic.gov.au/explore-history/australia- wwii/home-wii/roles-women-wwii Women in World War II www.historylearningsite.co.uk/women_WW2.htm Women at war www.electricpictures.com.au/documentaries/the- war-that-changed-us/ Unconscious bias How unconscious bias holds us back www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2014/ may/01/unconscious-bias-women-holding-back-work Not missing in action: the enduring penalty of ‘being female’ www.theconversation.com/not-missing-in-action-the- enduring-penalty-of-being-female-28503 The myth of merit and unconscious bias www.theconversation.com/the-myth-of-merit-and- unconscious-bias-18876 An interview with Cordelia Fine www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/an- interview-with-cordelia-fine

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ 6 Identity

When I looked around, I saw and heard of none like me. Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned? Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

uch of our self-identity – the things we believe about ourselves and the stories Mwe tell about ourselves – are influenced by our gender and what we perceive is expected of us as a result. Gender also influences the way we define others, the way we relate to them and the sorts of behaviours we expect of them. Writing, which can act as both mirror and window, can expand the way we see various gender roles and the way we think about ourselves and others.

The titles in this section address questions of identity ✦✦ How does their gender influence the way each and gender in a variety of ways. In The Night Guest, character thinks about themselves and their Ruth is losing her identity as her memory fades – abilities? or is it being stolen from her by an uninvited guest? – Does it limit them in any way? In Sea Hearts, sea-witch Misskaella shapes women – Does it give them freedoms? from the hearts of seals, manipulating one to create – Does it place certain expectations on them? the other. In Night Games, truth is stretched and twisted until it is no longer recognisable, even to the ✦✦ How does each character’s understanding of people telling it. And in Like a House on Fire, Cate their own identity differ from other people’s Kennedy presents a collection of stories spanning understanding of them? identities shaped by death, love, loss and change. ✦✦ How do the characters change their identities over Alongside the notes relevant to each title, it may help the course of the book? to consider the following questions and resources, ✦✦ How do you feel that gender roles shape your more broadly related to gender and identity. identity? ✦✦ How does a negative understanding of a gender QUESTIONS role influence your willingness to identify with it? ✦✦ What roles do women take on in the book (e.g. mother, wife, carer, witch, victim or protector) ACTIVITIES and how are those roles influenced by gender? Write a list of titles you might use to define yourself ✦✦ How are the attitudes towards each of the (e.g. daughter, student, athlete etc.). Which of characters influenced by their gender? these are influenced by your gender? Write a short ✦✦ Are the characters treated differently by men and journal entry detailing the ways you feel limited by women and, if so, how? by these titles, and another detailing the ways you feel empowered.

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ IDENTITYIDENTITY:: 7 Identity

Consider the books on this list and think about fiction as a window into someone else’s life. Write about how one of the characters makes you understand identity better through reading their story. Try taking on their role and, in pairs, having a conversation as your chosen character.

RESOURCES Gender-role development http://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/education/DLiT/2002/ family/gender.htm Gender roles and gender differences http://highered.mheducation.com/sites/ 0072820144/student_view0/chapter15/index.html Gender-role identity and self-esteem http://www.rcgd.isr.umich.edu/garp/articles/ eccles96e.pdf Always #LikeAGirl (VIDEO) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs Rebalancing gender roles by leaving men to hold the baby http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/society- and-culture/rebalancing-gender-roles-by-leaving- men-to-hold-the-baby-20110706-1h2dr.html

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ Identity: 8 IDENTITY Notes on Like a House on Fire SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2013 STELLA PRIZE

… a house on fire is a perfect description for what seems to be happening now: these flickering small resentments licking their way up into the wall cavities; this faint, acrid smell of smoke. And suddenly, before you know it, everything threatening to go roaring out of control. Cate Kennedy, Like a House on Fire

SYNOPSIS This collection of short stories catalogues moments Laminex and Mirrors − An eighteen-year-old girl from the dramatic to the mundane. In each story, takes on a hospital job over the summer holidays though, there is an expansion of the characters to save up so that she can travel to London. beyond the roles that they have fallen into, an Although she begins the job just to earn money, she understanding of their own humanity which allows manages to collect a series of snapshots of the lives them to view the humanity in others. The collection of those around her, images that put her life into inspires compassion and considers the impact of time perspective and give her insight into life, death, and expectation on our relationships. love and compassion. Flexion – A woman witnesses what she believes will Like a House on Fire – In the story that lends its be the death of her husband as he is crushed under name to the book, a husband looks at his life from their tractor. He survives, a harsh man who is unable his prostrate position on the floor. He has hurt his to show gratitude towards the kindness of others, back and, as a result of pain and the threat of further unable to ask for help, unable to show weakness or to injury, must lie still as life continues around him. tolerate perceived weakness. His wife takes an almost Once active and competent, he now feels frustrated cruel satisfaction in becoming the dominant one in with his inability to move and to contribute to his the relationship, until a moment of genuine warmth family, helplessly watching as his sons become more and shared understanding happens. immersed in television and lose the playfulness Ashes − As Chris drives his mother to a childhood that he remembers from only a year earlier. As his fishing spot so that they can scatter his father’s ashes, perspective changes so, too, do the attitudes of he dwells on the years of perceived injustices doled his family. out to him by his parents. Hurting also from a Five-Dollar Family – A new mother waits in recent breakup, Chris considers his mother a burden hospital for her milk to come in. Only days after and is counting the days until he can escape her giving birth, this mother cradles her newborn baby expectations. As they reach the lake, he starts to feel and lets her torn and tender body be pummelled and the weight, too, of his father, of not being accepted, judged by hospital staff. Her boyfriend, a loser named of not being enough. As he feels the grainy sand of his Des, doesn’t know what to do with himself, and she father’s ashes between his fingers, Chris sees beyond has already decided that she’s leaving him behind. his mother’s fussiness to her genuine grief. In this Determined to get one happy keepsake photo, crack of humanity, Chris revisits his own role in his though, she pushes through the pain, dresses her relationship with his father, wishing that he had been newborn and makes the three of them go to the mall able to compromise years earlier. for a family photo.

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ IDENTITYIDENTITY:: 9 LIKE A HOUSE ON FIRE

Cross-Country – Rebecca wallows in the dregs Waiting – A woman waits anxiously at a clinic of her failed relationship. As she sleeps all day and for the results of her latest ultrasound. She is there surfs the internet for signs of her ex, she becomes following a long line of miscarriages and lost obsessed with the idea of him as a runner. She talks children. She hasn’t even told her husband that she about getting running shoes, joining a club and has is pregnant, worrying for his feelings. Alone in the images of herself overtaking him. This image in fact waiting room, she considers the procedure that has motivates her to get up again and return to work. now become routine. However, she has missed something crucial in his Static – In a story that takes place during a family’s online profile. Christmas Day celebrations, Anthony tries to Sleepers – Ray is thinking about his broken negotiate between his wife’s and his parents’ demands relationship as he passes a new development in town on him, and the image of how he’d envisaged his that has resulted in a number of redgum sleepers life would be by this point. The story is filled with being piled along the edge of the road for resale. characters left wanting, and so it has a sense of Hyped up by gossip, despair and a dream that is yet longing, for children, for money and for happiness. to take shape, Ray drives out to the pile one night to Seventy-Two Derwents – In the story that concludes load up his truck with what he believes he deserves. the collection, Tyler writes a journal for her teacher Whirlpool – Anna is a young girl on the brink of Mrs Carlyle. She is in Year 6 and lives at home adolescence who is enduring another obligatory with her mother and sister Ellie, although she has Christmas photo. She feels judged by her mother and brothers and a sister who live with other families. escapes the stuffy, false air of the house, filled with Through the journal we learn of Shane, Tyler’s mum’s conspiratorial looks and minor betrayals, into the boyfriend, and how when he is around she feels stones cool, blue freedom of their above-ground pool. grinding together in her stomach. As the drama of Cake – Liz, a new mother, returns to work burdened her family unfolds around her, Tyler clings tight to with the guilt of leaving her eighteen-month-old son a sliver of hope that comes in the form of a tin of at childcare. She struggles with leaving the mothering Derwent pencils. side of herself behind, which she is expected to do while at work. At home, she finds it difficult to AUTHOR BACKGROUND explain her feelings to her husband as she tries to eke CATE KENNEDY is the author out precious moments with her baby boy. of the highly acclaimed novel The World Beneath, which won White Spirit – A woman working in a block of the People’s Choice Award in the community housing has commissioned two artists NSW Premier’s Literary Awards to paint a mural depicting the community within. in 2010. She is an award-winning short-story writer However, as the project goes on, she starts to feel whose work has been published widely. Her first ashamed, questioning the validity of the project and collection, Dark Roots, was shortlisted for the Steele its relevance to the actual community. Rudd Award in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Little Plastic Shipwreck – Roley arrives at work Awards and for the Society one day at Oceanworld to discover that Samson the Gold Medal. She is also the author of a travel memoir, dolphin has died. As Roley becomes increasingly Sing, and Don’t Cry, and the poetry collections frustrated with the manager’s cold-hearted treatment Joyflight, Signs of Other Fires and The Taste of River of the park’s star animal, he starts to notice the Water, which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary dinginess of the park. In a day that climaxes when Award for Poetry in 2011. She lives on a secluded he quits and storms out through the gift shop, Roley bend of the Broken River in north-east Victoria. takes home a little plastic snow globe to his wife, the www.thestellaprize.com.au/2013/04/ once-witty woman whose brain injury means that she the-stella-interview-cate-kennedy/ no longer knows to shake the souvenir for snow.

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THEMES Flexion Identity ✦✦ How is Frank different before and after the Humanity accident? Love ✦✦ How does his wife’s attitude towards him change? Death ✦✦ Why do both of these characters change their Understanding attitudes towards each other? Birth Parent−child dynamics Ashes ✦✦ How does Chris see his mother, and how does this LINKS TO THE make him act towards her? AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM ✦✦ What moment changes his attitude to his father, This collection asks a lot of readers – it asks them to and to his mother? be critical and literate and to consider the ethical ✦✦ What happens at the end to signify that treatment of others within the scope of our shared something has changed between Chris and his humanity. Its indelible images of Australia and the mother? landscape also offer the opportunity to consider and discuss themes such as sustainability. Laminex and Mirrors ✦✦ Why does Matron hunt out Marie? Why is Given the nature of short stories, and the number Matron annoyed? Why is Marie annoyed? of platforms where short-story writers can submit their work and read the work of others, there is a real ✦✦ What misconceptions does the main character opportunity within the study of this text to promote have about Len and Dot? What changes her mind ICT capabilities. Within this unit, students will have about them? What part does she have to play in the opportunity, as the general capabilities suggest, this moment? to read, view and respond to ‘digital and multimodal ✦✦ Why is Mr Moreton both happy and sad about texts’. his daughter’s visit? Why do you think the main character decides to do what she does for him? READING QUESTIONS ✦✦ How is the title of each piece relevant to the Like a House on Fire ✦✦ What does the title of this story refer to? (Does story? it fit with your suggestions for the book’s overall ✦✦ How do you feel the book title is relevant to the title from earlier?) collection? ✦✦ What hints does the author give to suggest that ✦✦ What similarities can you find between each of the dynamic between the two adults was once the stories? different? ✦✦ What impact do you get from short stories that ✦✦ How have Ben and Sam changed between this you don’t get from novels? What are the positive Christmas and the last? Why does this make their and negative aspects of them for you as a reader? father sad? ✦✦ How do each of the stories make you feel? ✦✦ How do each of the characters compromise in the ✦✦ Compassion is a key theme in the book. How does story? Cate Kennedy or her characters show compassion Five-Dollar Family in each of the stories? How does this translate to ✦✦ In what ways is Des a disappointment? feeling compassion as a reader? ✦✦ How does the main character describe her own ✦ ✦ Before you start the book, write down what you body at various points throughout the story? think the title means.

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✦✦ Why is she so determined to get this family ✦✦ What is happening differently in the reality of photo? this community project than was intended by the theory of it? Cross-Country ✦✦ How does Rebecca describe the differences Little Plastic Shipwreck between the grief over a loved one dying and the ✦✦ How does Roley feel about Oceanworld and his grief over a relationship ending? job? Why doesn’t he quit? ✦✦ Why does she become so obsessed with the image ✦✦ How does the author show us the differences of overtaking her ex while running? between Roley and Declan? How do we know ✦✦ What two words unravel her thoughts? Roley’s opinion of Declan? Waiting Sleepers ✦ ✦✦ ‘Just Ray’ is echoed several times in this story. ✦ Before we know where the main character is or Who says/thinks it, and what tone does it set for what she is there for, how does the author develop Ray’s character? the tone of the story? ✦ ✦✦ Why does everyone believe that they have a right ✦ How does she show the tension and anxiety in to take a share of the sleepers? each of the characters? What are they worried about? ✦✦ Consider the final few sentences of the story ✦ and Ray as a character. What are the similarities ✦ What are the different kinds of love demonstrated between the two? in this story? Static Whirlpool ✦ ✦✦ What strikes you immediately about the narrative ✦ What are the ‘Evil Rays’? Where are they coming point of view of this piece? from? ✦ ✦✦ What hints are there in the story about Anna’s ✦ What are the differences between Marie and her position within the family? How do they all feel husband and his parents? about her? How does this make her feel about ✦✦ What is each of the characters longing for? herself? Seventy-Two Derwents ✦✦ What does the pool represent to the girls and their ✦✦ How does the author show you that the girl in father? this story is younger than the narrators of other Cake stories in the book? ✦✦ The presence of cake is repeated throughout the ✦✦ Is the family rich or poor? How do you know? story and is echoed in the title. What do you How do each of the characters act because of this? think the significance of this is? How does it make ✦✦ What do you know about the relationship Liz feel, and why? between Ellie and her mother from Tyler’s story? ✦✦ What roles is Liz trying to switch between? How does Ellie take care of Tyler? How is she finding it difficult? How do others ✦✦ Why does Mrs Carlyle call the police? How does make things more difficult? this impact Tyler? White Spirit ✦✦ What are the benefits of having a young narrator? ✦✦ What is the importance of the mural? How does And what are the drawbacks? the main character feel let down by it? ✦✦ What is ‘the growing sense of community ownership through collaboration’?

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EXTENSION ACTIVITIES REFERENCES 1. In class, discuss the short-story form. On the Reviews board or a poster write a list of features that you as a Readings class think are important in a successful short story. www.readings.com.au/review/like-a-house-on-fire- Using one of the themes above as inspiration, write by-cate-kennedy your own short story. It should be no more than 2000 Interviews words, and should consider the elements you have A Bigger Brighter World come up with in class. www.abiggerbrighterworld.com/what-lights-cate- 2. Different publications publish quite different kennedys-imaginative-fire/ stories. Look into some journals (print or online) Readings that accept short-story submissions. Read at least www.readings.com.au/news/helen-garner-talks-with- three stories from at least two separate editions of cate-kennedy-about-her-latest-collection-like-a- the journal. What elements do you feel your chosen house-on-fire journal looks for in a story? Wheeler Centre Dailies Look up the submissions process for your chosen www.wheelercentre.com/dailies/post/7a73e588f275/ journal. This should give you information about how Writing short stories submissions are accepted, preferred styles, length Cate Kennedy on short stories etc. Based on this information and the stories that www.nswwc.org.au/support-for-writers/writers- you have read, write a story that you feel would be about-writing/cate-kennedy-on-short-stories/ suitable to be submitted to your chosen journal. The Huffington Post: short-story tips Read your story to a partner and ask for their www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/18/short-story- feedback. tips-_n_3947152.html Kurt Vonnegut on writing stories When you have edited your piece, submit it to the www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/04/03/kurt- journal you have chosen. vonnegut-on-writing-stories/ (Publications to look at could include Overland, Voiceworks, Kill Your Darlings and the Killings blog, Short-story platforms Express Media Meanjin Seizure Sleepers Almanac Southerly , , and , as www.expressmedia.org.au well as university newspapers and journals.) Kill Your Darlings 1 3. In this interview, Cate Kennedy talks a lot about www.killyourdarlingsjournal.com where she finds inspiration for her imagery and The Lifted Brow ideas. As imagery is often central to a short story, www.theliftedbrow.com try to find a collection of pieces that you could use as an inspiration board or journal. Collect at least ten Meanjin www.meanjin.com.au pieces. They could be quotes, images, descriptions of people or places you’ve been, photos, newspaper Overland articles, any number of things. Stick these in a journal www.overland.org.au (or turn this into an online project by using a Tumblr Seizure or a blog) and write a short piece explaining the www.seizureonline.com images that each item creates for you. Try to write a Sleepers Almanac short creative piece based on one of these images. www.sleeperspublishing.com/almanac/ Southerly www.southerlyjournal.com.au

1 http://www.abiggerbrighterworld.com/what-lights-cate- Voiceworks kennedys-imaginative-fire www.voiceworksmag.com.au

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IDENTITY Notes on Night Games SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2014 STELLA PRIZE

Where does this sense of entitlement start? I remember something a footballer told me when he briefly tried out as a rookie in an AFL team … when he wore his new uniform home, he stopped to grab a burger and chips. To his unease, the shopkeeper wouldn’t let him pay. It was nothing really, he told me, six bucks or something, but still it played on his mind. It was as if the old boundaries and rules were disappearing. Anna Krien, Night Games

CONTENT ADVICE Night Games is a work of nonfiction and its investigation of footy culture, the media and attitudes towards women is well worth studying. However, given the subject matter, there are scenes in the book that some schools may decide are inappropriate for students. If this is the case, these notes can still be used to study themes relevant to students alongside portions of the text selected by the school.

SYNOPSIS In this riveting work of nonfiction, Anna Krien takes the action and therefore the case itself. She watches readers on a fascinating and often disturbing journey and questions the ethics of separating one part of the into the darkest corners of Australian football culture. incident in question from the next, and of feeding the Night Games follows a young footballer who, only jury only some of the available information. shortly after moving to Melbourne and joining From there, Krien casts a wider net, looking at the Coburg Tigers, becomes the accused in a rape the definition of rape, along with the grey areas trial. What begins as an accusation of a pack rape, of consent and the resulting legal ramifications. involving high-profile players from the Collingwood She examines the attitudes towards women within Football Club, soon sees Justin (whose name has football culture that lead to the too-frequent been changed for privacy reasons) left hanging. He occurrence of these incidents. No stone is left is dropped by his famous friends, their well-known unturned as she investigates attitudes towards players’ lawyers and his club, left wondering how things had girlfriends, wives and one-night stands as well as to gone so horribly wrong. women involved in the culture in other ways – as Despite not being able to speak directly with the media reporters and as club board members. She complainant in the rape case, Krien presents a multi- notes those who are trying to change the culture faceted view of the night itself. In the first part of from within, and that some small steps forward have the book, Krien introduces the trial and the people undoubtedly been made. This is by no means an involved, and sheds some light on the legal process anti-male book, or even an anti-football book. Krien itself. She examines the language used to describe the points out that many of these objectionable attitudes events, and details the initial legal process – which are shared by women too, and that those who report involved three accused, represented by a high-profile rape are often criticised by their female counterparts lawyer engaged by the Collingwood Football Club as much as by males. – and the discussions between lawyers and the judge The media is scrutinised, including the demeaning as the two Collingwood players are separated from and obnoxious treatment of women and use of female

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ IDENTITYIDENTITY:: 15 Night Games effigies by high-profile media personalities such as LINKS TO THE Sam Newman on The Footy Show. In addition, the AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM issue of trial by media is raised, particularly when, Night Games is a challenging and confronting book partway through the trial, a Herald Sun article to read, and one that not all schools will decide is publishes misinformation about Justin with the suitable for students. For those who do decide to potential to taint the jury and negatively impact study the book, or select sections thereof, there the entire trial. Underlying this media circus is the is a great deal for discussion. In the context of personal drama, the way the trial and its implications ethical understanding, the book encourages affect not only Justin but also his family, who are readers to analyse group behaviour and its relation dealing with a relative’s terminal illness during to individuals’ attitudes and personal responsibility. the trial. Within the personal and social capability, The reader knows the trial’s conclusion from the students are asked to ‘empathise with and appreciate outset. However, many of the questions that it raises the perspectives of others’, and to do this via are left open, put out not necessarily to provide a set ‘analysis, research and the expression of viewpoints of answers but to start a vital discussion around the and arguments’. A text such as Night Games, which ethics and attitudes within Australian elite sports and presents multiple perspectives and encompasses a the associated media. whole range of issues – around the culture of football, media representation, rape and the treatment of AUTHOR BACKGROUND women – will challenge and develop these skills and ANNA KRIEN is the author of assist students to articulate their thoughts on complex Night Games: Sex, Power and and/or controversial topics. Sport, Into the Woods: The Battle for Tasmania’s Forests and Quarterly READING QUESTIONS Essay 45, Us and Them: On the ✦✦ What do the words ‘power’ and ‘disempower’ Importance of Animals. mean to you? Anna’s work has been published in The Monthly, ✦✦ Which issues within the book do you think fall The Age, The Big Issue, The Best Australian Essays, within ‘grey areas’? The Best Australian Stories, Griffith Review, ✦✦ What is meant by entitlement? What attitudes Voiceworks, Going Down Swinging, Colors, Frankie does it encourage? and Dazed & Confused. ✦✦ Who else (aside from the players themselves) www.thestellaprize.com.au/2014/04/ participates in the creation of ‘jock culture’? the-stella-interview-anna-krien/ ✦✦ Is this sense of mateship in sports a bad thing? THEMES ✦✦ How does the author present the court case? Identity ✦✦ Do you feel that the book is biased because the Rape author is unable to present the complainant’s Footy culture evidence? How does she attempt to get around Media bias this issue? Does she succeed in doing so? Legal procedures ✦ Women in sport ✦ How is Justin presented as a character? Truth ✦✦ How much of the author do you sense in the Sex and consent book? (Think about moments where she inserts Fame her opinion or where language implies her Power attitude towards something.) Is it a bad thing that

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this book is told by an ‘I’ rather than an invisible In gossip, and in trial by media, where does the truth narrator? fit? Does it matter? ✦✦ Who holds the power in this situation? Is it Justin? Write a short journal, blog or vlog about a time when Sarah? Is it one individual or a group? you have been the victim of gossip, or when you have ✦✦ What different types of media are shown in the participated in gossip about someone else. book? How is each of these portrayed? (The film Gossip [2000] would be a good tie-in for ✦✦ What roles do you see women taking throughout this activity.) the book? What are their attitudes? 3. One of the big issues in the book is media bias. (Consider their attitudes to men, to themselves Readers are encouraged to question what they are and to each other.) told by mainstream media, particularly in cases ✦✦ What are your thoughts on parts of the night where popular sentiment can easily overwhelm the being withheld from the trial? Is it fair? truth. Look through newspapers and online news sites for several articles written by different people ✦✦ Discuss the difference between ‘fair’ and ‘legal’. about the same issue. See if you can find any firsthand How does withholding these scenes impact the information about the issue. Try to write your own people involved in the trial? interpretation of events based on this. Write a passage ✦✦ How is Justin treated by his friends and family? critically examining the way the information is being presented to you. Consider the following when doing ✦✦ Where can you see attitudes changing or efforts this. being made to change attitudes throughout the book? What attitudes are they? Who is ✦✦ What is the issue? perpetuating them? What are the responses ✦✦ Who is involved? to change? ✦✦ Who is reporting on it? ✦✦ Who are they reporting for? EXTENSION ACTIVITIES ✦✦ Does the individual/organisation have any 1. Language is an important element of the book. connection to the issue outside of journalism? Find examples in the text where language is used in ✦✦ Is there any public pressure towards a each of the following ways. Discuss its importance, particular opinion? how it can be manipulated, and what it tells us about both the speaker and who is being spoken about. REFERENCES ✦✦ Definition ✦ Reviews ✦ Derogatory The Monthly ✦✦ Lies www.themonthly.com.au/book-club/2013/june ✦✦ Misunderstanding Readings ✦✦ Jokes www.readings.com.au/review/ ✦✦ Stereotyping night-games-by-anna-krien ✦✦ Demeaning The Sydney Morning Herald www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/ ✦ ✦ Intimidating foul-play-off-the-field-20130517-2jrt1.html ✦✦ Legal Sydney Review of Books 2. What is meant by ‘trial by media’? How is a trial www.sydneyreviewofbooks.com/the-grey-zone/ by media similar to gossip? Discuss the ways that gossip can affect an individual.

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Media bias How to detect bias in new media www.fair.org/take-action-now/media-activism-kit/ how-to-detect-bias-in-news-media/ Types of media bias www.studentnewsdaily.com/types-of-media-bias/ Sexual assault Changes proposed to laws on rape www.theage.com.au/victoria/changes-proposed-to- laws-on-rape-20131024-2w4f3.html Sexual assault laws in Australia www.aifs.gov.au/acssa/pubs/sheets/rs1/ Women in football Survey of women working in football www.theguardian.com/football/2014/mar/07/ women-football-survey-karren-brady Women and sport www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/public/ Women and Sport.pdf

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ IDENTITY: 18 IDENTITY Notes on Sea Hearts SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2013 STELLA PRIZE

If time, tide and circumstance were right, I could persuade them to combine, at the centre of the seal-being, into a man-like or a woman-like form. Margo Lanagan, Sea Hearts

SYNOPSIS Misskaella Prout is a knotted old witch who terrifies however, are nothing but scornful, and she suffers the young children of Rollrock. In the opening scene terribly from their attacks and derision. of the book, Daniel, Grinny and James are collecting Still, Misskaella doesn’t break. She has found a place sea hearts for their mothers when they stumble past where she feels that she belongs, and one night, when Misskaella on the beach and, terrified, they rush away the desperation of being alone is at its peak, she as quickly as possible. conjures a handsome and gentle man from the skin But, in fact, Misskaella began her life as a small, of a bull seal. They spend the night together, before frightened child. It is her grandmother, as she lies on she returns him to his skin and watches him swim her deathbed, who first labels Misskaella ‘different’. away. Weeks later, as she cares for her invalid father Misskaella is much younger and less attractive than in the house that her sisters have long left, Misskaella her sisters, who tease her about her strange eyes and discovers that she is pregnant. She gives birth dumpy body, so at first her ‘difference’ is attributed to alone, and hides her baby boy for fear of the town’s age and appearance. Soon, though, Misskaella realises judgement. Despite loving him with all her heart, and that her differences run much deeper: she has a power despite feeding him more than she is physically able, no one else in her family possesses. the child does not grow. A blanket of seaweed soaked She has always felt an affinity for the seals that come in the sea offers some comfort, but it is brief, and to rest their velvety, lazy bodies on the beach, but Misskaella realises that she must give up her son to her powerful differences only really become apparent his seal form. to Misskaella when one day the world becomes Alone now, grieving, and taunted still, Misskaella distorted, pushed and pulled by a wind visible only turns sour. She brings forth a seal woman, who walks to her. When she visits the seals on the beach, she up onto the shore, at once winning the hearts of the sees that the myths of Rollrock are true, that she men. Although the seal woman finds her skin and would be able to conjure a human from beneath the escapes, the damage is done. The town’s men have skin of a seal. Frightened by the seals’ reaction to lost their hearts and are willing to pay Misskaella her, Misskaella flees, spending days hiding in her bed anything to create each of them a sea maiden. as seals fill the streets in an attempt to follow her. What follows is a series of narratives by other As much as she tries to hide her newfound powers, characters – Bet Winch, Dominic Mallett and Daniel the town and her family see her otherness. Some Mallett – as gradually the men on Rollrock leave older members of the town even send gifts to placate their wives for sea maidens. Dominic Mallett, taken her lest she use her powers against them. Some also away from Rollrock as a child by his mother, returns send advice, which Misskaella is able to use to gain the week before his own wedding on the mainland control over her new abilities. Her family and peers,

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ IDENTITYIDENTITY:: 19 Sea Hearts to settle his parents’ affairs. Once there, he too falls Award. Her novel Tender Morsels won the World under the spell of Misskaella’s sea maidens, and takes Award for Best Novel and was a Michael L. a sea wife, returning to live again in his childhood Printz Honor Book for Excellence in Young Adult home. Fiction. Margo lives in Sydney. She blogs at The bulk of the remainder of the narrative is told by www.amongamidwhile.blogspot.com. Dominic’s son, Daniel. Daniel, like all the other boys thestellaprize.com.au/2013/04/ on Rollrock, has a ‘mam’ from the sea. There are no the-stella-interview-margo-lanagan/ girl children, as they are sent back to the sea to be raised as brides for future generations. Daniel is not THEMES interested in finding a bride. He is interested in his Identity beloved mam, and is distressed to see her, along with Ownership the other mams on the island, weakening under the Mother−son relationships weight of their desperation to return to the sea. When Love the women start giving up, driven mad by this desire, Desire Daniel decides to act. Along with his mam, and the Malice other boys, he develops a plan to steal back the coats Betrayal that will return the mams to seal form, and to take Enchantment the children with them. The morning after their escape, the men of Rollrock wake to discover their LINKS TO THE wives and sons gone. They will not see their wives again, and those who do meet their sons again will AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM not do so for some time. As with many of the books in the Identity segment of these notes, Sea Hearts calls for a strong sense of The story is concluded by Lory Severner, a mainland ethical understanding, as the identities of many of girl who returns to the island generations after her these characters are shaped, and often decided, by the family left, and Trudle Callisher, the mainland witch actions of others. who became Misskaella’s apprentice as a child. Upon burying Misskaella, Trudle uncovers a part of the secret that Misskaella had kept hidden. We learn that READING QUESTIONS Misskaella stopped making seal women when the ✦✦ What hints are given early in the book about mams escaped, but in this final scene with Trudle, Misskaella’s differences? there is an uneasy sense of events repeating. ✦✦ Why do people leave her gifts? ✦✦ How does Misskaella’s relationship with her AUTHOR BACKGROUND family affect her decisions? MARGO LANAGAN is an ✦✦ What happens to Misskaella when she becomes a internationally acclaimed writer of mother? novels and short stories. Her short- story collections have garnered ✦✦ Is she angry with the men or the women of many awards, nominations and Rollrock? If yes, why is she angry? How does she shortlistings. Black Juice was a Michael L. Printz seek revenge? Honor Book and won two World Fantasy Awards ✦✦ How does Misskaella describe bringing the and the Victorian Premier’s Award for Young Adult women from the seals? Fiction. Red Spikes won the CBCA Book of the Year: ✦ Older Readers, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of ✦ What are the ethical issues around her actions? the Year, a Horn Book Fanfare title, was shortlisted ✦✦ Why do the people on the mainland find the men for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize and longlisted of Rollrock disgusting? for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story

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✦✦ Why does Nance Winch go to see Misskaella? changed, which you have kept and why you made What do you read into the moment when the decisions that you did regarding characters, time, Misskaella tells Nance to ‘give my regards to setting etc. Mister Winch’ (p.126)? (This could be a good comparison exercise with ✦✦ Is the men’s behaviour justified by their another fairytale retelling e.g. Cinder by Marissa enchantment? How should they behave? Meyer.) ✦✦ How are the seal women portrayed in the book? 2. The seal women are portrayed as property and – How are they seen by the men? are written as having almost no personality or ability – By their sons? to rebel. Consider the effect this has on the way the other characters treat them, not only their husbands – By Misskaella? but other women and their children. Try to imagine – By the people from the mainland? that you are one of these women, suffering and (Give examples as evidence for each answer.) without a voice. ✦✦ When Dominic leaves, what is Kitty afraid of? Write a piece from their perspective (it can be a letter, ✦✦ What is disrespectful about the actions of the boys diary entry etc. but should be in the first person). when they put on their mother’s sealskins? How has this changed or enhanced your reading of the text? Discuss as a group what other situations this ✦✦ What inspires Daniel to help his mother escape understanding could be applied to. back to the sea? Why does he feel betrayed that she wants to leave? What other examples can you think of where women are not able to give voice to their suffering? Choose ✦✦ How do the men react once the seal women one of these women and research their situation, then have escaped? try to write a similar piece giving a voice to their – Are they sorry? suffering. – Who do they blame? – What are they upset to have lost? REFERENCES ✦✦ How does the author keep the narrative moving Reviews forward by giving different characters control of The Guardian the narrative? What are the benefits of this shared www.theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/10/brides- rollrock-islands-margo-lanagan-review narration? Kill Your Darlings ✦✦ What is the fate of the female babies? www.killyourdarlingsjournal.com/2013/11/26/a- ✦✦ One review describes the mams as ‘loving but not messy-kind-of-sense-margo-lanagans-sea-hearts/ happy’. What do you think the reviewer means by The Sydney Morning Herald this? Do you think it is correct? www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/ocean-of- ✦✦ What is Misskaella’s secret? What does Trudle lament-20120217-1tdo0.html think it is? What are the main differences between Interviews Trudle and Misskaella? Allen & Unwin Q&A www..com/watch?v=RY_TbUKr8I4 EXTENSION ACTIVITIES Seal people/Selkies 1. In Sea Hearts, Margo Lanagan has taken an Best of legends: Selchies old myth and turned it into her own story. Think www.bestoflegends.org/fairy/selchies.html of a myth or fairytale you know well and write a A Home for Selkies creative piece (up to 1500 words) making it your own echoes.devin.com/selkie/selkie.html story. Write a page outlining which parts you have

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IDENTITY Notes on The Night Guest SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2014 STELLA PRIZE

The feeling reminded her of something vital – not of youth, exactly, but of the urgency of youth – and she was reluctant to give it up. Fiona McFarlane, The Night Guest

SYNOPSIS Elderly widow Ruth is alone in her isolated New advantage of her, she is stuck in a relationship that she South Wales beach house. Her sensible husband, craves as much as she longs to escape it. Harry, who walked every day for good health, is Ruth’s reality is very much the focus of the book, and dead. Her two sons don’t live close enough to visit in this eerie house filled with unwanted guests, both regularly. Ruth is left with very little but the sense real and imagined, she finds herself casting her mind that her brain is somehow failing her, and a series back more and more to a romance from her childhood of memories from a time when her life felt sharper, in Fiji. When she makes contact with Richard and more vibrant. he comes to stay, the romance and trust that grows One night Ruth is visited by a tiger. She can hear it quickly between them is a welcome relief, and there creeping through the house, predatory, sweaty and is hope that this may provide Ruth’s escape. But this foreign. The presence of this prowling guest turns book is as much about Ruth’s inability to be saved as her house into the jungle of her colonial youth. In it is about her need of saving. When George, Frida’s the morning when she wakes, the tiger is gone, but partner in crime, double-crosses her and leaves her Ruth is convinced that she can see evidence of its stranded with Ruth, there is a beautiful, belated, visit. In the wake of this unsettling incident, Ruth moment of genuine understanding between the is surprised by a second guest, this time a woman, two women. Frida, who sweeps into the house and announces that Ruth, Frida and the tiger are inextricably linked, and she has been sent by the government to care for Ruth. as their lives are connected, so are their deaths. In a Ruth has the unsettling feeling that she has forgotten final act of manipulation – or perhaps real kindness something, and though she means to check up on – Frida chases the tiger around the house and kills it. Frida, the moment to do so passes, and Ruth soon When she later kills herself, these moments become finds herself succumbing to Frida’s new position in joined in self-awareness and sorrow. Ruth is the last her house. to die, leaving behind her cats as she calmly follows Frida’s presence takes up a great deal of space, leaving the tiger. little room for Ruth’s own uncertain thoughts. Frida is a dominant character, and in her increasing AUTHOR BACKGROUND uncertainty, Ruth starts to rely on her more and FIONA McFARLANE was born more. The reader, in turn, becomes uncertain of what in Sydney and has degrees in is truth or lies, and of where the real danger exists. English from Sydney University Ruth’s sense of reality becomes increasingly blurred, and Cambridge University, as well and by the time she realises that Frida is taking as an MFA from the University of

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Texas at Austin, where she was a Michener Fellow. ✦✦ How do each of the characters find redemption – Her work has been published in Zoetrope: All-Story, if they do at all? Southerly The Best Australian Stories New , and the ✦✦ How does Fiona McFarlane manage to cross Yorker , and she has received fellowships from the Fine several genres in the book? What is the overall Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Phillips Exeter effect of this? Academy, and the Australia Council for the Arts. The Night Guest, her debut novel, has sold into fifteen ✦✦ Why doesn’t Ruth reach out to her sons or territories around the world. She lives in Sydney. Ellen Gibson for help? www.thestellaprize.com.au/2014/04/the-stella- ✦✦ Why is Ellen Gibson suspicious that something interview-fiona-mcfarlane/ is wrong? ✦✦ In many interviews (links below), Fiona THEMES McFarlane talks about her inspiration for Identity the tiger. What is it? How does she show this Loneliness in the book? Dementia ✦✦ Is Frida a bad character? What desires is Love she driven by? Family ✦✦ How are the descriptions of Frida’s and Ruth’s Life/death respective physicality used to enhance the way Colonialism we feel about them as characters? Memory Isolation ✦✦ Does Ruth believe that the tiger is real? Forgiveness ✦✦ What are the attitudes of Ruth’s sons towards her? Manipulation Why do you think this is? How does this impact Fear on their treatment of her? Language Reality ✦✦ What does Richard represent for Ruth? ✦✦ How are the descriptions of the physical landscape LINKS TO THE used to enhance the sense of isolation and danger, AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM as well as the plausibility of the tiger? Alongside basic literacy skills and critical and ✦✦ How are Ruth’s feelings towards her childhood creative thinking, The Night Guest poses many different in the present and in the past? ethical questions to students asking them to consider ✦✦ Why do you think Ruth has recently started their treatment of others, care of the elderly as well as turning to her childhood more and more for the manipulation of someone in a trusting position. comfort? The study of this text therefore supports the general capability of ethical understanding, which ✦✦ Why does Ruth enjoy swearing? Is there a pattern encourages students to ‘appreciate and develop greater in the times that she feels like swearing? empathy for the rights and opinions of others’. ✦✦ How does Frida manipulate Ruth? ✦✦ What are Ruth’s fears? READING QUESTIONS ✦ ✦✦ In what ways are both Ruth and Frida ✦ What are Frida’s fears? untrustworthy? ✦✦ What is colonialism? If you’re not sure, look it ✦✦ What does the tiger symbolise? up and see what information you can find. What imagery in the book supports this theme?

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✦✦ What similarities can you find between the idea The Monthly of colonialism and Ruth’s relationship with Frida? www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2013/ How does this relate to Ruth’s childhood in Fiji? august/1375315200/catherine-ford/night-guest Sydney Review of Books EXTENSION ACTIVITIES www.sydneyreviewofbooks.com/the-night-guest- review/ 1. Try writing a chapter from the book in the voice of one of the other characters (e.g. Frida, The Telegraph Ellen Gibson, Jeffrey or Richard). Really try to put www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/ yourself in the shoes of this character by writing bookreviews/10591640/The-Night-Guest-by-Fiona- down everything you know about them from the McFarlane-review.html text and then creating a character description based Interviews on their actions. Discuss in pairs or groups how Booktopia (VIDEO) rewriting the scene has changed your interpretation www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AunZbsfL2Y of it and of the characters. Penguin 2. How does Frida’s treatment of Ruth make you www.penguin.com.au/products/9781926428550/ feel? How does it change? As a reader, how would night-guest/352841/q-fiona-mcfarlane you like Ruth to respond? Write a scene where Ruth The Sydney Morning Herald responds differently. Read or perform these in class, www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/interview- and discuss the impact of the changes. How would fiona-mcfarlane-20130919-2u09u.html Ruth reacting differently change the rest of the book? The Wheeler Centre 3. At the end of each chapter write a short passage wheelercentre.com/dailies/post/cf938b785d5d/ or some dot points with your observations on how Treatment of the elderly Ruth and Frida have both changed. Consider things Depression in the elderly such as: www.helpguide.org/mental/depression_elderly.htm ✦✦ their physical descriptions How the elderly are treated around the world ✦✦ the language they use theweek.com/article/index/246810/how-the-elderly- ✦✦ their actions towards each other are-treated-around-the-world ✦✦ who is given most of the dominant action Colonialism in the scene BBC News: Fiji profile www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-14919688 At the end of the book, share your observations with the rest of the class. Discuss where you felt Colonialism differently from someone else. What note did you feel plato.stanford.edu/entries/colonialism/ the relationship between the two women ultimately ended on? Imagine a graph of their relationship – what is the shape of it? Does it go up and down fairly consistently, or does it always favour one character? What are the high points and low points?

REFERENCES Reviews The Guardian www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/24/night- guest-fiona-mcfarlane-review

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History

History is who we are and why we are the way we are. David McCullough

hese four books have a strong link to history, and specifically women’s history. THistory is not only a way in which we can identify with the past, but also a way to make sense of our present and shape our future. When history is made personal, through the real or fictionalised accounts of specific individuals’ lives, we are given a way to connect with the story that can make larger historical events or concepts easier to imagine and understand. Books focusing on historical events allow us to see if and how our attitudes – towards gender roles, for example – have changed over time. We are able to more critically assess these attitudes with the benefit of hindsight. These books also give readers the opportunity to question the broad brush with which history is often painted, looking instead at the detail of why and how women in history took action, and the emotions that drove them. If we look at gender roles today, we can see how they have been shaped by history, but also how our empathy towards historical figures is shaped by contemporary expectations.

In The Burial, Australian bushranger Jessie Hickman QUESTIONS is shown as a scared and vulnerable young woman, ✦✦ How are the lives of the women in each book trying desperately to stay alive. In Boy, Lost, shaped by their historical setting? Kristina Olsson searches for answers in the story of her mother, who, as a young woman, was cruelly ✦✦ What gender expectations are placed on each of forced to abandon her son. In The Forgotten Rebels the characters because of the historical setting of Eureka, Clare Wright paints a much richer and of the book? more representative picture of Ballarat at the time ✦✦ How does the history portrayed in each of the of the Eureka Stockade than our history books have books fit with your knowledge of the history of previously provided. And in Burial Rites, Hannah that time? Kent makes us feel the sorrow, pain and rage of a ✦ young murderess sentenced to await her own death ✦ In what way does reading about these characters in the very home she had felt compelled to run from change your understanding of history? years earlier. ✦✦ In what way does reading about these characters Alongside the reading notes on the individual titles, change your understanding of yourself? it may help to consider the following questions and ✦✦ How much of your own history are you aware of? resources, more broadly related to gender and history.

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ACTIVITIES Create a family tree, going at least four generations back. Choose someone from your family tree who you don’t know much about and write a creative response about them. Consider what larger historical events were happening around the time one book was set. Write a piece on the impact those events may have had on the events or characters in the book. How has one character made this broader history more meaningful or relevant to you?

RESOURCES Australian women’s history forum www.womenshistory.net.au History in focus: gender www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Gender/index.html If we have no history, we have no future www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/28/ tristram-hunt-history-teaching-schools Smithsonian women’s history teaching resources www.smithsonianeducation.org/educators/resource_ library/women_resources.html Women’s history and gender history: what and why? www.earlymodernnotes.wordpress.com/ 2005/03/22/womens-gender-history-why/

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ History: 28 HISTORY Notes on The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka WINNER OF THE 2014 STELLA PRIZE

The great gift of Eureka – its beauty and, in a sense, its terror – is that the story of women’s effort, influence and sacrifice is both politically correct and historically true. Clare Wright, The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka

SYNOPSIS The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka aims to reinstate and the chance at independence. The harsh realities women in the traditional accounts of the Eureka of the ocean journey are not glossed over, although Stockade. It does not attempt to eject men from these the death and disease do little to dampen the spirits accounts and, in fact, by including the stories of the of those who land in Melbourne. Here Wright women who were integral to this momentous event introduces many of the characters who we will in our history, the stories of men become much more follow through the rest of the book and some of the complete too, and it becomes easier to understand other voices that have been neglected in traditional their complex motivations and struggles. histories, including those of the Wathaurung people. The book takes place over a 5-year span from before The second section, ‘Transformations’, sees life on and to slightly after the familiar events on the night the goldfields becoming reality. The women who of the Eureka Stockade. In a clamour of voices, have emigrated start carving out their own roles women insert themselves back into every aspect of in the community. Martha and Sarah open a store, this story, from emigration, travel and settling to building up a loyal clientele and cementing their place fighting and rebelling. They play vital parts in these as vital members of the community. Some women historical events, influential every step of the way. set up bars; others take up writing and acting. They Their stories are told in snippets grouped almost become far more than the sum of their domestic thematically, and the book itself is divided into responsibilities. They are at once hardworking three parts: ‘Transitions’, ‘Transformations’ and entrepreneurs, and wives and mothers. They petition ‘Transgressions’. Although Wright tells a number to change laws that are unfair to them, and are vital of stories, there are some characters that she players in the overturning of unfair taxes. follows more closely than others, including Martha There is one especially memorable scene where the Clendenning, Margaret Johnston, Sarah Hanmer, heroism of Sarah Skinner is detailed in her ultimately Catherine Bentley, Ellen Young and Clara Seekamp. tragic death in childbirth. This scene is also a prime In the first section of the book, ‘Transitions’, the example of the inclusion of men in this version of reader is caught up in the heady excitement of the events. While Sarah labours, her husband is also gold rush as it spreads across the world. Clare Wright present. His presence is labelled ‘as ineffectual as a identifies the many motivations for both men and handkerchief in a tempest’, but it nevertheless offers women to leave their old lives behind and make the readers a perspective on men as more than bawdy often perilous journey across the ocean to Australia. gold-diggers. These men were devoted husbands and The tone in this section of the book is buoyant: fathers too, men with as much fear as courage and people writing home of the possibilities, the money determination.

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In this section, Wright also touches on the domestic www.clarewright.com.au abuse that was all too common in the community. www.thestellaprize.com.au/2014/04/the-stella- The final section of the book, ‘Transgressions’, focuses interview-clare-wright/ on the dramatic events of the night that most readers will be familiar with: the rebellion that spilt blood THEMES across the goldfields. It begins, almost innocently, Australian history with the insult of Catherine Bentley by James Scobie. Women in history The narrative follows the inquiry into the murder Masculinity of James Scobie, warning of the mounting danger Independence and growing tensions within the community. In the midst of this panic and paranoia, a robbery occurs. LINKS TO THE Over £15,000 is stolen and a new mother, Ann Quin, wife of one of the thieves, is refused bail. Eliza Smith AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM is one of the robbers, going under the name ‘Elijah’ This nonfiction book, which fills in large gaps in the and invisible to the ‘gender-blind beurocrats [sic]’. traditional accounts of Australian history, links to This final section of the book is one that explores numerous cross-curriculum priorities as well as many the varied and often tough characters of the women. of the general capabilities. Everyone is becoming more desperate, starting to lose Although the focus of the book is women in the more, to be more reckless, and the rebellion is close. history of the Eureka Stockade, this narrative The final chapter sees ‘idealism and energy collid[e] also draws in the voices of Chinese settlers and with brutality and death’. The book ends with the the Wathaurung people. There are connections in Eureka Stockade, but even here Wright offers new these parts to Aboriginal and Torres Strait information, pushing readers as always to wonder and Islander stories and also Australia’s relationship to question. In this case the question is: why has the with Asia. death of a woman at the stockade been left out of the In addition to this, the very fact that the book is story until now? necessary to fill such a large hole in our historical records requires students to think critically and AUTHOR BACKGROUND empathically about Australian history and their CLARE WRIGHT is an award- place in it. winning historian, author and public commentator who has READING QUESTIONS worked in politics, academia and ✦✦ In The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, Clare Wright the media. She holds a PhD in asks the question: ‘Where were we in this story?’ Australian Studies from the University of Melbourne, and an MA in Public History from Monash – Consider the traditional narrative of Eureka. University. She is an internationally recognised Who else is missing from it? scholar of the social history of alcohol and women’s – How does this story fit alongside the traditional political activism. Her expertise in Australian history narrative? covers the gold-rush period, 19th- and 20th-century – How does it challenge it? women’s history, democracy movements, mining – How does it support it? history, bushrangers and the liquor industry. – How does it change your view? Her best-selling first book, Beyond the Ladies Lounge: – What questions does it make you ask of your Australia’s Female Publicans, met with both critical own past? and popular acclaim. The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka ✦ was the winner of the 2014 Stella Prize and will be ✦ Historically, what roles were considered fitting for published in a young adult version in 2015. women?

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– What roles did the women of Eureka undertake? ✦✦ How are history books written in this more – How did these positions challenge gender roles accessible, dramatic style different from and stereotypes? traditional history books? – How were the roles filled by women in Eureka – What are the benefits of telling history in integral to our history? this way? ✦✦ What evidence does Clare Wright offer for her – What are some of the concerns with this version of events? Is it reliable? technique? ✦✦ How does Clare Wright show respect in her book ✦✦ What is the significance of the flag on the to existing historical accounts? front cover? ✦✦ What challenges do the women in this book face: ✦✦ Why do you think women have been left out of the pages of history? – In their home countries? ✦ – On the boats? ✦ How and why have the voices of the Wathaurung people been excluded from history? – In Australia? ✦ ✦✦ In addition to women’s, what other perspectives ✦ How is dress presented in the book? does The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka offer to – How are women judged by what they wear? readers? – How are clothes used to mock, dominate ✦✦ In what ways does telling the story of women in or judge? our history deepen our understanding of the men – How do the women in the book break during that time? convention in this area and why? ✦✦ What traits did women need to be successful in Australia in those days? EXTENSION ACTIVITIES 1. The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka asks where women ✦ ✦ How did women participate in the campaign to were in traditional accounts of the Eureka Stockade. change the laws of the time? Clare Wright encourages readers to consider their ✦✦ How did emigrating to Australia offer women the place in history and wonder about their connections chance to be more independent? to the past. ✦✦ How were women’s reasons for emigrating Write a journal entry about how this book makes you different from those of men? How were their feel. How does it make you wonder about your own attitudes to their lives upon arrival different? past? What does it make you think about what you know? What questions does it make you ask of what ✦✦ Why are books like this – and Henry Reynolds’ you don’t know? Why Weren’t We Told?, which challenges the myth of ‘uncontested colonisation in Australia’ Research a woman from your own family who was – important? Why is it necessary that we have a alive at the time of the Eureka Stockade. What is their complete view of history? story? Are they connected to the events in the book? What themes or issues can you find in their life that ✦✦ What is the impact of the many voices that make you can see in the lives of the women in the book? up the book? Does researching your family make you feel more – How do the many voices challenge or enhance connected to the past and give you ownership over your reading of the book? your history? – How do they make you respond to the personal 2. As women are written out of their history, so too stories being told? are their needs, their contributions, their innovations. – What faults can you see with the use of many The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka writes these details voices? back in.

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In the second part of the book, Martha Clendinning The Newtown Review of Books identifies a need in the marketplace solely for www.newtownreviewofbooks.com.au/2014/05/08/ and because of women and childbirth. Being clare-wright-forgotten-rebels-eureka-reviewed- an entrepreneur requires identifying a need and annette-hughes/ providing a service accordingly. Find a modern The Sydney Morning Herald female entrepreneur. Write a piece discussing the www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the- similarities of her attitude and character traits with forgotten-rebels-of-eureka-by-clare-wright-wins- one of the entrepreneurial women in the book. How stella-prize-20140429-37fv6.html do these ideas and innovations have the potential Sydney Review of Books to change history? (Consider comparing how an www.sydneyreviewofbooks.com/forgotten-rebels- innovation that started during the period covered in eureka-clare-wright/ The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka appears now with how Interviews your chosen innovation is likely to appear 150 years MADE Ballarat (VIDEO) in the future.) What struggles do the two women www.youtube.com/watch?v=bambByxMiOU share? In what ways are they different because of Australian women writers challenge: the time? history, writing and television 3. In a review in the Sydney Review of Books (link australianwomenwriters.com/2014/03/30/history- below), Rachael Weaver connects women’s activism writing-and-television-an-interview-with-clare- in the book to ‘other historical instances of women wright/ becoming politically mobilised: during the French Other Revolution, in relation to the Chartist Movement in Flashers, femmes and other forgotten figures Britain’. In groups, using one of these examples or of the Eureka Stockade another from the book, research the way that women theconversation.com/flashers-femmes-and-other- are represented in your chosen moment in history. forgotten-figures-of-the-eureka-stockade-20939 Consider not only the evidence in existing accounts, The Other Australia Day but also the gaps – what voices aren’t being heard? www.theconversation.com/the-other-australia-day- What questions aren’t being asked? november-11-throughout-history-19891 Present your findings to the class, and record the final Why Weren’t We Told? A Personal Search for project to upload to a school or class blog. the Truth about Our History by Henry Reynolds (Penguin Books) REFERENCES Women of Eureka Reviews www.eurekapedia.org/Women_of_Eureka The Australian www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/ women-had-their-eureka-moment-too/story- fn9n8gph-1226831689510 The Drum www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-30/perkins-review- the-forgotten-rebels-of-eureka/5421162 The Independent www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/ reviews/the-forgotten-rebels-of-eureka-by-clare- wright-book-review-9613067.html

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ HISTORY: 32 HISTORY Notes on Burial Rites SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2014 STELLA PRIZE

Everything I said was taken from me and altered until the story wasn’t my own. Hannah Kent, Burial Rites

SYNOPSIS Agnes Magnúsdóttir has been sentenced to death for Worm’s farm, Agnes started up a friendship with her part in the murder of Natan Ketilsson and Petur Natan, a mysterious man with as much of a reputation Jonsson. She is sent to await her execution on a farm for healing as for his relationships with women. In where she spent much of her childhood. Under the love with him, and with the idea of perhaps finally damp roof of District Officer Jon Jonsson, his wife taking on a more valuable role in a household, Agnes Margret and their daughters, Lauga and Steina, she leaves Worm’s farm and makes the cold journey waits to hear on which day she will be killed, and to Illugastadir on foot. But when she arrives she gradually tells her story to the young Reverend Toti. is drawn into Natan’s emotional and manipulative At first the story she tells Reverend Toti is one of games. Here she encounters Sigga and Fridrik, her her childhood. She was abandoned by her mother, eventual partners in crime. The likelihood of these and even as a young child required to work as a three teaming up is improbable from the beginning. maid to find a home. She did not object to hard Agnes dislikes Fridrik from the moment they meet, work, and there were several times when she found feeling a sense of wrongness coming from him, and a kind of happiness only to lose it, but other times noting the enjoyment he takes in the slaughter of when she was subjected to cruelty and misery. When animals. At this point, it is easy to doubt whether she she worked for a farmer named Worm, she was committed the crime at all, although she does not reasonably content. Agnes had been given an amount deny it. of money, and she was saving it with the hopes of As Natan’s behaviour becomes more erratic, Agnes one day being mistress of her own farm. When her starts standing up to him, questioning his relationship brother reappeared, she vouched for his character. He with Sigga, and his paranoia towards the infrequent stayed for a while, but eventually disappeared, taking visitors and workers on the farm. Although Natan her money with him. tries to brush her off, tensions build as his power Reverend Toti is young and, though certain in is threatened by a developing relationship between his faith, unsure of the best way to lead Agnes to Sigga and Fridrik, and these tensions boil over when redemption before her death. As she recounts her Sigga accepts Fridrik’s marriage proposal. Agnes story to him, while knitting or churning butter, finally reveals the events of the night that Natan was he begins to love her. Although he doubts his own killed, and we learn that she is responsible for the stab abilities, he is unable to stay away. Toti starts to wound that killed him, although we discover that her question whether Agnes deserves her fate at all. Her part in the events was driven first by sympathy for story is a tragic one, as we discover when she finally Natan, who had been mauled beyond redemption by opens up and the details of the events leading to Fridrik, and then by panic and blackmail. the deaths in question spill out. During her time at

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Toti’s misgivings regarding Agnes’s fate are shared, Burial Rites is her first novel. It has been translated although not immediately, by Margret and her into twenty languages and has won and been daughters. Despite strong objections when they shortlisted for a number of awards. first hear that they are required to take her into www.hannahkentauthor.com their home, Steina then Margret and, finally, Lauga warm to Agnes. Steina feels that, like Agnes, she is thestellaprize.com.au/2014/03/the-stella- the odd one out, a misunderstood young woman interview-hannah-kent/ shunned for her differences. Agnes responds to her somewhat warily, not wanting to cause trouble in THEMES the household. Margret is fearful and resentful of History housing a murderess, and at first she imagines Agnes Death slitting their throats while they sleep. Lauga is more Belonging influenced by gossip and opinion, and layered on top Capital Punishment of her fear of living with a murderess, she is afraid Family that any appearance of sympathy towards the woman Manipulation will diminish their standing in the community and Fear decrease her chance of finding a good husband. Friendship Margret is not a simple or petty woman, but a complex character whose fear for her daughters is LINKS TO THE influenced by her own ill health and resentment AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM towards their bleak surroundings. She grows to Burial Rites calls for the exploration of capital respect Agnes’s silence and her strong work ethic. punishment within the framework of ethical Gradually, the women bond, sharing the knowledge understanding. Students should be able to that they are both close to death. By Agnes’s articulate their thoughts on this challenging issue final moments, Margret has become more than a clearly, and be able to look at and present arguments confidante, almost taking on a maternal role towards from more than one side of the discussion. the doomed woman. There is a tender scene where Literacy is ‘developed through the specific study she gathers the few items of great beauty that they of the English language in all its forms, enabling own and lays them out so that Agnes may walk to students to understand how the English language her execution shrouded not in the grey clothes of a works in different social contexts’1. Language plays a servant but in the warmth of clothing and accessories vital role in this story and its many uses – to withhold that show that she was someone, that she belonged. the truth, to manipulate, to plead, to condemn, and so on – offer much to analyse. AUTHOR BACKGROUND HANNAH KENT was born in READING QUESTIONS Adelaide in 1985. As a teenager she ✦✦ Why has Agnes been sentenced to death? travelled on a Rotary Exchange to Iceland, where she first heard the ✦✦ Who else has been charged with the crime? story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir. ✦✦ Why has she been sent to live with Jon and Hannah is the co-founder and publishing director of Margret? Australian literary journal Kill Your Darlings, and is ✦✦ What elements apart from Agnes’s narrative does completing her PhD at Flinders University. In 2011 the author use to tell the story? What impact does she won the inaugural Writing Australia Unpublished this have? Manuscript Award. 1 http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/english/general- capabilities

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✦✦ How do Margret and her daughters first respond about their lives as possible. Look for not only to the news that Agnes will be staying with them? historical accounts of the event, but any pictures or How do their attitudes towards her change over art you can find, examples of the political and social the course of the book? How does Agnes earn climate (what were they struggling against, living their respect? through, eating etc.). Write a short piece of historical ✦✦ How does Agnes know the house so well? fiction (1000−1500 words), weaving these details into a more personal story. ✦✦ Why does she choose to tell her story to Reverend Toti? Follow this up with 200–300 words on the way you approached the exercise, which elements you added ✦✦ How does the author introduce Natan before yourself, and why you made the decisions you did Agnes starts talking about him? What is your based on the information you found. opinion of him? (This exercise could be done as a vlog or blog to ✦✦ Why is Agnes so enamoured of Natan? How does enhance ICT capabilities.) he treat her? In what ways does he manipulate each of the characters? Does this make him 2. Agnes’s death was seen as unfair by many of the deserve his death? characters, and hers was the last example of capital punishment in Iceland. Run a mock trial for Agnes ✦✦ What part does Agnes play in Natan’s murder? using contemporary Icelandic laws and the facts of Why? Is her punishment fair? the case that you can find in the text. Present both ✦✦ Why does Sigga receive a pardon? sides of the argument as fully as you can. Discuss how things would have been different if they had ✦✦ How do you feel knowing that this book is based happened today. Would the outcome of her trial have on real events, and that the characters are based on been fairer? real people? How does this change your reading of the book? 3. One of the challenges that Hannah Kent would have faced while writing this book was being so far ✦✦ What are the benefits of telling this story as away from her subject. She was inspired by her time historical fiction rather than just a factual history? spent in Iceland, and this2 photo essay tells a story ✦✦ Why doesn’t Agnes fight against her fate? in itself. Choose a topic that is important to you and ✦✦ What is Reverend Toti’s job? Which create a photo essay. In pairs, swap photo essays and responsibilities does he fail to achieve? Why does produce a short creative response on each other’s he still feel that he is doing a good job? photographs. Compare stories. Has your partner’s story captured what you expected? ✦✦ How does Agnes find peace? ✦✦ In what ways are Margret and Agnes similar? REFERENCES How does this unite the two women? Reviews ✦✦ Why does Steina feel so drawn to Agnes? Why Academia.edu does Lauga hate her so much? Do both of their www.academia.edu/3503965/Ambiguous_Agnes._ attitudes towards her change? How? Review_of_Burial_Rites_by_Hannah_Kent The Australian EXTENSION ACTIVITIES www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/outcast- doomed-by-conformity-in-hannah-kents-debut/ 1. Write your own piece of historical fiction. Good story-fn9n8gph-1226630256683 historical fiction draws as much from fact as possible, but creates a personal voice based on the available information. Choose a historical event and one or two figures from it. Find out as much information 2 www.picador.com/blog/august-2013/burial-rites-a-photo- essay-from-iceland

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Interviews ABC Local Conversations with Richard Fidler (PODCAST) www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2013/05/16/ 3760644.htm The Guardian www.theguardian.com/books/australia-culture- blog/2013/jun/04/burial-rites-writer-hannah-kent Kill Your Darlings www.killyourdarlingsjournal.com/2014/04/burial- rites-and-the-stella-prize-an-interview-with-hannah- kent/ Radio National Books & Arts Daily (PODCAST) www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ booksandartsdaily/hannah-kent-burial- rites/4708058 The Australian www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/hannah- kents-debut-novel-burial-rites-is-written-in-cold- blood/story-fn9n8gph-1226623451767 Other Burial Rites: A photo essay from Iceland www.picador.com/blog/august-2013/burial-rites-a- photo-essay-from-iceland Hunches and the historical novel http://www.killyourdarlingsjournal.com/2010/09/13/ hunches-and-the-historical-novel/ Capital punishment in history Last female executions in Europe www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/eurofem.html Crime and punishment in Iceland www.murderbytype.wordpress.com/2011/06/19/yrsa- sigurdardottir-crime-and-punishment-in-iceland/

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ HISTORY: 36 HISTORY Notes on Boy, Lost SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2014 STELLA PRIZE

He is three years old. Flashes of memory – thin, insubstantial – begin here. Fleeting images and sensations of warmth, tenderness even, from his aunt, Adriana. Stepping in and out of the empty shape where a mother should be. Kristina Olsson, Boy, Lost

SYNOPSIS Boy, Lost is the memoir of Kristina Olsson and nursing home, she finds comfort in the routine and chronicles the life of her mother, Mimi. Told more earns the respect of the wily, cultured matron. Mimi as a biography, the book closely follows Mimi, who marries Arne, a much gentler man than Michael, and as a beautiful young girl falls in love with a Greek piece by piece they build a life and family together. man, Michael, and goes with him to Cairns, where Meanwhile, Peter is suffering. He has not had the she falls pregnant. Young and hopeful, Mimi ignores good Greek upbringing that the police assured his Michael’s increasing anger, his gambling and his mother he would receive. When Michael leaves reluctance to commit. When she gives birth to Peter, him with his sister Adriana and her husband, Spiro, she hopes that the child will be the hinge that brings who are kind and frown on Michael’s tendency for her and Michael closer together. But Michael’s temper violence, there is hope that this will be a good home turns to physical abuse, and Mimi, who left her for Peter. But when Michael sends for him in 1951, family behind for a life she had hoped would be more things begin to go very wrong. Peter is hit by the exotic, has no one she feels able to turn to. polio epidemic and loses much of the use of his legs. Mimi becomes pregnant again and miscarries. When He is no longer an asset to his father and becomes she becomes pregnant a third time, fearful for her another outlet for his father’s violence. Peter begins life, and those of her child and baby, she flees. In a running away, only to be dragged back, through heart-wrenching scene, Mimi, clutching a train ticket courts and police stations, to the father who continues home sent by her beloved grandmother, faces her to abuse him. There is a heartbreaking moment when worst fears: Michael storms on board, demanding she his path so nearly crosses that of his mother that it is hand over Peter and threatening death if she does not easy to forget this is a work of nonfiction. There is no comply. Terrified, Mimi submits. The glimpse she has happy reunion here, though, and Peter’s life only gets of her son as the train pulls away is the last she will worse as he becomes a victim of sexual abuse. have for many years. Peter’s glimmer of hope comes when he finds a paper Immediately, Mimi seeks assistance to recover her providing him with the name of the mother he has son, but as a young single mother, she is discouraged been searching for. It is not until years later that the from trying to find him. And so, with a new baby to two meet. Their eventual reunion is desperately deal with, her life goes on. happy, but the two have suffered so very much in the Olsson fills in the years of both her mother’s life and intervening years. The book ends with a death. The Peter’s. Mimi reverts to her previous name, Yvonne, life at the centre of this story was too short to offer a Boy, Lost and takes a job that not only pays the bills but gives happy ending, but what does offer is hope her some fulfilment. As she tends to patients in a that a family divided by violence and grief, guilt and silence can somehow forge a future together.

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AUTHOR BACKGROUND opportunity to look at the similarities between the KRISTINA OLSSON is of Swedish treatment of such children and the treatment of and Australian heritage and was Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children born in 1956 and raised in Brisbane. of the Stolen Generation. She studied journalism at the In addition to links to intercultural University of Queensland and went understanding, the text can be used to study on to write for The Australian, The Courier-Mail and personal and social capability and ethical The Sunday Mail, The Sydney Sunday Telegraph and understanding as students consider the effects on Griffith Review. children and mothers, families and communities, of She has also worked as an advisor to government forced seperation. and a teacher of creative writing and journalism at tertiary and community level. She supervises and READING QUESTIONS mentors several postgraduate writing students and ✦✦ Do you consider the book to be a memoir, also works as a manuscript assessor and editor. biography or an autobiography? Why? Her first novel, In One Skin, was published in 2001. ✦✦ Kristina Olsson is the daughter of the subject of This was followed by the biography Kilroy Was Here the book, so is therefore involved in the story. in 2005 and her second novel, The China Garden, in What advantages do you think this provides? 2009. What are the disadvantages? Kristina has two adult children as well as three ✦✦ How do you think the tone of the story might grandchildren. She lives in Brisbane. change if it were told by an outsider? www.kristinaolsson.net ✦✦ What gender roles does Mimi/Yvonne take on? www.thestellaprize.com.au/2014/04/the-stella- – How does each role shape her and those around interview-kristina-olsson/ her? – Which roles do you identify with? Why? THEMES – Which roles don’t you identify with? Why? Australian history ✦✦ The photograph described at the beginning of the Motherhood book is included at the end. Loss Domestic violence – How do you feel looking at it? Polio – Does seeing the photo make the story more real Disability to you? Does it change your feelings towards Hope the characters in the book? Maternal rights ✦✦ Although Kristina Olsson writes the story, many Children’s rights others are involved in the telling of it. – Who are they? LINKS TO THE – What is their relationship to Mimi? AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM – How do these relationships influence the Peter’s story is similar to that of many ‘Forgotten narrative? Australians’, people who experienced ‘institutional ✦✦ Whose stories are missing that could help flesh out or out-of-home care in Australia during the 20th the narrative further? Century’1. The study of this book provides an ✦✦ How do we know that the story is truth rather than fiction? What does this knowledge mean for 1 http://www.qld.gov.au/community/getting-support-health- social-issue/support-for-forgotten-australians/index.html

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our understanding of these characters and their law is relevant to this moment now and research its lives? history. Has the law changed? If so, how and why has ✦✦ Why doesn’t Peter run away to find his mother? it changed? ✦ ✦ Why doesn’t Mimi fight for custody of Peter? REFERENCES ✦ ✦ What historical differences can you see between Reviews the time when this story began and now? The Australian ✦✦ What resources are available now to sufferers of www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/a-mothers- domestic violence that weren’t available then? grief-for-a-lost-childhood/story-fn9n8gph- 1226618470013?nk=c301d2b8156095b1b21cac74f65c ✦✦ What are the links between Peter’s story and the 0c48 Stolen Generation? Readings www.readings.com.au/review/boy-lost-by-kristina- EXTENSION ACTIVITIES olsson 1. Write a scene that is personal to you. It can be about you or a family member. Form pairs and share Interviews Radio National Life Matters (PODCAST) the details (but not your piece) with your partner. Ask www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ your partner to write their version of the scene based lifematters/boy2c-lost/4595824 on the details you have provided. When you have The Wheeler Centre finished, share your pieces with each other and discuss wheelercentre.com/dailies/post/4b62676bff1f/ the differences. ✦✦ What have they missed? Writing memoir How to write memoir ✦ ✦ What have they seen differently? www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/arts/features/ ✦✦ What are the benefits of having someone not howtowrite/memoirs.shtml involved write the scene? 10 secrets of successful memoir writers ✦✦ In addition to the details of the story, what www.huffingtonpost.com/victoria-costello/memoir- makes memoir interesting and engaging for writing_b_1277035.html others? What makes a memoir ‘great’? 2. Mimi’s story might have been very different if she www.huffingtonpost.com/holly-robinson/writing-a- had lived now. Write a timeline, using the book as a memoir_b_1772696.html starting point, of the major historical events that were Polio in Australia occurring in Australia during the course of the book Memories of polio and those who wrestled with it (for example: postwar migration, the polio epidemic, www.smh.com.au/news/National/Memories- children in state homes and the Stolen Generation). of-polio-and-those-who-wrestled-with- How does looking at this timeline change your it/2004/12/06/1102182223039.html understanding of the book? Choose a moment in the Polio Australia book and explain – in an oral or written presentation www.polioaustralia.org.au – how this moment is influenced by one of the historical events on your timeline. Consider how it Domestic abuse could have been different and what that would have Domestic violence and abuse: signs of abuse meant for this family. and abusive relationships www.helpguide.org/mental/domestic_violence_ 3. Both Peter and Mimi were disadvantaged by abuse_types_signs_causes_effects.htm laws that did not consider the rights of women and children. Focus on one way in which they were disadvantaged or harmed by the law. Find out which

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Forgotten Australians About Forgotten Australians www.forgottenaustralians.org.au/aboutFas.htm Forgotten Australians: oral histories www.forgottenaustralianshistory.gov.au/ oral_histories.html

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ HISTORY: 40 HISTORY Notes on The Burial SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2013 STELLA PRIZE

If dirt could speak, whose story would it tell? Courtney Collins, The Burial

SYNOPSIS In the opening scene of this book, the famous escape As soon as they are married, any pretense of artist Harry Houdini performs a great escape from reasonableness ends. Fitz becomes increasingly chains and padlocks in the murky waters of the violent, threatening and often spiteful. His returns Yarra River. Reaching towards his ankles to unlock home are frequently attached to violent outbursts. the shackles, he finds instead the floating bones Jessie falls pregnant, but it is not until the night that of a corpse. He rises to the surface, panicking and she prematurely goes into labour, when she’s in pain thinking of nothing but telling of his discovery. But and desperate to escape, that she finally acts, felling on completing his escape, unable to find evidence her tormentor with a blow to the head. She lights a of the body, he decides not to, wondering who, if fire and leaves his corpse to burn with their house. anyone, would believe him. The events of this fatal night are studded between The story of real Australian bushranger Jessie Jessie’s desperate ride to the top of the mountain Hickman is chronicled here, although the fictional range. Although it is never specified exactly what retelling offers a different view of her life than solace she hopes to find in these peaks, her journey history books would be likely to. In a brutal moment, there is filled with chance encounters and brief the character of Jessie is introduced as a mother moments of respite from the horror of her life thus slitting the throat of her newborn baby, burying it in far. When she first sets out, bleeding, broken and not the muddy earth and carefully erasing her tracks as far from death, she pushes Houdini as far as they can she gallops away on her horse, Houdini. both go. He carries her further than even she thinks is It is hard to imagine sympathy for a woman like this, possible and then she drops, bleeding into the shallow and yet that is the emotion the book manages to elicit depths of a river. She is found by an old man and as Jessie’s story is narrated from the shallow grave woman and their almost-feral hunting dog. The old of her baby. At 23, already imprisoned for rustling man wants to leave her for dead. He has no time for horses and cattle, Jessie is released into the custody of another mouth to feed and no respect for a creature Fitz, though she comes to realise that Fitz is no escape not willing to fight for its survival. The old woman, either. She believes him to be the lesser of two evils: roughened by the years and the landscape, has some better a life with a sullen, unlikeable man where she softness in her, a remnant of tenderness from her own is free to ride her beloved horses than a life in prison. failed attempts to become a mother. She insists that Fitz is careful, managing to restrain his violent nature they take Jessie home, feed her and save her. When until he has woven Jessie into a situation that would the old man becomes a threat and Jessie feels that she land her back in jail if she crosses him. Once he has has to go, it is the old woman who helps her escape. her trapped, he offers her the choice of marriage or Further up the mountain, haunted by memories prison. and unknowingly followed by the law, Jessie stops

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ HISTORY: 41 The Burial again. This time she finds herself in the company of www.thestellaprize.com.au/2013/04/the-stella- a young boy, the youngest in a group of Peter Pan- interview-courtney-collins/ like orphans, who have banded together and formed a camp and a family of sorts. They too are rustlers, THEMES and on learning of her skills, agree to take Jessie in. Australian history Her relationship with these boys reminds Jessie of an Women in history earlier time in her life, a time before prison, when she Outlaws had been the Amazing Miss Jessie, circus performer Childhood and best friend to the young Bandy Arrow. Her Family memories are painful, as she can clearly recall Bandy’s Motherhood fall from the high tightrope and her feeling of despair Violence when she left him behind. Despite the gnawing ache Escape of these memories, Jessie feels that she has found a Hope kind of home with the boys. She agrees to help them Longing vanish a hundred head of cattle. It is this decision that brings Jessie to the attention of LINKS TO THE the men chasing her. A bounty on her head makes AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM her an appealing target, and before long the boys can Alongside literacy and critical thinking, with hear the hooves of the men determined to capture the book encouraging the study of a female role not her, dead or alive. Jack Brown, an Indigenous man typically found in discussions of Australian history, who was also blackmailed into Fitz’s employ, is there are some links to Aboriginal trackers used tracking Jessie too, determined to find the woman by the police. Although this is not how Jack Brown he once loved. He is assisting the sheriff, whose defines himself, the fact that he is seen to fit this obsession with finding Jessie is driven by their earlier role by the sheriff opens up discussions around the relationship, back when he had been a young circus assumptions and expectations of Aboriginal people orphan going by the name of Bandy Arrow. during this time. As all of these elements are revealed, and Jessie leaves in order to protect her new family, there is an READING QUESTIONS emotionally charged pursuit through the mountains. ✦✦ What are the difficulties of having a murdered This chase reveals the characters and their secrets narrator, following the story from beneath the to each other and to themselves. Although Jessie is dirt? How does the author work around these caught and taken to be hanged, the book ends with a difficulties? moment where once again she is saved by her furious determination to live, and the ghost of a friendship ✦✦ In what way might the themes, narrative style that she felt she’d abandoned. and events in this book be considered unusual for historical fiction? AUTHOR BACKGROUND ✦✦ Which historical figure is the character of Jessie COURTNEY COLLINS grew up based on? in the Hunter Valley and now lives ✦✦ Who is chasing Jessie? What are their motivations in Newcastle. Rights to her debut for wanting to catch her? novel, The Burial, have been sold in ✦✦ Why does Jessie murder her newborn child? the UK, , the US and Spain. Courtney is currently completing her second novel, ✦✦ What kind of character do you think Jessie is? The Walkman Mix. What does she represent to the other characters that she meets? www.courtneycollinswriter.com

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✦✦ Why does Jessie agree to marry Fitz? Why does instructions regarding setting, costume etc. (This she feel that killing him is the only way to escape? activity could become a larger project, where one ✦✦ What is significant about the historical figure of student takes on the script, one takes on the costume, Jessie Hickman? one takes on direction and so on, and then the end result is performed to the class.) ✦✦ At which points in the book does Jessie feel helpless? REFERENCES ✦ ✦ At which points does she feel hope? Reviews ✦✦ Which characters are connected to these The Australian moments? What impact does meeting Jessie have www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/ on their lives? audacious-evocation-of-a-lady-bushranger/story- fn9n8gph-1226493688490 ✦✦ What are the parallels between the opening scene, Crikey: Liticism featuring Harry Houdini’s escape, and Jessie’s life? blogs.crikey.com.au/liticism/2013/02/27/unearthing- ✦✦ How is motherhood represented in the book? herstory-courtney-collins-the-burial/ ✦✦ How does the landscape become a part of the The Sydney Morning Herald story? How does it affect the characters? How smh.com.au/entertainment/books/digging-up-the- does it protect them? What do we learn about its truth-20121019-27ull.html shape, temperament and dangers? Interviews ✦✦ What is the role of the law in this society? LiteraryMinded www.literaryminded.com.au/2012/10/10/dignified- ✦✦ What are the roles of women? How are they survival-courtney-collins-on-the-burial/ treated? Radio National Books and Arts Daily ✦✦ Jack Brown is a tracker and a loner. What does the www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ author tell us about him? How do we learn about booksandartsdaily/courtney-collins-and-the- him through his actions, and his attitudes towards burial/4326108 women? Jessie Hickman Courtney Collins on Australia’s last bushranger EXTENSION ACTIVITIES nedavanovac.com/2012/11/26/courtney-collins-on- 1. The events in The Burial are heavily driven by -last-bushranger-jessie-hickman-in-her- the landscape. Spend an afternoon somewhere outside debut-novel-the-burial-2ser-107-3/ and write about your experience. How were you Wild woman of Wollemi influenced by the shapes, the weather, the colours or www.outlaws.com.au/outlaws-articles/2002/9/12/ the animals? What were your emotional responses wild-woman-of-wollemi/ and physical responses? What practical issues did you New book will uncover the truth about come across – food, water, finding somewhere to sit the lady bushranger and so on? www.mudgeeguardian.com.au/story/2372457/ new-book-will-uncover-the-truth-about-the-lady- 2. The Burial is currently being turned into a film. bushranger/ Consider this translation of book to script. What elements of the text will work on film? Which The Lady Bushranger by Pat Studdy-Clift elements won’t? Which characters will need to be (Hesperian Press) extended? Bushrangers Taking one of the scenes from the book, and thinking Early Australian bushrangers about all the elements necessary for a film, try to www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/ write a script of the scene. Include all directions, and australian-story/early-austn-bushrangers

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Trove: female bushrangers www.trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/63170042 Aboriginal trackers Aboriginal trackers australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/ aboriginal-trackers Aboriginal trackers ergo.slv.vic.gov.au/explore-history/rebels-outlaws/ law-enforcement/aboriginal-trackers Jimmy James adb.anu.edu.au/biography/james-jimmy-10607

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ HISTORY: 44 Place

If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are. Wendell Berry

sense of place refers to more than a geographical location; it also refers to the Apersonal connection with a space established through lived experience as well as individual and inherited memories. Humans regularly imbue spaces with particular meanings, but place can be seen to define us as much as we define it.

The study of place also gives us an opportunity QUESTIONS to align the four texts in this section with the ✦✦ What does place mean to you? Australian Curriculum priority of sustainability, which prompts ‘consideration of environmental, ✦✦ What do you think is the distinction between a social, cultural and economic systems and their geographical place and a sense of place? interdependence’. ✦✦ How do the characters in each of the books shape Women’s roles have often been defined by traditional the place around them? Do they do so consciously beliefs of where they ‘belong’. The four books in this or unconsciously? Or both? section explore the meaning of belonging in the very ✦✦ How are each of the main characters shaped by broadest sense. We see characters moving away from places that they lived or have visited? home and others searching desperately for a sense of ✦ belonging, or even just a safe place to call home. ✦ Does your understanding of the physical places in the books – the landscape, history and so on – In Questions of Travel, the dual narrative follows influence your view of the characters? the journeys of two travellers from very different ✦ places. Mateship with Birds is steeped in the rhythms ✦ Where would you find each place on a map? What of country life as a broken family from the city finds places would not be mentioned on a map? Why? their feet among the cowsheds and kookaburras. ✦✦ How do the authors evoke a sense of place? Take The Swan Book presents a futuristic dystopian note of any sounds, smells, colours and textures Australia, home to the mute Oblivia, hostage to her mentioned, along with any emblematic events. own mind. In The Sunlit Zone, the effects of climate change are central to the narrative of love and death ACTIVITIES in the near future. Choose a character from one of the four books and Alongside the notes relevant to each title, it may help draw a map that represents their sense of place. to consider the following questions and resources, Alongside the physical elements of the place, include more broadly related to gender and place. memories, experiences and emotions. Come up with a creative response to the phrase ‘a sense of place’. This can be an open-ended exercise

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ Place: 45 Place and could take a variety of forms, for example a blog, a poem, a short story or a performance.

RESOURCES Theme: ‘A Sense of Place’ (VIDEO) www.ted.com/tedx/events/3671 A sense of place www.theage.com.au/news/national/a-sense-of- place/2005/10/13/1128796652520.html Australia was born in a tent www.wheelercentre.com/dailies/post/ c5c2a08b6632/ The sense of place www.artofgeography.com/info/the-sense-of-place Space, Place and Gender by Doreen B Massey (Polity Press) Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography www.tandfonline.com/toc/cgpc20/current-. U7D9ShYxHFI

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ Place: 46 PLACE Notes on Mateship with Birds WINNER OF THE 2013 STELLA PRIZE

The girl Dora might be water, but his Betty is oil. You can’t take oil lightly. It seeps into your skin. It marks you. Carrie Tiffany, Mateship with Birds

CONTENT ADVICE Mateship with Birds contains a certain amount of graphic sexual content. We are aware that this will present an issue for some schools. As such, schools may prefer for their students to study just select portions of the book in isolation. These notes have been written accordingly and page numbers have been provided for recommended sections of the text.

SYNOPSIS Harry is a quiet farmer who comes from generations her son has found a father figure of sorts. Michael is of dairy farmers. He spends his time daydreaming, of the age where he is discovering the opposite sex, milking cows and bird-watching. Next door lives and has just begun a relationship with a girl from Betty, who moved to the country some years earlier school. Harry feels duty-bound to offer some fatherly to build what she hoped would be a better life for advice and inform Michael of the facts of life. Being herself and her two fatherless children. Almost since shy, though, and not wanting to embarrass Michael, the day they moved in, Harry has been a constant in Harry decides to write the boy letters. Along with the lives of Betty, Michael and Little Hazel. information gleaned from library books and his own Harry is shy and quietly poetic, a dreamer with a childhood experiences, Harry’s letters draw on what good heart. Despite the lack of variation in his daily he has observed in birds and cattle. He leaves these routine, Harry doesn’t find his life at all monotonous. notes for Michael, imagining that he is saving the boy To him, the cows have distinctive personalities, from the cruelty of ignorance. and he is tender-hearted and gentle as he goes Little Hazel is the more boisterous of the two about milking them. He finds beauty in his natural children, and the more prone to getting into trouble. surrounds and closely watches the birds, particularly A young girl still yet to enter adolescence, Little a family of kookaburras, whose behaviour he notes Hazel can see certain truths about adults but is not down in the margins of his farming journal. He quite old enough to make sense of them. Early in possesses a strong desire to help those he cares about, the book, she has an unsettling encounter with their although his shyness often makes it difficult for him neighbour Mr Mues that she doesn’t reveal to anyone, to do so. writing it off as part of the strange, frequently sad Betty is a hard worker, determined to support behaviour of grown-ups. When Betty finds one of her children. She is glad to see Harry and her son, Harry’s letters to Michael, she assumes the worst. Michael, spending time together. She feels keenly the Generally, though, the tone of this book is peaceful, judgement of people in the town and is happy that setting a gentle pace that mirrors the easy relationship

PLACE:: 47 thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ Mateship with Birds its characters have with the landscape. This peace inspire a discussion on ethical behaviour, if deemed is echoed in the conclusion of the book, which sees appropriate. a generally happy ending for the characters, and Given the instances of graphic content, teachers the beginnings of a relationship between Harry may consider this book inappropriate to be read and Betty. in full. If this is the case, classes could nonetheless study portions of the book to examine the links AUTHOR BACKGROUND between the text and the cross-curriculum priority CARRIE TIFFANY was born of sustainability. The characters’ affinity with in West Yorkshire and grew up the landscape, and the animals inhabiting it, in Western Australia. She spent provides plenty of fodder for discussion of humans her early twenties working as a relationship with the natural world, the impact of park ranger in the Red Centre farming on the Australian landscape and the future of and now lives in Melbourne, where she works as an rural communities. agricultural journalist. Her first novel, Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living READING QUESTIONS (Picador), was shortlisted for numerous awards In case schools prefer to study just select portions of including the Orange Prize, the Miles Franklin the text, these questions have been split into three Literary Award, the Guardian First Book Award sections – Writing Styles, Themes and Characters – and the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, and won with relevant page numbers provided. the 2006 Dobbie Award for Best First Book and the 2006 Western Australian Premier’s Award for Fiction. Writing styles Mateship with Birds is her second novel. ✦✦ Poetry (pp.130−137) In this section of the book, Harry starts recording www.carrietiffany.com.au his observations of the kookaburra family in his www.thestellaprize.com.au/2013/04/ farming journal. the-stella-interview-carrie-tiffany/ – How are the verses here broken up? – What is the effect of the spacing on the text? THEMES – What style of verse is this? Place Landscape – What imagery does Harry use in the verses? Loneliness – What human characteristics are given to the Poetry kookaburras? Nature – What is it that makes Harry’s observations so Animal behaviour poetic? Is it just the writing style, language and Kinship format? Or is it the detail, which is only possible Adolescence because of the amount of attention he has paid Sexuality to what he’s observing? Try choosing something that you see regularly – it could be an animal, LINKS TO THE place, object or person – and write some verse AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM of your own describing your observations of it. Are you surprised by what you’ve noticed by Readers of this text will require a mature paying close attention? understanding of the content, so any in-depth study of the book will offer significant opportunities ✦✦ Journal (pp.148−150) for critical understanding. Additionally, there Hazel’s nature diary is part of a school project. are several incidents within the book that could Like Harry’s verse (see above), the writing is

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ PLACE: 48 Mateship with Birds

observational, but the style is journal writing – How is Harry’s character visible in the way he rather than verse. writes? – What are the stylistic differences between – How are Harry’s thoughts about family Hazel’s journal writing and Harry’s verse? revealed in these segments? – What are the similarities? – Why is Harry so interested in the kookaburras? – Is one style more poetic than the other? – How is his attitude different from that of – How is Hazel’s age conveyed in her writing? Mr Mues? Themes – What does this imply about their different characters? ✦✦ Animal behaviour and the natural world (pp.130−136, 176–182) ✦✦ Little Hazel (pp.71−2, 107−111, 147−151) – What observations does Harry make about the – What do we learn about Hazel from these kookaburras in these segments? segments? – How do kookaburras parent their young? – How is her isolation apparent? – In what ways is the kookaburras’ behaviour – Do you think she is unhappy? If so, similar to human behaviour? what suggests this? – In what ways is it different? – What does Hazel want? – What do Harry’s observations tell us about ✦✦ Betty (pp.35−38, 170−172) the connection between animals and their – How is Betty portrayed as a mother in environment? these sections? – What issues does this connection raise regarding – What does she worry about? sustainability? – How does she feel about herself? – Create a sustainability map using the – What kind of person is she? connections between animals and land in these – Why is she so hurt when Michael calls her verses as a starting point. Add in other animals a spoon? that might be found in the area, noting their likely impact on the land and other animals. – What example does she wish to set for Then add people, buildings and technological her children? infrastructure. Try to identify how each of these elements would impact on each other. EXTENSION ACTIVITIES – In his notes, Harry presents the animals as Choose one of the characters and, using what you familiar, almost human, and one of the ways know about them from the segments provided, flesh that he does this is by referring to them as them out more. In a creative scene of around 1000 ‘Mum and Dad’ or ‘male and female’. Carrie words, write a moment from their past that is hinted Tiffany has referred to this as ‘trying to relate to at in one of these sections but not described in detail. nature in a way that’s lyrical but that makes it a family you’re a part of’. What are the benefits of REFERENCES this approach? What are the limitations? Reviews Characters The Guardian www.theguardian.com/books/australia-culture- ✦ ✦ Harry (pp.28−34, 61−67) blog/2013/jun/12/miles-franklin-award-mateship- A lot of what we learn about Harry comes from birds his observations (above). The Sydney Morning Herald – What do these observations tell us about Harry? www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/seductive- lessons-in-a-pastoral-landscape-20120224-1tsly.html

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Interviews Readings www.readings.com.au/news/carrie-tiffany-talks-to- gregory-day-about-mateship-with-birds Ramona Koval www.ramonakoval.com/2013/07/24/my-interview- with-writer-carrie-tiffany-the-monthly-book- august-13/ LiteraryMinded www.literaryminded.com.au/2012/02/15/up-in-the- air-mateship-with-birds-by-carrie-tiffany/

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ PLACE: 50 PLACE Notes on Questions of Travel SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2013 STELLA PRIZE

It’s squalid because it’s alive. Only the dead are perfect. Michelle de Kretser, Questions of Travel

SYNOPSIS In this dual narrative, Michelle de Kretser tells the As a child, Malini vowed ‘not to live my life in vain’, stories of Ravi and Laura, two characters who will and her energies are soon consumed by political meet only fleetingly, but whose lives are pushing activism, fighting the human rights violations in their them relentlessly towards the same destination. country. Ravi fears her passion, concerned not only Laura is given the first portion of the narrative. for her safety but about association with a political Laura’s mother dies from breast cancer while she is movement that he sees as dangerous and provocative. still breastfeeding and Laura grows up in a family He becomes jealous of Malini’s co-workers and their where her brothers have the sense that she is to relationship begins to suffer. blame. Her father lavishes her with gifts to hide his Meanwhile, Laura has been travelling the world, discomfort around her. She is an unusual child, and searching in vain for an experience that feels not an attractive one. During her early years, the authentic and meaningful. She has a number of empty only person who seems to have a genuine affection relationships and makes promises to herself that she for Laura is Hester. Hester is Laura’s exotic great- can never quite fulfil, compounding her sense that she aunt, who returns to Sydney to help raise the children is missing something, that she is always slightly on and enchants Laura with her tales of travel. After the outskirts of life rather than participating in it – school, Laura enrols in a fine arts degree. She remains a tourist. She befriends Theo, an eccentric PhD unconvinced that she will ever be an artist, though, student in London, and becomes part of his and when Hester dies leaving Laura all of her money, circle. Still, though, she hasn’t found the sort of Laura decides to travel, hoping to find whatever it is true connection that she is looking for. When an that her life has been so lacking thus far. opportunity takes her to Naples, Laura starts writing Ravi, whose story is told in the alternating chapters, about her travel for magazines. It is a way for her to was born in the same decade as Laura. His youth in share her experiences, as well as a step towards the Sri Lanka is largely uneventful, although from his career that she feels she ought to have. But the reality account we can see that at the periphery hovered the falls short, and Laura is disappointed that the few threat of violence from Tamil fighters. Despite losing moments of authenticity she has stumbled across on friends who are forced to move away following the her travels do not make for welcome material. horrific slaughter of family members, Ravi maintains Laura’s return to Sydney is motivated by her and an almost naïve optimism that this violence is apart Theo’s increasing homesickness. Ravi’s move is also from him. He dreams of travel and a life beyond his motivated by the death of a loved one, and it is the small village, and his main priority is finding a girl. threat of further violence that eventually forces him He falls in love with Malini; they marry and their away from home. As Malini becomes increasingly son, Hiran, is born. involved in political activism, she attracts the

PLACE:: 51 thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ Questions of Travel attention of terrorists. One weekend, she and Hiran AUTHOR BACKGROUND set off to visit her parents without Ravi. She and MICHELLE DE KRETSER was Hiran are killed, along with her parents, and her born in Sri Lanka and emigrated to body is delivered back to Ravi, as a warning and a Australia when she was 14. Educated threat. As Ravi is reeling from the shock – by turns in Melbourne and Paris, Michelle despairing at the loss of his wife and hating her for has worked as a university tutor, bringing the death of his son – Malini’s colleague an editor and a book reviewer. She is the author of Freda tries to help and protect him. She takes Ravi The Rose Grower, The Hamilton Case, which won to her home, but he fails to see the threats to his life the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the UK that are evident to her and he becomes convinced that Encore Prize, and The Lost Dog, which won a swag Freda is merely trying to control him. When Ravi of awards, including the NSW Premier’s Book of the starts to receive written threats, Freda pushes him Year Award and the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, from hotel to hotel and, finally, finds a way to help and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. him escape to Sydney. Questions of Travel won the 2013 Miles Franklin In Sydney, both Ravi and Laura attempt to pick up Literary Award, ALS Gold Medal, Prime Minister’s their lives. They each get a job, find somewhere to Literary Award for Fiction and two WA Premier’s live and forge new relationships. But neither feels Book Awards. settled. Ravi has begun the long process of applying www.thestellaprize.com.au/2013/04/the-stella- for asylum, but his heart is not really in it. A vital interview-michelle-de-kretser/ part of him remains in Sri Lanka with his dead wife and son. He finds friendship with Hana, but fears THEMES leaving his past behind to pursue a future with her. Place Laura is still searching for an anchor. She takes on Travel a management job at a travel publisher, hoping that Death a career is the answer. She becomes the mistress of Longing a man from her office, but the true connection she Activism craves continues to elude her. Fate Ravi comes to work at the same company as Laura. Dispossession The two have barely had the chance to get to know Asylum one another when Ravi decides that, despite having Love been granted asylum, he wants to return to Sri Lanka. Human connections Laura, too, is feeling the need to leave, and decides Home that Sri Lanka is as good a place as any for her to Belonging travel to next. Ravi and Laura arrive in Sri Lanka, separately, at the end of 2004. Laura travels first to LINKS TO THE visit Ravi’s old friend Nimal, and is with him when the Boxing Day tsunami hits. Both character and AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM reader are left with the sudden shock of the event, as This book is rich in themes linked to the general the white wall of water rises up to meet them. capability of intercultural understanding, which aims to ‘stimulate students’ interest in the lives of others’1 and allows students to reflect on connections between their own experiences and those of others.

1 http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/ GeneralCapabilities/Pdf/Intercultural-understanding

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ PLACE: 52 Questions of Travel

READING QUESTIONS ✦✦ What opportunities does travel offer? ✦✦ With reference to the book’s title, what questions ✦✦ How are Laura’s shallow romantic relationships does the author ask about travel? in opposition to what she is searching for? ✦✦ What kinds of travel are discussed in the book? What is it about her friendship with Theo that breaks her heart? ✦✦ Why do we travel? Why does Laura travel? Why does Ravi? ✦✦ Why is Ravi unable to move on with Hana? ✦✦ In what ways does Laura’s experience of travel fail ✦✦ What is Ravi’s experience of coming to Australia? to live up to her expectations? What kind of relationships does he form with other people? Why do you think that he ✦ ✦ ‘Photographs were produced to prove that travel ultimately decides to return to Sri Lanka? had occurred’ (p.61). Travel is seen as an almost chore-like experience, rather than something ✦✦ At the end of the book, do you think it is Ravi life-changing. Do you think this is true? Why? or Laura who has found a greater sense of peace? How might our experiences with other cultures Have either of them truly found a place where be different? they belong? ✦✦ What is the difference between being a spectator and being immersed in a culture? How do these EXTENSION ACTIVITIES terms apply to Laura and Ravi? 1. Ideas of home and belonging are central to both Ravi’s and Laura’s travels. In groups, discuss the ✦✦ Despite their differences, Laura and Ravi do have following: quite a bit in common. What are some of their ✦ commonalities? ✦ What does home mean to you? ✦✦ What makes you feel ‘at home’? ✦✦ What is the effect of having the two stories ✦ interspersed? How does it change: ✦ What can make you feel ‘at home’ when you’re away from where you live? – Your reading? ✦✦ What might make you feel uncomfortable in – Your connection with the characters? your own home? – Your understanding of events? Turn your discussion into a creative response focusing ✦✦ In what ways are both Ravi and Laura on what home means to you. (A good comparative disconnected? How does this make them feel? text here would be the picture book My Place by ✦✦ What events are occurring in the background Nadia Wheatley and Donna Rawlins.) of the novel? How do these events impact on 2. Laura discovers, to her disappointment, the characters? that writing about travel is quite different from ✦✦ How is travel linked to class and modernity? experiencing a culture. ✦✦ In what ways is this book political? ✦✦ How do you think we are ‘sold’ a culture by the tourist industry? ✦✦ What do you think is the role that art plays ✦✦ Does this affect our experience of travel? in politics? ✦✦ How does it help or hinder our cultural ✦ ✦ What have you learnt about Sri Lanka from awareness? this book? Think of a place you’ve travelled to (it doesn’t need to ✦✦ What are the similarities and differences between be overseas, it could be interstate, or even somewhere migration and tourism? local). Try to ‘sell’ it. Write a brief travel guide ✦✦ How do Ravi’s and Laura’s notions of home highlighting the key attractions of the area. change and develop the more they travel?

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When Ravi suggests Western Sydney as a possible Travel writing tips location to write about, he is laughed at. What have astw.org.au/index.php?option=com_ you left out of your travel guide? Why? Now focus content&view=article&id=87&Itemid=179 on one of those elements that you didn’t include in Bradt guides: writing for us your guide and write a creative piece based on it. www.bradtguides.com/writing-for-us 3. One of the questions Michelle de Kretser asks is why we travel. You often hear people say, ‘I need to get away’. Using this as your staring point, write a response in the form of a short story or an essay about needing to get away. What does it mean to different people?

REFERENCES Reviews First Tuesday Book Club (VIDEO) www.abc.net.au/tv/firsttuesday/s3725624.htm The Guardian www.theguardian.com/books/australia-culture- blog/2013/jun/17/questions-travel-michelle-de- kretser-review The Independent www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/ books/reviews/book-review-questions-of-travel-by- michelle-de-kretser-9128842.html The Monthly www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2012/ october/1349327375/owen-richardson/questions- travel-michelle-de-kretser Sydney Review of Books www.sydneyreviewofbooks.com/ tripped-up-tripped-out/ Interviews The Australian www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/ michelle-de-kretser-the-collector/story- e6frg8h6-1226689590746 The Sydney Morning Herald www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the- interview-michelle-de-kretser-20121004-270bp.html Travel writing Travel writing tips www.theguardian.com/travel/2011/sep/23/ travel-writing-tips-expert-advice

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ PLACE: 54 PLACE Notes on The Sunlit Zone SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2013 STELLA PRIZE

fiveislandspress.com Lisa Jacobson The Sunlit Zone …On moonlit nights Lisa Jacobson Lisa Jacobson

The Sunlit Zone is a moving elegy of love The Sunlit Zone and loss, admirable for its narrative sweep and the family dynamic that drives it. A risk-taking work of she called to me; rotten, putrescent. rare, imaginative power. The Sunlit Zone combines the narrative drive of the novel with the perfect pitch of true poetry. A darkly futuristic vision shot through with bolts of light. Brilliant, poignant, disconcerting. Adrian Hyland, author of Kinglake 350 and Diamond Dove I’d run to the beach and scan the sea This novel in verse, at once magical and irresistible, draws us into a vivid future. In Lisa Jacobson’s telling, the Australian fascination with salt water and sea change is made over anew. Romance holds hands with science and takes to the ocean. Chris Wallace-Crabbe, author of The Domestic Sublime and By and Large till someone came and brought me in.

Cover image ©Samantha Everton. Often I woke in a great panic, gasping Image supplied courtesy of Anthea Polson Art. for air as if still drowning. Lisa Jacobson, The Sunlit Zone

SYNOPSIS In a world of perfect clones, Finn and her sister that North does not. And yet the two are real friends North are the misfits. Their mother, a free-thinker, and Cello is a complex character fuelled by wanted her daughters whichever way they came. recognisable human emotions. North is healthy, strong and clever. Finn is more As the book moves towards its conclusion, North’s delicate, fragile even, with an anxious temperament past catches up with her – in the form of Jack. North soothed only by rocking water. Her affinity with is uncertain about seeing him as she still carries so the sea is obvious from the start, and her differences much grief from the last time they saw each other, only increase from there. She is an unusual child, the day that Finn disappeared, and she has never appearing more sea-nymph than human, which is really forgiven Jack for abandoning her to the grief. not helped by her slightly webbed feet or tendency Her confused feelings are complicated still further to daydream. When North meets Jack, she becomes when her father dies and she returns home to help her fed up with having her younger sister constantly at mother with the funeral. her heels. One day down at the beach with him, she neglects her sister, only noticing too late when Finn’s The book concludes at an exhibition opening for body is taken by the sea. North tries to save her, but North’s mother. North, Jack, Cello and Waverly the last thing she remembers of her sister is a pale are all present. And in a way, Finn is there too, in a hand slipping away. painting depicting her final moments with North. Here North is able to let go of some of the guilt she North is the focus of this verse novel set in the has been carrying and open herself up to the people near future. Years later, she sets off for university, close to her, and to the future. leaving behind her calm, understanding father, and her artistic mother, who is panicked at the thought of losing another child. At university AUTHOR BACKGROUND North experiments, trying to find herself. LISA JACOBSON is an award- She meets Waverly, with whom she will later winning poet and fiction writer work as a marine scientist. based in Melbourne, Victoria. Her verse novel, The Sunlit Zone North and Waverly dive in the ocean, recording fish (Five Islands Press), was described and noting changes. For North, the sea is perhaps by novelist Adrian Hyland as a ‘storm warning for always a bittersweet reminder of what she has lost. the 21st century’. It won the 2014 Adelaide Festival North’s other friend, Cello, is her opposite: a clone John Bray Poetry Award, and was shortlisted in four baby, designed to be beautiful. With a house, other national awards. Her latest poetry collection a husband, a dog and a child, Cello has everything is South in the World (UWA Publishing). Lisa holds

PLACE:: 55 thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ The Sunlit Zone a PhD in creative writing and has held a variety ✦✦ What other imagery is used in the book? of day jobs, including dog trainer, therapeutic care ✦✦ How does the character of Cello explore the worker and bushfire recovery officer. She spent much ethical implications of genetic modification? of her adolescence on horseback and is currently rediscovering the sweet hay-scent of horses. ✦✦ Jacobson describes the white space on the page as ‘things unspoken, yet part of the novel itself’. www.lisajacobson.org What do you think she means by this? How does www.thestellaprize.com.au/2013/04/the-stella- the page itself become a part of the narrative? interview-lisa-jacobson/ ✦✦ What effect does the layout of the verses have on the reading of it? (Read parts aloud in class and THEMES discuss the way the format of the book dictates Place your reading and interpretations.) Sustainability ✦✦ What do you think has happened to Finn? Technology Genetic modification ✦✦ How does North resolve her feelings of guilt over Ethics Finn’s disappearance? Loss ✦✦ In addition to her webbed feet, how else is Finn Friendship described that makes her different from North First love and her friends? Difference ✦✦ What kinds of friendship are demonstrated in Acceptance the book? LINKS TO THE ✦✦ Why is North angry at Finn? How does this AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM contribute to her guilt? How does it affect her relationship with her parents? There are clear links in this book with several of the general capabilities, including critical ✦✦ What does North’s work represent to her? thinking and ethical understanding, which ✦✦ How do the verses opening each chapter link to can be discussed in relation to cloning and genetic the narrative? modification. In addition, the cross-curriculum ✦ priority of sustainability is a key theme of the ✦ Describe the ways that Jack has an impact on book, specifically with regard to water conservation, North’s life, both by his presence and his absence. climate change and the future of the Australian How does she feel about him? Why is their coastlines. relationship so complicated? ✦✦ How does North’s mother’s painting initiate READING QUESTIONS a resolution in their relationship? ✦✦ How does the author signal that this story is set in the future? EXTENSION ACTIVITIES ✦✦ What has happened to the world in this imagined 1. Consider what is meant by the term ‘verse novel’. future? As a group, write a list of the characteristics you associate with each of the following: ✦✦ What do you understand by this book’s ✦✦ Poetry categorisation as a ‘verse novel’? ✦✦ Novel ✦✦ How is the ocean used as a metaphor for the loss ✦✦ Verse novel of North’s sister and her experience with grief? How is each style different? How is each similar? ✦✦ What does ‘the sunlit zone’ refer to? What opportunities does the verse novel form give

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ PLACE: 56 The Sunlit Zone writers that are not found in traditional poetry or Writing the young adult verse novel novel form? In what ways is it restrictive? www.axonjournal.com.au/issue-4/writing-young- adult-verse-novel Using this book as a guide, try to write your own short verse novel (there are some links to tips in the references below). This activity could be done in groups, with students brainstorming a narrative, characters, images and metaphors, and then writing the verses separately. 2. Lisa Jacobson describes a future almost forty years from now. She makes this future believable for the reader by taking contemporary issues, such as genetic modification and climate change, and imagining how they might have developed further in forty years. Choose a current event, scientific development or emerging issue that you think might have a significant impact in five years and do some research of your own. Using the information you can find, write a short piece imagining a time five years from now that shows the impact of your chosen topic.

REFERENCES Reviews The Australian (PAYWALL) www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/verse-novels- navigate-zones-of-longing-and-belonging/story- fn9n8gph-1226478147067 Mascara Literary Review www.mascarareview.com/linda-weste-reviews-the- sunlit-zone-by-lisa-jacobson/ Writing verse novels Exploring the verse novel www.ingridsnotes.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/ exploring-the-verse-novel/ Get genrefied: verse novels www.stackedbooks.org/2013/05/get-genrefied- verse-novels.html Try a mini verse novel! www.sherrylclark.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/try- mini-verse-novel.html The verse novel www.writersvictoria.org.au/news-views/post/the- verse-novel/

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PLACE Notes on The Swan Book SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2014 STELLA PRIZE

There is a really big story of that ghost place: a really deadly love story about a girl who has a virus lover living in her brain – that made the world seem too large and jittery for her, and it stuffed up her relationships with her own people, and made her unsociable, but they say that she loved swans all the same. Alexis Wright, The Swan Book

SYNOPSIS In this rich and poetic novel, Oblivion Ethylene the people of her land towards the sea, urging them is captive in her own brain, struggling to regain forward onto the waves and away from the wars in sovereignty over her mind. She hasn’t spoken since, their own country. She carries a small collection of years earlier, she was raped by a gang of petrol- personal relics, including a swan-bone flute, which sniffing youths. Oblivia retreated ‘into the deep she uses to sing her swan song. underground bowel of a giant eucalyptus tree’ where, When the swans arrive at the swamp, they single locked in sleep, she wrote ‘stanzas in ancient symbols out Oblivia, raising the suspicions of the community wherever she could touch’. Long after her family again. But they are beautiful, perhaps lucky. The and community have given up looking for her, an swamp is renamed ‘Swan Lake’ by the locals. They old refugee woman, Bella Donna of the Champions, surround the hull where Oblivia and Bella Donna finds her. Bella Donna rescues the girl and, seeing that live, and each night Bella Donna sails her raft among no one will claim her, takes her aboard her rusted- them, feeding them and singing to them with her out ship hull resting in the swamp, the centre of the flute. When Bella Donna dies, Oblivia tries to take Army-run Aboriginal detention camp that Oblivia her place, but the swans have given up. When they comes from. are attacked by the swamp people’s dogs, they refuse The camp is indicative of the future landscape that is to save themselves and die ‘still sitting on the ground, the backdrop of the novel; once a home to its people, heads tucked under their wings’. it has been ravaged by war, industry and ‘closing the It seems as though Oblivia, too, will give up, that gap’. The people left, but have now returned and there is nothing to stop her from burying her head made their lives around the swamp, looking to their beneath her wing and refusing to acknowledge healer and elder the Harbour Master for a solution. the dangers surrounding her. Instead, a promise He provides none. The Harbour Master is mad with made years earlier on the other side of the swamp his own desires, and his own sense of failing to live intervenes. up to the expectations of his people. He is unable to move the ever-growing mountain of sand on the Educated and fluent in many languages, Warren edge of the swamp and is obsessed with Bella Donna, Finch has been raised as the saviour of the Aboriginal visiting her daily to wage a war of words and stories, people. He is the deputy prime minister of Australia, each competing to outdo the other. Oblivia stays but everyone knows he will soon become the prime silent, listening to their songs, saying in her mind all minister. Years ago, before he left his country, the words that she cannot say aloud. Warren read in the newspaper the story of a young local girl who had been raped and had gone missing. Bella Donna is fixated on swans. She tells stories of This girl, Oblivia, is his promised bride. And so, them to Oblivia. She tells a story of the swan that led

PLACE:: 59 thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ The Swan Book years later, when Oblivia is mourning the death of They say that she is still a teenage girl, screaming as her swans and of Bella Donna of the Champions, the voice of this long broken place. and the swamp people have once again forgotten her, Warren comes back to claim her. AUTHOR BACKGROUND Oblivia has no choice but to follow Warren and his ALEXIS WRIGHT is a member of the Waanyi three genies, Dr Bones Doom, Dr Edgar Mail and nation of the southern highlands Dr Snip Hart. The five of them leave the swamp of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Her behind and walk into another part of country, one books include Grog War, a study the genies call home, and as Oblivia spits, punches of alcohol abuse in Tennant Creek, and tries to run, in her heart she knows that there is and the novels Plains of Promise and no escape, that she has once again been claimed by Carpentaria, which won the Miles Franklin Literary another. Warren spends his days on his mobile phone, Award, the Victorian and Queensland premiers’ ignoring the increasing threats to his life, concerned awards, and the Australian Literature Society Gold that his promised bride will not be able to withstand Medal, and was published in the United States, the pressures of the city. Oblivia still doesn’t speak, , China, Italy, France, Spain and but she is haunted by the presence and the ceaseless Poland. Alexis is a Distinguished Fellow in the chatter of the Harbour Master, who is her reluctant, University of Western Sydney’s Writing and Society argumentative companion for the remainder of Research Centre. the book. www.thestellaprize.com.au/2014/04/ Leaving behind the country, where the genies have the-stella-interview-alexis-wright/ either died or ceased to exist, Oblivia and Warren arrive in the city, and are folded into the welcoming, THEMES commanding arms of Big Red. She dresses Oblivia Place ‘properly’ and instructs her on how lucky she is to Language become the wife of the great Warren Finch. They are Displacement married, and Warren parades Oblivia around before Identity returning her to the People’s Palace, where he will not Climate change visit her again until after his death. Oblivia’s time in Aboriginal rights the palace is murky and claustrophobic. She is again Land joined by the Harbour Master, who brings with him the Storytelling talking monkey, Rigoletto. They watch as the swans Belonging fill the lanes beyond the palace, and Oblivia becomes Imagination obsessed with saving them and setting them free. Power Oblivia leaves the palace, only to return when LINKS TO THE Warren Finch is assassinated. She is unsure whether she is to blame for his death. Warren’s body is cause AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM for disturbance between the swamp people and the There are links to many of the general capabilities government, and so, as a way of postponing any of the Australian Curriculum in this text, including decisions about what to do with it, the dead Warren ethical understanding, critical thinking, Finch and his barely alive widow are put in a truck personal and social capabilities, and that will lap Australia indefinitely so that people intercultural understanding, and it is also aligned can say goodbye. We say goodbye to Oblivia alone. with several of the cross-curriculum priorities. Warren Finch is dead, as is Bella Donna. The Harbour Alexis Wright is an Indigenous author, and her work Master has long left Oblivia behind. She has become explores the boundaries of Australian identity, the a legend, seen by those visiting the Swan Country. displacement and treatment of the Aboriginal people,

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ PLACE: 60 The Swan Book and the outcomes of government intervention in – What would be needed to change that Indigenous communities. The authorship, themes power balance? and characters of this novel all fit strongly with ✦✦ How has Warren Finch forgotten his own Aboriginal and Torres Strait the priority of history? How does this influence his decisions? Islander stories. ✦✦ In what ways does the author experiment with In addition to this, the book is set in the future, language and narrative? What impact does this and imagines not only the political future of have on the story and your reading of it? Australia, but the potential consequences of climate change. It is therefore also relevant to areas within ✦✦ Many moments in the book are enhanced by sustainability, which looks to address ‘the ongoing the appearance of birds, either in abundance or capacity of Earth to maintain all life’.1 scarcity – grass owls, brolgas, swans. – What do the birds represent? READING QUESTIONS – How do they mirror parts of the book or ✦✦ Language is a central theme in the book. Give relationships within it? examples of the following ways that it is used. – When are they real? – To communicate ✦✦ Discuss the difference between reality, spirit, – As a barrier madness and metaphor. – To outclass or exclude – How do each of these appear in the text? – To name – What are the swans? – To identify – How do each of the characters cross into different – To overpower states at varying times throughout the book? – As a metaphor – Is Oblivia mad? ✦✦ In what ways is language about more than just ✦✦ Keep a list of the references to climate change. words? – How does the book show us the future? ✦✦ The phrase ‘architecture of the mind’ is used in – What has happened? one review (Sydney Review of Books). – How have the Earth and its inhabitants suffered? – In what ways does the author construct the ✦✦ How are refugees and the swamp people linked? mind as a place? – How are they similar? – Who inhabits it? – How are they different? – Who controls it? – How do they feel about each other? – How does it change? – What do the following characters fear? – What power does it have? • The Harbour Master ✦✦ What is a motif? How are swans used as a motif • Oblivia in the book? • Bella Donna • Warren Finch ✦✦ What power relationships can you see in the book? ✦✦ Who are the following characters? Are they real? – Who has the power? What importance do they have to Oblivia and Warren? – How do they use it? – Big Red – How do those with less power respond? – The genies – Machine 1 http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/ crosscurriculumpriorities/sustainability

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✦✦ At its core, The Swan Book is a love story. Mascara Literary Review – Whose love story is it? www.mascarareview.com/michelle-cahill-reviews- the-swan-book-by-alexis-wright/ – How does it unfold? The Newtown Review of Books – Does it have a happy ending? www.newtownreviewofbooks.com.au/2014/02/25/ alexis-wright-swan-book-reviewed-annette-hughes/ EXTENSION ACTIVITIES Readings 1. Reading well-considered critical reviews of a www.readings.com.au/review/the-swan-book-by- book can help us understand it further, and can help alexis-wright us find meanings that we may have missed. From the The Sydney Morning Herald list of references at the end of these notes, read one www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/after-the- review of The Swan Book. In groups, discuss how the apocalypse-despair-hope-and-all-things-between- review has enhanced your understanding of the book. 20131003-2utda.html Share things that you discovered in the review that Sydney Review of Books you missed in your own reading. Discuss the points www.sydneyreviewofbooks.com/going-viral/ in the review that you agreed with and the points that you disagreed with, and why. Interviews Overland As a further online activity, write a review for a www.overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-213/ school blog, or start your own blog. Aim to write feature-alexis-wright-and-arnold-zable/ about 500–1000 words. First up, discuss the elements of a good review and decide whether yours will Radio National Books and Arts Daily www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ be formal (like in most review publications) or booksandartsdaily/alexis-wright27s-the-swan- more informal (like personal blogs, e.g. ‘I liked it book/4882782 because …’). Publish all the reviews together. This is a book that demands a lot from readers Other 2. The law of storytelling: the hermeneutics of and repays close reading. In groups, take a chapter relationality in Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book or portion of the book and read it aloud. Remaining www.academia.edu/7440850/The_Law_of_ in groups, discuss the language and syntax, imagery Storytelling_The_Hermeneutics_of_Relationality_in_ and metaphor in your chosen portion. What have Alexis_Wrights_The_Swan_Book you noticed on close reading and discussion that you Talking about an Indigenous tomorrow: didn’t initially? Share your thoughts with the other an open letter by Alexis Wright groups. www.abc.net.au/news/2011-03-30/ 3. Look up the meaning of sovereignty. Discuss talkingaboutanindigenoustomorrow/45734 what you think it means to have sovereignty of Writing a critical review your own mind. How is it different to sovereignty www.student.unsw.edu.au/writing-critical-review of land or a country? Do you think people can have one without the other? What does The Swan Book suggest?

REFERENCES Reviews The Australian www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/alexis-wright- stages-a-counter-intervention-with-the-swan-book/ story-fn9n8gph-1226692942929

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hese comparative essay questions pair Stella Prize shortlisted titles thematically, Tencouraging students to explore two texts in more depth and detail. ✦✦ Discuss remembrance and forgetting with relation to The Swan Book and The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka. ✦✦ Boy, Lost and The Burial both tell of women who lose a child as they flee abusive men. Discuss how love, fear, hope and redemption are explored in these two books. ✦✦ Compare and contrast the use of mythology in Sea Hearts and The Swan Book. ✦✦ What do Burial Rites and The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka have to say about women’s place in history. ✦✦ How are the themes of exploitation and invasion explored in The Night Guest and The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka? ✦✦ Discuss the exploration of truth and the legal system in Night Games and Burial Rites. ✦✦ What is the relationship between place and identity in The Swan Book and Questions of Travel? ✦✦ Discuss motherhood and isolation in Like a House on Fire and The Night Guest. ✦✦ The Sunlit Zone and The Swan Book present visions of the near future that reveal the consequences of our actions today. Discuss. ✦✦ Discuss the use of birds in Mateship with Birds and The Swan Book. What do you think the authors are saying about our relationship to place and the natural world?

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The Stella Prize for younger readers

he bulk of this Stella Prize Schools Program kit provides teaching notes on each Tof the 2013 and 2014 Stella Prize shortlisted books. As these books are mostly not suitable for students below Year 10, we have compiled here a separate reading list for Years 7 to 10, along with some general reading questions and classroom activities to encourage wider reading of Australian women writers at younger secondary levels too.

Alongside some well-known recent books, we have Surface Tension by Meg McKinlay (Walker) suggested books of different styles – picture books, A story about secrets and forgotten towns, and verse and graphic novels, and so on. There is an finding a place where you belong. additional list for reluctant readers. As in the rest of The Four Seasons of Lucy McKenzie  the kit, books have been grouped under the themes by Kirsty Murray (Allen & Unwin) of IDENTITY, PLACE and HISTORY. See the A time-slip adventure about the true meaning of introductory notes in the relevant section of the main friendship. teaching kit for general questions around these three themes. And, of course, there are lots more great books Tensy Farlow and the Home for Mislaid Children by Australian women for this age range out there too! by Jen Storer (Puffin) An orphan with no guardian angel who eventually BOOKLIST FOR YOUNGER READERS finds much more than a home. Year 7 – Identity A Ghost in My Suitcase by Gabrielle Wang Red by Libby Gleeson (Allen & Unwin) (Puffin) A genre-crossing mystery about a girl struggling to Celeste travels to China to visit her grandmother, regain her memories and solve a crime in the wake of where she discovers her family history and inherits a natural disaster. a powerful gift. Pureheart by Cassandra Golds (Penguin) Year 7 – Place Deirdre and Gal journey through an enchanted Cicada Summer by Kate Constable house, and their own past, to try to break a curse and (Allen & Unwin) reclaim their identity. A time-slip tale about family, home and belonging. The Three Loves of Persimmon by Cassandra Year 7 – History Golds (Penguin) Nanberry: Black Brother White  A gaslamp novel about love and destiny. by Jackie French (Angus & Robertson) Moonlight and Ashes by Sophie Masson The true story of Nanberry, a young Aboriginal (Random House) boy adopted by Surgeon John White and raised In this story of Selena, the tale of Cinderella is retold to act as an interpreter between Aboriginal people to enhance the magic behind the fairytale and grant and European settlers. Selena control over her own destiny.

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Year 8 – Identity Thyla by Kate Gordon (Random House) Girl Saves Boy by Steph Bowe (Text) Thyla is the story of Tasmania: a story of darkness, Being terminally ill is not going to stop Sacha convicts, devils and tigers. Thomas from falling in love and having an amazing adventure. Year 8 – History New Guinea Moon by Kate Constable Cinnamon Rain by Emma Cameron (Walker) (Allen & Unwin) Verse novel about friendship, family and falling Set on the cusp of independence in New Guinea, in love. this is the coming-of-age story of Julie as she falls Whisper by Chrissie Keighery in love and finds her own kind of independence. (Hardie Grant Egmont) The Children of the King by Sonya Hartnett A teenager deals with not only her loss of hearing but (Penguin) a new identity as a deaf person. A kind of ghost story that blends history with Killing Darcy by Melissa Lucashenko (UQP) storytelling as two children, from different times and Darcy Mango is looking for his mob, his past, places, connect in a ruined building. and himself. India Dark by Kirsty Murray (Melissa Lucashenko is the author of Mullumbimby, (Allen & Unwin) which was longlisted for the 2014 Stella Prize) Based on the true story of a group of young Australian performers, travelling through Asia and A Small Free Kiss in the Dark  India, who initiate a groundbreaking court case. by Glenda Millard (Allen & Unwin) Trying to survive amid the rubble of war, a group The Forgotten Pearl by Belinda Murrell of young misfits band together and, against all (Random House) expectations, find hope and love. The Forgotten Pearl recounts the events of World War II through the eyes of teenager Poppy, The Rosie Black Chronicles  series  who flees her crumbling Darwin home to start by Lara Morgan (Walker) a new life in Sydney. Rosie Black lives in a world destroyed by climate change, where people are divided into haves and Year 9 – Identity have-nots. She is drawn into a mystery that will Noah’s Law by Randa Abdel-Fattah change the shape of her future. (Pan Macmillan) A light-hearted legal thriller about a rebellious Vulture’s Gate by Kirsty Murray teenager’s summer working at a law firm. (Allen & Unwin) A dystopian novel set in a desolate future world Shift by Em Bailey (Hardie Grant Egmont) where girls are being trapped and farmed. A slightly supernatural tale of unhealthy friendships and the importance of self-acceptance. Only Ever Always by Penni Russon (Allen & Unwin) All This Could End by Steph Bowe (Text) Claire feels irrevocably broken, until she finds a way Nina would love to be a normal teenager – if only she to escape into a dream world inhabited by Clara, who could convince her family to leave their life of crime. has plenty of experience in dealing with broken. Will by Maria Boyd (Random House) Year 8 – Place Everybody can see that Will’s in trouble, except Will, Crow Country by Kate Constable and things are going to get worse before they get (Allen & Unwin) better. A time-slip adventure in which Sadie tries to right old wrongs involving her own family and an Aboriginal sacred site.

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Chasing Charlie Duskin by Cath Crowley My Big Birkett by Lisa Shanahan (Pan Macmillan) (Allen & Unwin) Charlie Duskin is running from her mistakes, but as A coming-of-age story about life, love and chucking she runs she’s chasing dreams and hoping things will a birkett. get better. Loving Richard by Feynman Penny Tangey This Is Shyness by Leanne Hall (Text) (UQP) Wildgirl is being someone else for a night. Wolfboy is Catherine is dealing with all the things normal just trying to get by. In a town where the sun doesn’t teenagers deal with, but she’s doing it by writing to rise, it only takes one night to fall in love. the dead scientist Richard Feynman. I’ll Tell You Mine by Pip Harry (UQP) Shadows from the Requiem series by Paula Kate Elliot hides beneath her Goth appearance, but Weston (Text) when she gets sent to boarding school, claustrophobic Gaby thinks she remembers the accident her brother friendships bring out her secrets – and her potential. died in – she has nightmares about it – but she’s about The Whole of My World by Nicole Hayes to find out that the memory is false, and that the (Random House) reality is much crazier. Shelley’s twin brother is dead. She’s dealing with it in Love-shy by Lili Wilkinson (Allen & Unwin) the only way she knows how, trying to lose herself A high-school journalist searching for stories finds in football. But nothing is simple anymore, not even a love-shy student online. He’s the perfect project, footy. even if he doesn’t realise it. Cry Blue Murder by Kim Kane The Zigzag Effect by Lili Wilkinson & Marion Roberts (UQP) (Allen & Unwin) A chilling dual narrative about online identity and a When Sage takes a holiday job as a magician’s assistant suburban murderer. to pay for her photography lessons, she gets more Life in Outer Space by Melissa Keil magic than she bargained for. (Hardie Grant Egmont) Year 9 – Place Sam is a geek just trying to get through high school, Rise of the Fallen by Teagan Chilcott but Camilla is determined to make Year 12 much (Magabala) more exciting than that. The first in a YA paranormal romance series by the The Tribe series by Ambelin Kwaymullina winner of the 2012 black&write! Indigenous Writing (Walker) Fellowships. A four-book dystopian series about a tribe of rebels, Grace Beside Me by Sue McPherson hunted and experimented on because their abilities (Magabala) make them ‘illegal’. Small-town life is explored with warmth and humour Fury by Shirley Marr (Black Dog) through the eyes of Fuzzy Mac in this award-winning Eliza Boans might be confessing to a murder but book. readers will question her guilt to the very end. Days Like This by Alison Stewart (Penguin) Fairytales for Wilde Girls by Allyse Near In this dystopian thriller, Lily is a prisoner held (Random House) hostage by her parents and wondering what her own The coming-of-age fairytale of Isola Wilde, who can fate will be following the disappearance of her brother. see things that others can’t. The Sky So Heavy by Claire Zorn (UQP) One day, everything is normal; the next, Fin is fighting to make sense of a world devastated by nuclear fallout.

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Year 9 – History Girl Defective by Simmone Howell Preloved by Shirley Marr (Walker) (Pan Macmillan) Amy doesn’t believe her mother’s ghost stories, A detective story about family, love and the things until one of the ghosts follows her home. that fall through the cracks. Year 10 – Identity Cooper Bartholomew Is Dead by Rebecca James Zac and Mia by AJ Betts (Text) (Allen & Unwin) A funny, raw and sometimes grotty story about love, Cooper Bartholomew is dead. His girlfriend Libby is cancer and living as hard as you can for as long as devastated, and she’s not convinced his death was an you’ve got. accident. Pig Boy by JC Burke (Random House) Kill the Music by Nansi Kunze Damon Styles has been wronged and is out for (Random House) revenge. But when he takes a job with the Pigman so An indie thriller about a rock-star teenager and a plot that he can learn to shoot, he’s in for more education to kill the music – literally. than he anticipated. Losing It by Julia Lawrinson (Penguin) The Story of Tom Brennan by JC Burke Four friends make a pact to ‘Lose It’. They’d like to (Random House) be sober, they’d like it to be with Mr Right. The only Tom Brennan’s life is pretty simple, until his brother thing that’s certain is that it’ll be awkward. is arrested and his whole world explodes. Burn Bright by Marianne de Pierres Every Thing Left Unsaid by Jessica Davidson (Random House) (Pan Macmillan) Book One of the Night Creatures trilogy. A science- Tai and Juliet have been friends forever, and it seems fiction novel set in the intoxicating and mysterious like they might finally have a chance to get together. world of Ixion. But then Tai gets sick, and it’s not the kind of sick you Cracked by Clare Strahan (Allen & Unwin) come back from. A coming-of-age story about trying to make sense of Night Beach by Kirsty Eager (Penguin) the world when it feels like it’s cracking into a million A novel about obsession and possession. Abbie is in pieces. love with Kane, but Kane has returned from holiday Friday Brown by Vicki Wakefield (Text) with the devil on his back. Running away from the past and her family curse, Head of the River by Pip Harry (UQP) Friday Brown finds a new sort of belonging with a Siblings Leni and Christian are on track to make group of homeless misfits. their Olympian parents proud. But school sports Beatle Meets Destiny by Gabrielle Williams are high pressure and when life gets complicated, (Penguin) everything can go wrong. When John Lennon (Beatle) meets Destiny The Accident by Kate Hendrick (Text) McCartney, he falls instantly in love. The only An intriguing novel in which three seemingly problem is he already has a girlfriend. unconnected narratives tell the before, during and Six Impossible Things by Fiona Wood after of a devastating car crash. (Pan Macmillan) Notes from the Teenage Underground  Dan Cereill is watching as his life falls apart before by Simmone Howell (Pan Macmillan) his eyes. He’s going to get through it, one day at a Gem, Mira and Lou have gone Underground. But time, if he can just do six impossible things. even the avant-garde and anti-social need their friends sometimes.

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Year 10 – Place The Great Gatsby by Nicki Greenberg Stolen by Lucy Christopher (Chicken House) (Allen & Unwin) In a letter to her captor, Gemma relates her F Scott Fitzgerald’s jazz-age classic The Great Gatsby experience of being kidnapped and taken to a remote becomes a vivid and delightful graphic novel. shack in the middle of the Australian outback by Hamlet by Nicki Greenberg (Allen & Unwin) a man who expects her to love him. A graphic adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley (Pan Macmillan) Reluctant Readers – Place The Papunya School Book of Country and History It’s the last night of high school, and it’s going to be a by the Papunya School (Allen & Unwin) big one. A story about love, hope, and making a place An Aboriginal picture book celebrating the history of that’s your own. the Western Desert communities. Black Glass by Meg Mundell (Scribe) One Small Island by Alison Lester A futuristic dystopian novel about two young teenage & Coral Tulloch (Penguin) sisters trying to find one another and survive as A visual history of Macquarie Island, a World ‘undocs’ in the City. Heritage site, and an exploration of sustainability. As Stars Fall by Christie Nieman (Pan Macmillan) Reluctant Readers – History An exploration of growing up, identity and home in Maralinga, the Anangu Story by Christobel the aftermath of a bushfire. Mattingley, with Yalata and Oak Valley communities (Allen & Unwin) Clara in Washington by Penny Tangey (UQP) An illustrated history of Maralinga told from the Clara is taking an end-of-school holiday in Indigenous perspective. Washington. It’s her chance to become someone else, but that person might not be quite who she imagined. READING QUESTIONS The following general questions can be applied to Wildlife by Fiona Wood (Pan Macmillan) any book. They are intended as a starting point for Lou from Six Impossible Things is grieving and the discussions with younger readers about what and last thing she needs is to be trapped in the middle of how they read. nowhere for a term of outdoor education with the accidentally famous Sybilla and a bunch of girls who ✦✦ Who is the author? she’ll never fit in with. ✦✦ How well do you know the author? Year 10 – History ✦✦ Do they go by their full name? Steal My Sunshine by Emily Gale ✦✦ What sort of cover does the book have? (Random House) In the middle of a Melbourne heatwave, Hannah ✦✦ How do the cover and author’s name influence listens as her grandmother shares the heartbreak your decision to pick up the book? of having been a ‘wayward girl’. ✦✦ Is it a genre book? Reluctant Readers – Identity ✦✦ What are the key themes in the book? Tjarany Roughtail by Gracie Greene ✦✦ What do you generally look for in a book? & Joe Tramacchi, with illustrations by Lucille Gill (Magabala) ✦✦ What makes you pick up a particular book? An illustrated book about the cultural history of the ✦✦ What makes you reluctant to pick up a particular Kukatja people and the mysteries of the Dreamtime. book? Told in Kukatja and English. ✦✦ How real are the characters? ✦✦ Are there more male or female characters?

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✦✦ How are men portrayed in the book? ✦✦ What influences your reading choices most ✦✦ How are women portrayed in the book? strongly? 3. Know your authors: as a group brainstorming ✦✦ How do the characters treat each other? activity, make a list of the authors that immediately ✦✦ Are their attitudes influenced by their gender? come to mind (this should be done fast, with no Are they influenced by the gender of the person researching or looking at shelves). Make another list they are talking to? of the characters that first come to mind (again, no ✦✦ What gender roles are represented in the books? looking at books or shelves). Are they portrayed realistically? ✦✦ What percentage of the characters you have ✦✦ Are the female characters given the opportunity named are women? to think for themselves? ✦✦ What percentage of the authors you have named are women? ✦✦ Does the author challenge gender stereotypes? ✦✦ Is there any inequality in the most memorable FURTHER ACTIVITIES authors or characters based on gender? The following can be used as stand-alone ✦✦ Is there inequality in the authors based on activities or in conjunction with the study of any location? (For example, have you got more of the books recommended above. American authors or characters by American 1. Brainstorm your favourite authors. Then compare authors than Australian ones on your lists?) the percentages of men and women on this list and 4. What’s in a name? Some female authors whose discuss this. Do the same with characters. (This takes books feature male protagonists choose to use their some of the key points from the questions and turns initials rather than their first name. For example: them into longer, more thoughtful activities and JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, and discussions.) JC Burke, author of The Story of Tom Brennan. 2. As a class, cast a critical glance over your reading Some say this choice is often made because the habits. Divide into two groups, with each group authors believe that boys are less likely to read a book choosing a pile of books (not the most popular, if it’s written by a female author. recognisable ones). One group should photocopy the ✦✦ What do you think about this? covers of the books, blanking out the title and author. ✦✦ For what other reasons might an author go The other should write out the blurbs, again not by their initials? including the title or author. ✦✦ Have you read any books written by an Each group should then share their covers/blurbs with author who goes by just initials? Do you think the remainder of the class, asking them to vote on the your feelings about the book would have been books they would choose to read, and the books they different if the author used their full name? wouldn’t. Discuss what has prompted your choices. ✦✦ If you were to publish a book, do you think Why have you said no to particular books? you would use your full name on the cover ✦✦ If you have said yes/no based on the cover, or just your initials? Or maybe a pseudonym? does your opinion change once you read Explain your choice. the blurb? ✦✦ If you have said yes/no based on the blurb, does your opinion change once you have seen the cover? ✦✦ Does your opinion change once you know the author?

thestellaprize.com.au/resources/schools-program/ For Younger Readers: 70 The Stella Prize Schools Program Education Resource Kit was produced for the Stella Prize by Bec Kavanagh.

Bec is a writer, reviewer, educator and YA fiction specialist. She founded A Thousand Words Festival, which celebrated and encouraged the reading and writing of young adult fiction, and now takes that knowledge and passion for books directly into schools.

To enquire about booking a Stella Prize Schools Program speaker, please contact the Stella Prize at [email protected] or Booked Out speakers agency: [email protected] / (03) 9824 0177

For more information on the Stella Prize, or to make a donation, visit: www.thestellaprize.com.au

The Stella Prize Schools Program is proudly supported by the Readings Foundation and Andyinc Foundation. www.thestellaprize.com.au