Caro Llewellyn | |
|---|---|
 Llewellyn in 2008 | |
| Occupation(s) | Business executive, artistic director, festival manager and nonfiction writer |
| Known for | Literary festivals |
| Notable work | Diving into glass |
Caro Llewellyn (born 1965) [1] is an Australian business executive, artistic director, festival manager and nonfiction writer. From 2020 to July 2023, she was chief executive officer of the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne.
Llewellyn is the daughter of Richard Llewellyn and poet Kate Llewellyn. She grew up in Adelaide. [2]
Early in her career Llewellyn had a job booking bands for venues. [2] She entered the literary world and became product manager for Random House. From 2002 to 2006 Llewellyn was director of the Sydney Writers' Festival. [3] In 2006 she moved to New York where she was employed by Salman Rushdie to manage the PEN World Voices Festival from 2007. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2009 and found she was no longer able to read. [3] At the time she had been appointed inaugural director of what later became the Wheeler Centre but resigned before she began the role. [4] After about three years she discovered that her sight had improved and she was able to read novels again. [3]
For Columbia University, she served as artistic director of the Paris-based Festival des Écrivains du Monde from 2012 to 2015. During this period, from 2013 to 2015, she ran the New Literature from Europe Festival in New York. [5] Back in Australia in 2017, Llewellyn was appointed Director of Experience and Engagement at Museums Victoria. [5]
In 2020 Llewellyn was appointed chief executive officer of the Wheeler Centre, [5] taking over for Michael Williams, who had maintained a decade-long post there. She vacated the role in July 2023 when her contract expired, [6] [7] and the centre hired Eric Vincent.
"Diving into Glass is a deeply moving journey across family, love, art, literature and loss. Lit throughout with brilliant prose, this book reveals a family on the brink. Set against the backdrop of mental illness and childhood trauma, it is also the journey of the hard-fought victories that signalled changes in legislation surrounding the conditions of people with disabilities.
Llewellyn shows she has total control of the prose as she eloquently reveals the life she watched her father live – paralysed and in a wheelchair for most of his adult life as a result of polio – is something she herself may face after a diagnosis of MS.
The author takes us into the dark places of mental illness as well as the beauty of her mother’s, Kate Llewellyn, poetry. Diving into Glass is a brilliantly constructed story that is at once gripping and tender – shot through with love and empathy for the author’s family. "
— 2020 Stella Prize Judges
Her 2019 memoir, Diving into Glass, details both her and Richard's handicaps, and how his way of living through polio since the age of 20 influenced her own method of managing her condition. The book is primarily a biography about Richard and the relationship he had with his children and wives, plus it mentions his work in improving accessibility to those who are disabled; it also covers her career, and the later chapters finally discuss her tribulations with MS. The memoir/biography received considerable attention from other disabled professionals, drawing both positive remarks and critical analysis. Astrid Edwards, a writing professor at RMIT, in the April 2019, no. 410 issue of Australian Book Review , discussed how she also has MS and "approached [this biography] with excitement and... a certain cynicism," as she looked to glean insight into her condition, or "find someone that has had symptoms like [hers]." [8] She was disappointed that MS was not discussed very much until the end of the book; "it is more of a biography than a memoir. The majority of the work is devoted to Richard's life and the impact he had on his daughter. While it's marketed as a memoir of [her] experience with MS, in reality it's a reflection of growing up along with her father's severe disability." [8] However, she did find Caro Llyewellyn's recounting of her "impressive" career to be "world-class tales" and viewed the reflection on stigma and discrimination of "citizens of sickness", and society's evolving treatment of these things, notable. [8]
It was shortlisted for the 2020 Stella Prize. [9] The panel believed that it not only reflected a "deeply moving" personal story, it also related to societal movements in the special interests of those with disability, including growing inclusivity and more effective legislation. They also complimented her mastery of language, calling it "total control of the prose;" and said that the memoir constituted a "brilliantly constructed story."
Between 2007 and 2009, Llewellyn worked at PEN World Voices. While running in Central Park in New York, her legs experienced numbness and lost all sensation; she was soon diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a disease of the nervous system that can impair eyesight. As someone who needed to read in order to organize book-related functions, this affected her career and life profoundly and inspired Diving into Glass.
Her family had experience with disability beforehand, as her father, Richard, suffered from polio, which causes permanent loss of movement in the extremities; despite and because of this, he became disability advisor to South Australian Premier John Bannon.
Sister Kenny is a 1946 American biographical film about Sister Elizabeth Kenny, an Australian bush nurse, who fought to help people who suffered from polio, despite opposition from the medical establishment. The film stars Rosalind Russell, Alexander Knox, and Philip Merivale.
Jacqueline Mary du Pré was a British cellist, considered by many as one of the greatest of all time. Achieving mainstream popularity at a young age, du Pré won Britain's most prestigious cello award at age 11, made her adult debut at 17, and became a fully established artist by 20. At 21, she married the acclaimed conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim, forming a celebrated musical couple.
Julian Schnabel is an American painter and filmmaker. In the 1980s, he received international attention for his "plate paintings" — with broken ceramic plates set onto large-scale paintings. Since the 1990s, he has been a proponent of independent arthouse cinema. Schnabel directed Before Night Falls, which became Javier Bardem's breakthrough Academy Award-nominated role, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which was nominated for four Academy Awards. For the latter, he won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director and the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, as well as receiving nominations for the Academy Award for Best Director and the César Award for Best Director.
Shirley Hazzard was an Australian-American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. She was born in Australia and also held U.S. citizenship.
Nikola Jean Caro is a New Zealand film, television, and music video director and screenwriter. Her 2002 film Whale Rider was critically praised and won a number of awards at international film festivals. She directed the 2020 live action version of Disney's Mulan, making her the second female and the second New Zealand director hired by Disney to direct a film budgeted at over $100 million. Caro's works ranged from music videos, commercials, television dramas, and films, etc.
Timothy Dorcen Langbene Ferguson is an Australian comedian, film director, screenwriter, author and screenwriting teacher.
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Sophie Cunningham is an Australian writer and editor based in Melbourne. She is the current Chair of the Board of the Australian Society of Authors, the national peak body representing Australian authors.
The Wheeler Centre, originally Centre of Books, Writing and Ideas, is a literary and publishing centre founded as part of Melbourne's bid to be a Unesco Creative City of Literature, which designation it earned in 2008. It is named after its patrons, Tony and Maureen Wheeler, founders of the Lonely Planet travel guides.
Georgia Frances Elise Blain was an Australian novelist, journalist and biographer.
Kate Howarth is an Aboriginal Australian writer whose memoir Ten Hail Marys was published by the University of Queensland Press in 2010. The sequel, Settling Day, was published in 2015.
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Heather Rose is an Australian author born in Hobart, Tasmania. She is the author of the acclaimed memoir Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here. She is best known for her novels The Museum of Modern Love, which won the 2017 Stella Prize, and Bruny (2019), which won Best General Fiction in the 2020 Australian Book Industry Awards. She has also worked in advertising, business, and the arts.
Stella Jane Young was an Australian comedian, journalist and disability rights activist.
Bernice Chauly is Malaysian writer, poet, educator, festival director, actor, photographer and filmmaker.
Kate Llewellyn is an Australian poet, author, diarist and travel writer.
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This is a list of historical events and publications of Australian literature during 2019.
Veronica Gorrie is an Aboriginal Australian writer. She is a Krauatungalang Gunai woman. Her first book, Black and Blue: A memoir of racism and resilience, a memoir reflecting on her Aboriginality and the decade she spent in the police force, was released in 2021. Black and Blue won the Victorian Prize for Literature, Australia's richest literary award, in 2022.
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