The Lives of the Saints is a collection of short stories by Australian writer Edward Berridge published by University of Queensland Press (UQP) in 1995. [1] Karen Brooks calls the book an example of grunge lit, an Australian literary genre from the 1990s.
In a 1998 article in the Australian Literary Studies journal, Karen Brooks called Berridge a grunge lit author and stated that along with Clare Mendes' Drift Street and Andrew McGahan's Praise , Berridge's book of stories "...explore[s] the psychosocial and psychosexual limitations of young sub/urban characters in relation to the imaginary and socially constructed boundaries defining...self and other" and "opening up" new "liminal [boundary] spaces" where the concept of an abject human body can be explored. [2] Brooks states that Berridge's short stories provide "...a variety of violent, disaffected and often abject young people", characters who "...blur and often overturn" the boundaries between suburban and urban space. [2]
Brooks states that the story "Caravan Park" in Berridge's short story collection is an example of a story with a "liminal" setting, as it is set in a mobile home park; since mobile homes can be relocated, she states that setting a story in a mobile home "...has the potential to disrupt a range of geo-physical and psycho-social boundaries". [2] Brooks states that in Berridge's story "Bored Teenagers", the adolescents using a community drop-in centre decide to destroy its equipment and defile the space by urinating in it, thus "altering the dynamics of the place and the way" their bodies are perceived, with their destructive activities being deemed by Brooks to indicate the community centre's "loss of authority" over the teens. [2] Brooks states that the marginalized characters in Berridge's short stories (and in Drift Street and Praise) are able to stay in "shit creek" (an undesirable setting or situation) and "diver[t]... flows" of these "creeks", thus claiming their rough settings' "liminality" (being in a border situation or transitional setting) and their own "abjection" (having "abject bodies" with health problems, disease, etc.) as "sites of symbolic empowerment and agency". [2]
Professor and fiction author Andrew McCann compared The Lives of the Saints to Christos Tsiolkas' Loaded , stating that in Berridge's book, there is "...none of [Loaded's] structural economy of the anti-epiphany to impose formal unity." [3]
The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879–1954), who is best known for writing the Australian classic My Brilliant Career (1901). She bequeathed her estate to fund this award. As of 2016, the award is valued A$60,000.
Australian literature is the written or literary work produced in the area or by the people of the Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding colonies. During its early Western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies; as such, its recognised literary tradition begins with and is linked to the broader tradition of English literature. However, the narrative art of Australian writers has, since 1788, introduced the character of a new continent into literature—exploring such themes as Aboriginality, mateship, egalitarianism, democracy, national identity, migration, Australia's unique location and geography, the complexities of urban living, and "the beauty and the terror" of life in the Australian bush.
Abjection is a concept in critical theory referring to becoming cast off and separated from norms and rules, especially on the scale of society and morality. The term has been explored in post-structuralism as that which inherently disturbs conventional identity and cultural concepts. Julia Kristeva explored an influential and formative overview of the concept in her 1980 work Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, where she describes subjective horror (abjection) as the feeling when an individual experiences or is confronted by the sheer experience of what Kristeva calls one's typically repressed "corporeal reality", or an intrusion of the Real in the Symbolic Order.
In anthropology, liminality is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete. During a rite's liminal stage, participants "stand at the threshold" between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way.
The Queensland Premier's Literary Awards were an Australian suite of literary awards inaugurated in 1999 and disestablished in 2012. It was one of the most generous suites of literary awards within Australia, with $225,000 in prize money across 14 categories with prizes up to $25,000 in some categories. The awards upon their establishment incorporated a number of pre-existing awards including the Steele Rudd Award for the best Australian collection of new short fiction and the David Unaipon Award for unpublished Indigenous writing.
Charlotte Wood is an Australian novelist. The Australian newspaper described Wood as "one of our [Australia's] most original and provocative writers".
Rosie Scott was a novelist, poet, playwright, short-story writer, non-fiction writer, editor and lecturer, with dual Australian and New Zealand citizenship.
Christos Tsiolkas is an Australian author, playwright, and screenwriter. He is especially known for The Slap, which was both well-received critically and highly successful commercially. Several of his books have been adapted for film and television.
Literary realism is a literary genre, part of the broader realism in arts, that attempts to represent subject-matter truthfully, avoiding speculative fiction and supernatural elements. It originated with the realist art movement that began with mid-nineteenth-century French literature (Stendhal) and Russian literature. Literary realism attempts to represent familiar things as they are. Realist authors chose to depict everyday and banal activities and experiences.
The Victorian Premier's Prize for Fiction, formerly known as the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, is a prize category in the annual Victorian Premier's Literary Award. As of 2011 it has an remuneration of A$25,000. The winner of this category prize vies with 4 other category winners for overall Victorian Prize for Literature valued at an additional A$100,000.
Drift Street is a fiction book by Australian author Claire Mendes. Karen Brooks says that along with Edward Berridge's The Lives of the Saints and Andrew McGahan's Praise, Drift Street is a grunge lit book which "...explor[es] the psychosocial and psychosexual limitations of young sub/urban characters in relation to the imaginary and socially constructed boundaries defining...self and other" and "opening up" new "limnal [boundary] spaces" where the concept of an abject human body can be explored. Brooks states that Berridge's short stories provide "...a variety of violent, disaffected and often abject young people", characters who "...blur and often overturn" the boundaries between suburban and urban space.
Grunge lit is an Australian literary genre usually applied to fictional or semi-autobiographical writing concerned with dissatisfied and disenfranchised young people living in suburban or inner-city surroundings, or in "in-between" spaces that fall into neither category. It was typically written by "new, young authors" who examined "gritty, dirty, real existences", of lower-income young people, whose egocentric or narcissistic lives revolve around a nihilistic or "slacker" pursuit of casual sex, recreational drug use and alcohol, which are used to escape boredom. The marginalized characters are able to stay in these "in-between" settings and deal with their "abject bodies". Grunge lit has been described as both a sub-set of dirty realism and an offshoot of Generation X literature. The term "grunge" is a reference to the US rock music genre of grunge.
Nike Sulway is an Australian novelist.
Karen Brooks is an Australian author, columnist, social commentator and academic.
This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 2013.
Justine Ettler is an Australian author who is best known for her 1995 novel, The River Ophelia, which was shortlisted for the 1995 Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction - Horror Division - Best Novel. She is a seminal figure in Australian "grunge fiction" or "dirty realism" literature of the mid-1990s and was labelled 'The Empress of Grunge'. Her second published novel is Marilyn's Almost Terminal New York Adventure (1996) but technically it is her first novel as she wrote Marilyn's Almost Terminal New York Adventure novel before she wrote The River Ophelia. She has also worked as a literary reviewer for newspapers such as The Observer, The Sydney Morning Herald, a teacher, and academic.
Luke Carman is an Australian fiction writer and academic. He is known for his collection of semi-autobiographical stories, which is entitled An Elegant Young Man. The stories are set in Liverpool, Australia, a suburb outside Sydney. He has been called a post-grunge lit writer, a reference to an Australian literary genre from the 2000s which emerged following the 1990s grunge lit genre.
Andrew McCann is an Australian professor and fiction writer. He used the pen name "A. L. McCann" for his first book, The White Body of Evening, to avoid confusion with fellow Australian writer Andrew McGahan. His second fiction book, Subtopia, is a coming-of-age novel that takes place in "south-eastern suburbs in the 1970s, St Kilda in the 1980s and Berlin in the 1990s." He is an Associate Professor of English at Dartmouth College. He has been called a post-grunge lit writer, a reference to an Australian literary genre from the 2000s which emerged following the 1990s grunge lit genre.
This is a list of historical events and publications of Australian literature during 2019.
Dead Europe is a 2005 magical realist, Gothic novel written by Australian LGBT author Christos Tsiolkas. It is his third novel and was published by Vintage Random House.