 First edition | |
| Author | Dorothy Porter |
|---|---|
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Picador, Australia |
Publication date | 1999 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 276 |
| ISBN | 0330361287 |
| Preceded by | The Monkey's Mask |
| Followed by | Wild Surmise |
What a Piece of Work is a 1999 verse novel by Australian poet Dorothy Porter which was shortlisted for the 2000 Miles Franklin Award.
In an address to the Tasmanian Writers' and Readers' festival in August 1999, Porter stated: "This is a verse novel in the voice of a male psychiatrist, Doctor Peter Cyren, working in Sydney's Callan Park Mental Hospital in the late 60s, who goes from pretty bad to heinous worse. My model here was Shakespeare with his black-hearted but full blooded creations such as Macbeth and Iago. The challenge is to make bad men good company. And Shakespeare takes that hurdle with magnificent ease." [1]
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 at A$60,000.
Timothy John Winton is an Australian writer. He has written novels, children's books, non-fiction books, and short stories. In 1997, he was named a Living Treasure by the National Trust of Australia, and has won the Miles Franklin Award four times.
Dorothy Featherstone Porter was an Australian poet. She was a recipient of the Christopher Brennan Award for lifetime achievement in poetry.
Leslie Allan Murray was an Australian poet, anthologist and critic. His career spanned over 40 years and he published nearly 30 volumes of poetry as well as two verse novels and collections of his prose writings.
Alexander McPhee Miller is an Australian novelist. Miller is twice winner of the Miles Franklin Award, in 1993 for The Ancestor Game and in 2003 for Journey to the Stone Country. He won the overall award for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for The Ancestor Game in 1993. He is twice winner of the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Christina Stead Prize for Conditions of Faith in 2001 and for Lovesong in 2011. In recognition of his impressive body of work and in particular for his novel Autumn Laing he was awarded the Melbourne Prize for Literature in 2012.
Amy Witting was the pen name of an Australian novelist and poet born Joan Austral Fraser. She was widely acknowledged as one of Australia's "finest fiction writers, whose work was full of the atmosphere and colour or times past".
Andrea Goldsmith is an Australian writer and novelist, known for her 2002 novel The Prosperous Thief.
Dorothy Johnston is an Australian author of both crime and literary fiction. She has published novels, short stories and essays.
Alchemy has had a long-standing relationship with art, seen both in alchemical texts and in mainstream entertainment. Literary alchemy appears throughout the history of English literature from Shakespeare to modern Fantasy authors. Here, characters or plot structure follow an alchemical magnum opus. In the fourteenth century, Chaucer began a trend of alchemical satire that can still be seen in recent fantasy works like those of Terry Pratchett.
My Life as a Fake is a 2003 novel by Australian writer Peter Carey based on the Ern Malley hoax of 1943, in which two poets created a fictitious poet, Ern Malley, and submitted poems in his name to the literary magazine Angry Penguins.
Alexis Wright is a Waanyi writer best known for winning the Miles Franklin Award for her 2006 novel Carpentaria and the 2018 Stella Prize for her "collective memoir" of Leigh Bruce "Tracker" Tilmouth.
Tara June Winch is an Australian writer. She is the 2020 winner of the Miles Franklin Award for her book The Yield.
Truth is a 2009 crime fiction novel written by Peter Temple. The novel is a sequel to Temple's 2005 novel The Broken Shore, and won the Miles Franklin Award in 2010.
This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 2013.
Cold Light is a 2011 novel by Australian novelist Frank Moorhouse which won the 2012 Queensland Literary Award. The novel forms the third part of the author's "Edith Trilogy", following Grand Days that was published in 1993, and Dark Palace that was published in 2000.
Wild Surmise is a 2002 verse novel by Australian poet Dorothy Porter which was shortlisted for the 2003 Miles Franklin Award.
Eyrie (2013) is a novel by Australian author Tim Winton. It was shortlisted for the 2014 Miles Franklin Literary Award.
Past the Shallows (2011) is a novel by Australian author Favel Parrett. It was shortlisted for the 2012 Miles Franklin Award. It has been published in Australia, the UK, the US, Germany and Italy. Past the Shallows has also been used as a prescribed text for HSC students.
After Darkness (2014) is a novel by Australian author Christine Piper. It won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 2014 and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award in 2015.
Toni Jordan is a Melbourne-based novelist best known for her debut novel Addition, an international bestseller long listed for the Miles Franklin Award. In 2017 her fourth book, Our Tiny Useless Hearts, was shortlisted for the Voss Literary Prize. Her novel Nine Days was named the Indie Book of the Year by the Australian Booksellers in 2013. Her most recent novel Prettier if she Smiled More was called 'sharp-eyed, engaging, endearing and very funny'.
 | This article about a 1990s novel is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page. |