Suzanne Falkiner
This was an extraordinary task you set yourself. How did you decide to do it in the first place?
I was actually asked to do it. Lesley Mackay, who has a bookshop in Double Bay that I go to, was doing a bit of publishing and packaging, and it suddenly occurred to her that while there was a Writer’s France and a Writer’s Britain there hadn’t been a Writer’s Australia, so she came to me with the idea. She thought she could package the idea to a publisher and would I write it? I thought, what a wonderful idea and signed the contract, and then realised that what I was going to do was write an entire literary history of Australia, and every chapter could have been a book on its own, and probably should have been.
... (read more)Rain in the Distance by Suzanne Falkiner & Tilly’s Fortunes by Helen Asher
by Paul Salzman •
