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Bernadette Brennan

Bernadette Brennan

Bernadette Brennan is a former Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Sydney, and a former President of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL). Dr Brennan has published widely on various aspects of Australian literature. She is currently working on a critical biography of Helen Garner.

Bernadette Brennan reviews 'The Burning Library: Great Novelists Lost and Found' by Geordie Williamson

February 2013, no. 348 02 February 2013
As a reader, teacher, and scholar of Australian literature, I applaud any initiative directed towards increasing readers’ understanding of, and engagement with, Australian writing. Geordie Williamson’s The Burning Library sets out to achieve that goal. Through a mix of biography and literary review, Williamson seeks to recuperate the work and reputation of fifteen Australian writers whom he ju ... (read more)

Bernadette Brennan reviews 'Wild Card' by Dorothy Hewett

September 2012, no. 344 30 August 2012
Dorothy Hewett’s Wild Card: An Autobiography 1923–1958 was first published by McPhee Gribble in 1990. Now, a decade after Hewett’s death, UWA Publishing has reissued this extraordinary autobiography in a beautifully packaged, reader-friendly format. Reviewing Wild Card for ABR in October 1990, Chris Wallace-Crabbe drew attention to Hewett’s candour in relating explicitly her many sexual ex ... (read more)

Bernadette Brennan reviews 'When It Rains: A Memoir' by Maggie Mackellar

November 2010, no. 326 01 November 2010
Maggie Mackellar’s stunning new memoir, When It Rains, narrates her journey through the disorienting landscape of loss and mourning. As a young academic, pregnant with her second child and uncomplicatedly in love with her athletic husband, the boundaries of Mackellar’s world seem fairly secure. With her husband’s sudden psychic disintegration and suicide, the foundations of that world collap ... (read more)
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