Delys Bird

Delys Bird is a Senior Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Humanities at the University of Western Australia. She recently retired as the co-editor of Westerly. Her publications include a co-edited book of essays on Elizabeth Jolley’s fiction, Elizabeth Jolley: New Critical Essays and a critical edition of nine of Jolley’s radio plays, Off the Air: Elizabeth Jolley’s Radio Plays. She has published widely on Australian women’s writing.

Reading Australia: 'Miss Peabody's Inheritance' by Elizabeth Jolley

Reading Australia • 24 March 2015

Elizabeth Jolley’s personal and publishing history is well known. She migrated from the United Kingdom to Western Australia with her husband, Leonard, and their three children in 1959, when Leonard was appointed Librarian at the University of Western Australia. Although she had been writing from a young age and had brought a great deal of manuscript material with her, it was not until the late 1 ... (read more)

Delys Bird reviews 'Tim Winton: Critical essays' edited by Lyn McCredden and Nathanael O’Reilly

October 2014, no. 365 • 01 October 2014

Sitting, a few years ago, in the audience at a writers’ festival in the south-west of Western Australia, at a panel session hosted by Jennifer Byrne, I was struck by the widespread reaction to one of the panellists announcing that the book she had chosen to discuss was Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet (now securely canonised as an ‘Australian national classic’, as Fiona Morrison’s essay in this ... (read more)