Rosemary Sorensen

An interview with Dorothy Hewett

June 1993, no. 151 • 12 August 2022

When Dorothy Hewett won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for non-fiction with the first volume of her autobiography, Wild Card, it was a popular choice on the night. She’s a writer who has attracted all kinds of controversy, from libel suits to outrage over her flamboyant politics, both sexual and social. She has published four volumes of poetry, thirteen plays, but only one novel, calle ... (read more)

An interview with Drusilla Modjeska by Rosemary Sorensen

September 1994, no. 164 • 01 September 1994

Drusilla Modjeska has written a book of essays on women writers, Exiles at Home, and the award-winning semi-autobiography Poppy. And now, with The Orchard, the essay meets the autobiographical and both come out very differently indeed. Drusilla Modjeska begins by patiently explaining why the question, is this fiction or non-fiction?, is relevant to her writing. It has a relevance in one sense bec ... (read more)

Rosemary Sorenson reviews 'Chasing Mammon: Travels in the Pursuit of Money' by Douglas Kennedy

December 1992, no. 147 • 01 December 1992

Douglas Kennedy is one of that group of travel writers who are annoyingly good at getting an angle on a story but never really making a point. He whisks us around the world, in this case around the money markets of the world, observing, picking up quotable quotes, telling tidy anecdotes, and in the end, back home, he snaps the lid on his collected experience and calls it a day. Easy listening, but ... (read more)

An interview with Suzanne Falkiner by Rosemary Sorensen

December 1992, no. 147 • 01 December 1992

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 ... (read more)

'Editorial' by Rosemary Sorensen | December 1992

December 1992, no. 147 • 01 December 1992

Because it’s the end of the year, every Tom, Dick and Harry is trotting out the Top Books of the Year, My Favourite Summer Reading, What Book I’d Like for Christmas – good old standbys. ABR, however, is looking soberly (for the most part) at the current state of critical writing. Critics and scholars and researchers talking about theory and analysis. People engaged in the processes that help ... (read more)

An interview with Nicholas Hasluck

September 1994, no. 164 • 01 September 1994

In the fictional town of Blosseville, the dirty core of politics is being revealed, and lawyers are having to examine their consciences … for Perth writer, Nicholas Hasluck, the themes are intriguing, as he explains to Rosemary Sorensen. Are you a regional writer? I suppose I am, if your definition of a regional writer is someone who evokes atmosphere and themes which have a particular relev ... (read more)

An interview with Bruce Beaver

June 1994, no. 161 • 01 June 1994

When I visited Bruce and Brenda Beaver in their Manly flat it was a sparkling day. The water of the Harbour was glittering, and the pines on the foreshore were stirring only slightly in the breeze. But, however soothing the weather, I was nervous. For me, Bruce Beaver is huge, a poet of the first order, and his extraordinarily difficult life, the periods of debilitating sickness and the various al ... (read more)

'Canberra Literary Centre of Australia' compiled by Rosemary Sorensen

February–March 1991, no. 128 • 01 February 1991

In his Canberra 1913–1950 Jim Gibbney summarises the indecisions which accompanied the establishment of a site for Canberra around the turn of the century. When finally, in De­cember 1908, Yass-Canberra was decreed the Seat of Government, it brought to a close nearly two decades of hesitation – at least Australia knew where the Federal Capital was to be situated, if not what kind of city i ... (read more)

'Editorial' by Rosemary Sorensen

October 1994, no. 165 • 01 October 1994

You, certainly, understand what it’s like when you know for sure, and in your heart of hearts, that there is something rotten in the State of Denmark, but every time you put up your hand to point to the rottenness it is ignored, slapped down, or obfuscated. Lying, back-stabbing, shoving one’s own snout in the trough ahead of the mob, manoeuvring to get ahead, and destroying anything that might ... (read more)

Rosemary Sorensen reviews 'The Name of the Mother: Writing illegitimacy' by Marie Maclean

October 1994, no. 165 • 01 October 1994

For some time now literary criticism has been fascinated by the role of naming, and the inscription of the name, in relation to the identity of the self. There are rich pickings to be had from examining autobiography for the way the writer reveals and hides behind the words with which a life is described. And in this era of autobiographical and biographical tumescence, it is most important that th ... (read more)