Brigitta Olubas

Aug 21, 2024 | theconversation.com | Jo Case |Aidan Coleman |Alexander Cothren |Alexander Howard |Ali Mohammad Alizadeh |Amanda Tink | +44 more

Like so many avid readers around the world, I was fascinated by the recent New York Times list of the Best Books of the 21st century, as voted by 503 authors, critics and book lovers. But like many Australians, I was disappointed to see no Australian books on the list. Even those authors who’ve made a splash in the US literary scene this century – Helen Garner, Gerald Murnane, Maria Tumarkin – didn’t get a guernsey. That’s where we come in.

Jun 12, 2024 | unsw.press | Brigitta Olubas |Susan Wyndham

Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Harrower met in person for the first time in London in 1972, six years after they began a correspondence that would span four decades. They exchanged letters, cards and telegrams, and made occasional phone calls between Harrower’s home in Sydney and Hazzard’s apartments in New York, Naples and Capri. The two women wrote to each other of their daily lives, of impediments to writing, their reading, politics and world affairs, and in Hazzard’s case, her travels.

May 28, 2024 | unsw.press | Brigitta Olubas |Susan Wyndham

NewSouth has acquired a new authoritative biography of Australian novelist Elizabeth Harrower by writer, journalist and 2024 National Library of Australia Fellow Susan Wyndham. Due to publish in mid-2025, the new biography of Harrower provides insight into the powerful and ever-relevant work of this literary luminary. It explores her vast and influential friendship circle and how her life and relationships both shaped her work and led to her withdrawal from it.

Sep 13, 2023 | lrb.co.uk | Brigitta Olubas |Clair Wills

Shirley Hazzard​ liked to tell the story of how she got to know Graham Greene. A rainy morning in the late 1960s, a café on the island of Capri. She was doing the Times crossword. Greene and his friend Michael Richey came in from Mass at the church across the square and she overheard them at a nearby table fumbling for a line of Robert Browning’s ‘The Lost Mistress’:Tomorrow we meet the same then, dearest? May I take your hand in mine?

May 21, 2023 | swf.org.au | Brigitta Olubas

Brigitta Olubas (Australian) Brigitta Olubas was born in Hobart, Tasmania and now lives in Sydney. She is professor of English at the University of New South Wales where she teaches and researches in Australian Literature. Her publications include books and essays on Australian Literature, particularly on writing by migrant, diasporic and refugee writers, as well as on the work of Shirley Hazzard. Her writing is directed at both scholarly and general readerships.