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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'In this award-winning work of fiction, Ellen van Neerven takes her readers on a journey that is mythical, mystical and still achingly real.'
'Over three parts, she takes traditional storytelling and gives it a unique, contemporary twist. In ‘Heat’, we meet several generations of the Kresinger family and the legacy left by the mysterious Pearl. In ‘Water’, a futuristic world is imagined and the fate of a people threatened. In ‘Light’, familial ties are challenged and characters are caught between a desire for freedom and a sense of belonging.'
'Heat and Light presents an intriguing collection while heralding the arrival of an exciting new talent in Australian writing.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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'The author’s prose style is spare, carefully wrought and lucid. Van Neervan portrays some wonderful women characters with a deft and sure hand. The plots are beset by tantalising twists and turns, and there is some stunning imagery. There is no doubt that this exciting new author has much potential.' (Judges' comments, The Queensland Literary Awards website 2013)
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Three thematically linked stories.
Contents
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Large print.
- Sound recording.
Works about this Work
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Six Books to Read This Summer
2023
single work
review
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 11 December vol. 33 no. 24 2023;
— Review of Heat and Light 2014 selected work short story -
Settler Belonging in Crisis : Non-Indigenous Australian Literary Climate Fiction and the Challenge of “The New”
2023
single work
criticism
— Appears in: ISLE : Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment , Winter vol. 30 no. 4 2023; (p. 952–971) -
Weathering, Tethering, Transforming : The Overstory and Writing the Future
2022
single work
essay
— Appears in: Meanjin , June vol. 81 no. 2 2022; (p. 86-90) Meanjin Online 2022; -
y
Reading Our Way : An Indigenous-centred Model for Engaging with Australian Indigenous Literature
Kelvin Grove
:
2021
23964231
2021
single work
thesis
'Indigenous writers’ works have been subjugated in a context of power and domination by many historical publishing frameworks. However, through the act of writing many Indigenous writers assert their sovereign power and make clear interventions designed to challenge the status quo. This thesis argues for the further shifting of power from the majority non-Indigenous Australian literary sector to Indigenous writers and their communities through the development of an expansive model for reading Australian Indigenous literature.
'Using a theoretical framework of Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing this thesis proposes a reading method based on Indigenous paradigms, constituted by Indigenous ontologies, epistemologies and axiologies. The proposed reading method is then operationalised in the reading of five texts written by Australian Indigenous women and non-binary writers: We Are Going by Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1964), Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington (1996), Carpentaria by Alexis Wright (2006), Heat and Light by Ellen van Neerven (2014), and The Yield by Tara June Winch (2019). New understandings and knowledges are derived from the works, derived from reading with responsibility and accountability to family, kin and community, reading for songlines and relations in the text, and reading with Indigenous notions of time and with the understanding that Indigenous literature is knowledge.
'The results of these readings are compared with the history of critical reception across four areas of the Australian literary sector, inclusive of the Australian media, published scholarly work, and the Australian literary and Indigenous literary industries. Differences and similarities confirm that reading from within Indigenous research paradigms results in a reorientation of Australian Indigenous literature across the literary sector. From this process, an Indigenous-centred reading approach is documented and an Indigenous-centred model for reading Australian Indigenous literature is further synthesised.
'The thesis builds on the work of Indigenous scholars such as Anita Heiss, Sandra Phillips, Jeanine Leane and Alexis Wright and makes a critical intervention within the Australian literary sector and especially the academy. The developed model places power back into the hands of Indigenous writers and readers, storytellers and storyreceivers and provides expansive ways of reading and a productive tension through which new knowledge can be produced for the benefit of Indigenous writers and their communities.'
Source: QUT ePrints.
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Dragon Lovers and Plant Politics : Queering the Nonhuman in Hoa Pham’s Wave and Ellen Van Neerven’s “Water”
2021
single work
criticism
— Appears in: ISLE : Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment , Autumn vol. 28 no. 3 2021; (p. 1048–1065)'In her 2015 novel Wave, the Vietnamese Australian writer Hoa Pham creates a world in which fantasy is constitutive of reality. Enshrouded in lyricism and a faint veil of racial melancholia, the novel portrays how a lesbian Asian couple, Midori and Âu Cô, coping on the margins of contemporary Australian society find belonging in an imagined nonhuman identity, as dragons-in-love. Both characters are migrants who embody different subversions of inculcated dragon stories. Midori’s early sexual experiences in Japan involve enacting secret dragon performances with her girlfriend. Âu Cô’s sexual orientation defies the expectations of her Vietnamese name, which means a mythic mountain fairy married to the dragon king. The strategic trope of queering the dragon in the story comes to highlight the couple’s desire to reclaim a functional self in the face of new racial and sexual stereotypes in Australia. In a more radical manner, the Indigenous Australian writer Ellen Van Neerven’s 2014 speculative eco-novella “Water” queers the nonhuman in ways that challenge cultural essentialism and human exceptionalism. At the heart of the novella’s futuristic vision is a newly-discovered species, the plantpeople, who are sentient beings capable of reading, speaking, and, most importantly, adapting to a changing environment. As the novella connects the plantpeople to Indigenous Australian inscriptions of land, the homo-erotic love between the Indigenous protagonist and the leader of the plantpeople dismantles heterosexual norms while exposing colonial claims of history and sovereignty that suppress an Indigenous multispecies ontology.' (Introduction)
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[Review] Heat and Light
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: Books + Publishing , vol. 94 no. 1 2014; (p. 22)
— Review of Heat and Light 2014 selected work short story -
Selected Shorts
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 364 2014; (p. 52-50)
— Review of Heat and Light 2014 selected work short story ; Captives 2014 selected work short story ; Arms Race : And Other Stories 2014 selected work short story ; Las Vegas for Vegans 2012 selected work short story ; An Elegant Young Man 2013 selected work short story ; Tarcutta Wake 2012 selected work short story -
[Review] Heat and Light
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 364 2014; (p. 48)
— Review of Heat and Light 2014 selected work short story -
Ellen Van Neervan : Heat and Light
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: The Newtown Review of Books , March 2015;
— Review of Heat and Light 2014 selected work short story -
[Review] Heat and Light
2015
single work
— Appears in: Queensland Review , June vol. 22 no. 1 2015; (p. 102)
— Review of Heat and Light 2014 selected work short story -
Ellen's Novel Experience
2013
single work
column
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 28 August 2013; (p. 12) -
High Praise for Young Author
2015
single work
column
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 15 April 2015; (p. 48) 'At 24, Ellen van Neerven is already receiving recognition locally and internationally for her unique voice...' -
Stella Prize 2015: The Shortlisted Authors on the Stories behind Their Books
2015
single work
column
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 17 April 2015; -
Graduate with the Write Stuff
2015
single work
column
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 22 April no. 599 2015; (p. 42) -
Young Novelists Speak with Original Voices
2015
single work
column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 23-24 May 2015; (p. 17) The Canberra Times , 23 May 2015; (p. 13)
Awards
- 2016 joint winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Indigenous Writer's Prize
- 2016 commended Australian Centre Literary Awards — The Kate Challis RAKA Award
- 2016 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards — Prize for Indigenous Writing
- 2015 shortlisted Queensland Literary Awards — University of Southern Queensland Australian Short Story Collection – Steele Rudd Award
- 2015 shortlisted Queensland Literary Awards — Queensland Premier's Award for a Work of State Significance
- Queensland,
- Brisbane, Queensland,
- Hill End, South Brisbane - East Brisbane area, Brisbane - South & South West, Brisbane, Queensland,
- 2014-2022