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Jennifer Mills Jennifer Mills i(A76636 works by)
Also writes as: jenjen
Born: Established: 1977 ;
Gender: Female
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Works By

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1 Naming the Bones : A Meditation on Consequence and Care Jennifer Mills , 2023 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 460 2023; (p. 39)

— Review of Stone Yard Devotional Charlotte Wood , 2023 single work novel

''Arrive finally at about three.’ The opening sentence of Charlotte Wood’s seventh novel does a lot in five simple words, emblematic of her gift for compression. With the direct, truncated prose of a diary entry, we are suddenly on intimate terms with another mind, impatient to begin. The unnamed narrator is a woman alone, returning to the country town where she grew up and where her parents are buried. ‘Your bones are here, beneath my feet,’ she thinks, standing at their graves for the first time in thirty-five years. So begins her reckoning.' (Introduction)          

1 Suburbia’s Crackle and Hum : Blending the Sinister and Domestic Jennifer Mills , 2023 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 457 2023; (p. 32)

— Review of Ordinary Gods and Monsters Chris Womersley , 2023 single work novel

'In his essay on the uncanny, Sigmund Freud observed that fiction writers have an unusual privilege in setting the terms of the real, what he called a ‘peculiarly directive power’: ‘by means of the moods he can put us into, he is able to guide the current of our emotions’, and ‘often obtains a great variety of effects from the same material’.' (Introduction)

1 My Year as a Salaried Artist Jennifer Mills , 2023 single work autobiography
— Appears in: Meanjin , Winter vol. 82 no. 2 2023; Meanjin Online 2023;

'Late in 2021, I attended a conference in Tarntanya (Adelaide) organised by a collective of thinkers called Reset Arts and Culture. I listened particularly closely to a panel about labour and the arts that was chaired by Vitalstatistix director Emma Webb. I’d been writing about these issues, and against the backdrop of the ongoing pandemic, discussions had taken on a new urgency.' (Introduction)

1 The Artist as Essential Worker Jennifer Mills , 2023 single work essay
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , February 2023;

'Over the past decade, arts policy has been dominated by an increasingly incoherent ‘creative industries’ mindset that places artistic labour in an entrepreneurial framework, ultimately a private-sector concern. The Australia Council has reflected this turn, slowly drifting from the language of public funding and towards ‘investment’.' (Introduction)

1 y separately published work icon Labor's New National Cultural Policy Jennifer Mills , Southbank : Jennifer Mills , 2023 25906404 2023 single work podcast
1 Human Constellations : Paul Dalgarno’s Chatty Ghost Jennifer Mills , 2023 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , March no. 451 2023; (p. 33)

— Review of A Country of Eternal Light Paul Dalgarno , 2023 single work novel
'When a book takes its title from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, you can expect the shock of something supernatural. But although Paul Dalgarno’s A Country of Eternal Light is narrated by a dead woman, there is little here to horrify.' (Introduction)
1 1 A Revival Meeting at the Espy : Labor’s New National Cultural Policy Jennifer Mills , 2023 single work essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , March no. 451 2023; (p. 8-10)

'Welcome to the March issue of ABR. We examine everything from the new National Cultural Policy to Volodymyr Zelensky, Shirley Hazzard, First Nations incarceration, infidelity, exciting new fiction, machines behaving badly, TÁR, the young Robert Menzies, women’s cricket and much more. And while Australia is now set to receive its own Poet Laureate, ABR continues its longstanding commitment to the form, publishing four new poems and reviewing four verse collections.' (Introduction)

 

1 Dystopia Creep Jennifer Mills , 2022 single work essay
— Appears in: Meanjin , September vol. 81 no. 3 2022; (p. 38-46)
'The Centre for National Resilience was an uncanny place. Rows of beige-grey dongas with small shared verandahs faced each other, a concrete strip and a bit of gravel between them. The rows were separated into sections, and the sections were separated by chainlink fencing, numbered and lettered with laminated signs. We were placed in H block. You have to laugh.' (Introduction) 
1 Unnatural Being Jennifer Mills , 2022 single work essay
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , November 2022;
1 Blurring Boundaries : Angela Meyer’s Experimental Second Novel Jennifer Mills , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , November no. 448 2022; (p. 42)

— Review of Moon Sugar : A Novel Angela Meyer , 2022 single work novel

'There is an experiment at the heart of Angela Meyer’s second novel, Moon Sugar. Without going into spoiler-level detail, it unlocks something in her protagonists, offering them new ways to connect with each other and the world around them. This experiment is a neat metaphor for Meyer’s own; by slipping between genres, her fiction strives to upend readerly expectations, expanding the possibilities for engagement.'  (Introduction)

1 A Distant Leviathan : Robbie Arnott’s Realist New Novel Jennifer Mills , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 447 2022; (p. 38)

— Review of Limberlost Robbie Arnott , 2022 single work novel

'Limberlost opens with an image of nature as dangerous: a whale, reportedly driven mad or feral by a harpoon in its side, is alleged to be destroying fishing boats in a vengeful spree. Ned is five, and the whale stories haunt him so much that his father takes him out to see for himself. The frightened child waits in a small boat for the animal’s power to show itself.'  (Introduction)

1 ‘My God. The World.’ A Coda to the Theft of Weeping Woman Jennifer Mills , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , July no. 444 2022; (p. 39)

— Review of The Diplomat Chris Womersley , 2022 single work novel

'In Chris Womersley’s novel Cairo (2013), a middle-aged man looks back as his seventeen-year-old self is caught up in the notorious theft of Pablo Picasso’s Weeping Woman from the National Gallery of Victoria by a group of bohemian artists. The heist-Bildungsroman combination is energetic, and decades of distance give Tom Button’s narration a lush, nostalgic quality. His sifted memories of 1986 fall gently, landing somewhere between regret and sustained desire.' (Introduction)   

1 Mud Jennifer Mills , 2022 single work short story
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 21-27 May 2022;

Brown shapes move across the screen, leaving dark streaks in the mud behind them. Salt glitters, and some darker crystal. The bodies move purposefully, now and then a flash of teeth that must be laughter. Happy workers, covered in the earth they think they’re saving. Later the mud will dry on their skin, cracking and burning.

1 The Funeral Jennifer Mills , 2022 single work short story
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2022;
1 The Push-pull of the Past : A Hypnotic Trip into Outback Gothic Jennifer Mills , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , April no. 441 2022; (p. 33)

— Review of Banjawarn Joshua Kemp , 2022 single work novel

'The latest in a new crop of outback gothic fiction, Josh Kemp’s début has everything readers have come to expect from the genre. There’s a messed-up bloke with a past. There’s a lost girl, ten years old and traumatised. There’s plenty of guilt and shame, damaged landscapes, haunted houses, injecting drug use, altered states, brutal acts of violence, and of course, there is the road.' (Introduction)

1 Freelancers Get Organised Jennifer Mills , 2022 single work column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2022;

'Last Wednesday a historic mass meeting of freelancers took place online as freelance writers, photographers, illustrators and other media workers came together, beaming in from around the country. With over 120 people in attendance, it was the biggest meeting of any kind MEAA has had since the start of the pandemic and the biggest meeting of freelancers the union has ever had. Members voted overwhelmingly to endorse the new Freelance Charter of Rights.'  (Introduction)

1 Breaking and Entering : Piecemeal Transgressions of a Small Town Jennifer Mills , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , March no. 440 2022; (p. 32)

— Review of Australiana Yumna Kassab , 2022 single work novel

'Australiana opens with a break-in. Lifting away a flyscreen, strangers climb into a man’s house, help themselves to his biscuits. The crime doesn’t feel important – it’s the fourth in a month, we’re told – but the intrusion does. It evokes the entanglements of small towns, the way in which lives intersect, physical proximity breaking down the barriers of class and culture and personal choice that can divide urban populations into subcultures. As a declaration of intent, the image of trespass is pretty clear: there is no real privacy in this town, and as readers we’re about to gain access.' (Introduction)

1 Precarious Words Jennifer Mills , 2021 single work essay
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , November 2021;

'Eight years ago, I wrote  a short piece for Overland called ‘Pay the Writers’. I was fed up with being asked to work for ‘exposure’. It was a time when a lot of writing work was moving online, and this work was often unpaid. Writers were at risk of losing our incomes entirely. If anything needed some exposure, it was the working conditions of freelancers.' (Introduction)

1 Local Giant Jennifer Mills , 2021 single work short story
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 11-17 September 2021;
1 9 y separately published work icon The Airways Jennifer Mills , Sydney : Pan Macmillan Australia , 2021 21856814 2021 single work novel horror

'I had a body once before. I didn't always love it. I knew the skin as my limit, and there were times I longed to leave it. I knew better than to wish for this.

'This is the story of Yun. It's the story of Adam. Two young people. A familiar chase.

'But this is not a love story. It's a story of revenge, transformation, survival. Feel something, the body commands. Feel this. But it's a phantom . . . I go untouched.

'They want their body back.

'Who are we, if we lose hold of the body? What might we become?

'The Airways shifts between Sydney and Beijing, unsettling the boundaries of gender and power, consent and rage, self and other, and even life and death.

A powerful, inventive, and immersive novel from award-winning author Jennifer Mills.' (Publication summary)

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