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The Australian Literature Resource
- Teaching with BlackWords resources now available.
- BlackWords turns five years old in 2012! To recognise this event, a celebration and symposium will be held on the 19th and 20th of October, 2012. We are calling researchers, writers, and readers to submit proposals for presentations at the Symposium on the 20th of October. See the Call for Presentations here and submit your proposal.
- Dr Aunty Ruby Ginibi was born on Invasion Day, 26 January 1934, and, sadly, passed away on 1 October 2011. Read a few words about Aunty Ruby written by BlackWords National Coordinator Dr Jeanine Leane here.
- You Me Unity is the national conversation about updating our constitution to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and culture for the benefit of all Australians. Have your say here: http://www.youmeunity.org.au/
- Dr Anita Heiss speaks on Aboriginal writing: literature as a political tool promoting the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature on Allen and Unwin’s YouTube Channel.
Users are warned that AustLit contains information that may be culturally sensitive including images of deceased persons and terminology that reflects attitudes or language used at the time of publication that are considered inappropriate today.
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| We welcome ideas for BlackWords. If you would like to provide corrections or additions to the content of this site, please email the BlackWords Team. | View the record of a work chosen at random | View the record of an author - Please be aware that this may contain images of and information about people who have died |
| These three symbols frame Michael Gilsenan’s story of the development of the BlackWords logo. Click here to read the whole story. | ||
BlackWords is an initiative of AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource. In 2010 AustLit entered a partnership with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) with a view to ensuring that BlackWords remains under the direction of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
BlackWords is an information-rich website, a searchable database and a forum for communication. It supersedes AustLit's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers subset (2001-2006) which was created to encompass this important part of Australia's literary culture.
BlackWords provides access to both general and specific information about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literary cultures and traditions, providing a platform for the investigation and articulation of what 'Black writing' and 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literatures' might be. BlackWords also contains records describing published and unpublished books, stories, plays, poems and criticism associated with eligible writers and storytellers and includes works in English and in Indigenous languages.
BlackWords is a work in progress. We look to visitors to this site, whether creators, readers or scholars of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature to help us build and maintain the most reliable and relevant resource for Indigenous storytelling in all its forms in the world.
Click here to read more about the history of BlackWords.
The BlackWords team is composed of members from across Australia with Dr Jeanine Leane as the National Coordinator. Click here to learn more about the BlackWords team.
Many of the significant dates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples are the subject of some of the writing or author records listed in the BlackWords dataset.
Click here to see a time line showing many of these significant events.
BlackWords aims to be as inclusive as possible in order to represent a wide variety of cultural and creative fields and genres in which Indigenous writers and storytellers in Australia are working. At a minimum, BlackWords will include biographical information about Australian writers identifying with particular Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritages together with descriptive information about their works.
Read more about the scope of BlackWords here.
The development of BlackWords has been made possible through funding and support from the Australian Research Council's Linkage Infrastructure Equipment and Facilities program and the AustLit partners. AustLit team members at all partner organisations assisted individual BlackWords team members during the establishment period, especially Joan Keating at The University of Queensland and Tessa Wooldridge at UNSW at ADFA.
AIATSIS provides assistance with heritage and language terminology and since Dr Anita Heiss vacated her position as Foundation National Coordinator in 2010 has provided personnel to take on that coordination role.
Finally, BlackWords would be a lesser resource without the participation of many Indigenous writers and researchers who are providing information, support and assistance in the ongoing work of creating accurate and appropriate records for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers, storytellers and their works in BlackWords.
BlackWords: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers and Storytellers is a separately published work within AustLit.
No part of this work may be reproduced without permission from the publisher.
AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource 2004-
BlackWords: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers and Storytellers
Bibliography.
Biographical index.
Includes index.
ISBN 0 9750867 7 4.
1. Australian literature - Bibliography.
2. Australian writers - History and criticism - Bibliography.
3. Indigenous Australian literature - Bibliography.
4. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers - In literature - Bibliography.
I. AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource.