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Adele Dumont Adele Dumont i(8141089 works by)
Gender: Female
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1 Bold’, ‘extremely Fun’, ‘luminously Written’ : The Best Australian Books Out in March Imogen Dewey , Nigel Featherstone , Joseph Cummins , Steph Harmon , Lucy Clark , Sian Cain , Yvonne C Lam , Adele Dumont , Bridie Jabour , 2024 single work review
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 6 March 2024;

— Review of 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem Nam Le , 2024 selected work poetry ; The Silver River Jim Moginie , 2024 single work autobiography ; One Another Gail Jones , 2024 single work novel ; Appreciation Liam Pieper , 2024 single work novel ; Loving My Lying, Dying, Cheating Husband Kerstin Pilz , 2024 single work autobiography ; Servo : Tales from the Graveyard Shift David Goodwin , 2024 single work autobiography ; The Cancer Finishing School : Lessons in Laughter, Love and Resilience Peter Goldsworthy , 2024 single work autobiography ; Thanks for Having Me Emma Darragh , 2024 single work novel ; Lead Us Not Abbey Lay , 2024 single work novel ; Always Will Be : Stories of Goori Sovereignty from the Futures of the Tweed Mykaela Saunders , 2024 selected work short story
1 I’m a Compulsive Journal Writer but I’d Never Mentioned My Secret on Paper. Writing Helped Me Regain Control Adele Dumont , 2024 single work column
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 29 January 2024;
'Finding the words about her compulsive hair-pulling helped author Adele Dumont find power over her illness – and also a type of revenge'
1 4 y separately published work icon The Pulling Adele Dumont , Carlton North : Scribe , 2024 27046067 2024 selected work autobiography essay

When I've been overtaken, I have stood and watched the water in my porridge simmer away into the air, and then the oats turn black and crackle with dryness, and my ears fill with the smoke alarm's shriek.

'When Adele Dumont is diagnosed with trichotillomania - compulsive hair-pulling - it makes sense of much of her life to date. The seemingly harmless quirk of her late teens, which rapidly developed into almost uncontrollable urges and then into trance-like episodes, is a hallmark of the disease, as is the secrecy with which she guarded her condition from her family, friends, and the world at large.

'The diagnosis also opens up a rich line of inquiry. Where might the origins of this condition be found? How can we distinguish between a nervous habit and a compulsion? And how do we balance the relief of being 'seen' by others with our experience of shame?

'Reminiscent of the writing of Leslie Jamison and Fiona Wright, The Pulling is a fascinating exploration of the inner workings of a mind. In perfectly judged prose, both probing and affecting, Dumont illuminates how easily ritual can slide into obsession, and how close beneath the surface horror and darkness can lie.'(Publication summary)

1 Adele Dumont Reviews A Kind of Magic by Anna Spargo-Ryan Adele Dumont , 2023 single work review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , no. 29 2023;

— Review of A Kind of Magic Anna Spargo-Ryan , 2022 single work autobiography

'From its outset, A Kind of Magic establishes two distinct kinds of language. There’s Spargo-Ryan’s narration, as she recounts meeting with her new therapist: this voice is warm and confiding. The language she employs is vibrant and all her own: she likens her anxiety, for example, to ‘being trapped in jelly and also being allergic to jelly’(6). It’s laden with humour and irony, too: the narrator worries that the thongs she’s worn to the appointment are going to make a bad impression, and what’s more, their slapping sound might disturb the ‘sick people’ in the medical centre; the ‘patients with actual problems’(4). Within this same opening chapter, we’re introduced to a medical lexicon, which Spargo-Ryan informs us she’s become well-versed in: ‘I feel dissociated, I have intrusive thoughts’(6). These two sorts of language indicate two spheres of knowledge: the first, clinical and official; the second, intimate and embodied. The therapist’s PhD in clinical psychology is displayed on the wall; she is a ‘specialist in anxiety and psychosis’(4). But Spargo-Ryan tells us she is ‘also a specialist’ in these conditions, ‘but in the other way, where sometimes they try to kill me’(4).' (Introduction)

1 Adele Dumont Reviews Childhood by Shannon Burns Adele Dumont , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , no. 28 2022;

— Review of Childhood : A Memoir Shannon Burns , 2022 single work autobiography

'Anyone writing about their childhood must grapple with the intervening gulf of time, and with the strange slipperiness of memory. This is especially so for Shannon Burns, who today lives a stable, contented life in the higher echelons of Australia’s middle class, but whose early years, he now recognises, were chaotic and perilous, peopled by adults who were unreliable, volatile, and sometimes violent. Childhood charts Burns’ upbringing in 1980s suburban Adelaide: he is passed between his mother (his ‘true home’ (88)), his father and stepmother, various relatives, and foster carers. Aged fifteen, he leaves school, escapes his father’s place and finds work in a recycling centre. Despite all this dislocation and instability, and despite Burns’ well-developed talent for forgetting, Childhood doesn’t read as fragmentary or disjointed: rather, the narrative is sculpted so skilfully that it is never less than propulsive.'(Introduction)

1 Re-Mystification Adele Dumont , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , June 2022;

— Review of The Writer Laid Bare : Emotional Honesty in a Writer's Art, Craft and Life Lee Kofman , 2022 single work autobiography

'In her 2019 memoir Imperfect, Lee Kofman wrote about the disfiguring scars she sustained as a child, the result of several major surgeries. She describes going to great lengths to conceal these scars as an adult, with her ‘shell of stockings and long dresses’. It is this impulse towards concealment and secrecy that first led me to feel a great (and covert) sense of kinship with Kofman. In my case, it was my own mental illness, and its strange physical manifestations, that I was driven to hide.'(Introduction)   

1 Insides Out Adele Dumont , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , September 2021;

— Review of The First Time I Thought I Was Dying Sarah Walker , 2021 selected work essay

'‘A thing from the outside was inside her,’ writes Sarah Walker, conjuring one of her earliest memories. The thing in question is an enormous piece of bark, protruding from her kindergarten teacher’s outstretched hand, ‘under the elegant slip of her skin’. The image is carefully chosen, foreshadowing this essay collection’s interest in the intersections between our bodies and the world, and the breaching of these thresholds. Throughout The First Time I Thought I Was Dying the outside world gets in and insides are turned out. Walker’s lesson from that playground accident is that ‘constant vigilance is required’. Just a handful of paragraphs later, she tells us the revised lesson her adult self is trying to learn: ‘be not afraid’. This movement from fearfulness and control towards trust and acceptance is one that reverberates through the collection.' (Introduction)

1 Homing Adele Dumont , 2021 single work prose
— Appears in: Meanjin , Winter vol. 80 no. 2 2021;

'Occasionally I go bush with a friend, and as we walk she will—with little apparent effort—take in the lie of the land. When we break to catch our breath, or to check our ankles for leeches, or to fix an undone shoelace, she will have counted how many creeks we’ve crossed, will have noticed how the steep cliffs and undulating valleys correspond to the contours of our map. With a swivel of her head along the ridgeline, she’ll be able to establish roughly where it is we now are. As though thumbing back through the pages of a just-read chapter, she might trace with her finger the passages we’ve covered: ‘that must be that section of blue gums’ or ‘that’s back where that landslide was’ or ‘here’s when we made a turn for the east’. I, meanwhile, might have noticed globules of blood-red resin weeping from the base of a tree, or have been startled by a black cockatoo winging itself across my path and scoured the ground afterwards for its feathers … but I will mostly be oblivious. The overall shape of the land we’re passing through will remain a blur to me.' (Introduction)

1 Once, Twice, Thrice : A Year of Lamentation Adele Dumont , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , January–February no. 428 2021; (p. 60)

— Review of Fire Flood Plague : Australian Writers Respond to 2020 2020 anthology essay
1 Eulogy for the Living Adele Dumont , 2020 single work prose
— Appears in: FourW (New Writing) , no. 31 2020; (p. 57-62)
1 Adele Dumont Reviews The House of Youssef by Yumna Kassab Adele Dumont , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: Plumwood Mountain [Online] , September 2020;

— Review of The House of Youssef Yumna Kassab , 2019 selected work short story
1 Adele Dumont Reviews The Grass Library by David Brooks Adele Dumont , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: Plumwood Mountain [Online] , March 2020;

— Review of The Grass Library David Brooks , 2019 single work autobiography
1 Adele Dumont Reviews The Girls by Chloe Higgins Adele Dumont , 2020 single work review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , August no. 25 2020;

— Review of The Girls : A Memoir of Family, Grief and Sexuality Chloe Higgins , 2019 single work autobiography

'The title of Chloe Higgins’ debut memoir is shorthand for her two younger sisters, victims of a fatal car accident when the author is aged seventeen. Her family avoids using their individual names, explains Higgins, so that ‘they are separate from us, an abstract thing on which we need not hang our pain’. In her frank depictions of drug use, sex work, mental illness, and her fraught relationship with her bereaved mother, Higgins might be described as unflinching in her approach. But the telling of this story is equally characterised by a flinching: from the memory of her sisters; from her own pain.' (Introduction) 

1 Adele Dumont Reviews Yellow City by Ellena Savage Adele Dumont , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , December no. 24 2019;

— Review of Yellow City Ellena Savage , 2019 selected work essay

'Yellow City charts Ellena Savage’s travels in Lisbon, a city she returned to having experienced an assault there eleven years prior. Framed as a set of journal entries spanning three weeks in 2017, the chapbook records the author’s attempts to locate the archived court files pertaining to this crime. Savage is a kind of detective in her own case: accompanied by Dom, her lover-slash-sidekick, she navigates the cobbled footpaths and the local bureaucracy.' (Introduction)

1 This Is Not a Conversation about Asylum Seekers Adele Dumont , 2017 single work interview
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 76 no. 3 2017; (p. 10-23)

'I met Mehdi back in 2010. He was one of my students when I was teaching English at the Curtin immigration detention centre. To be honest for the first few months of knowing him, I found his presence unsettling - he'd always arrive late and smelling of cigarettes, sit towards the back of the classroom, arms folded, frowning slightly, and not ever saying much. He's since admitted his first impression of me was that I was a total snob, so I guess we each misread one another's reticence as arrogance.' (Introduction)

1 4 y separately published work icon No Man Is an Island : One Teacher’s Story of How Humanity and Hope Flourished behind Barbed Wire No Man Is an Island Adele Dumont , Sydney : Hachette Australia , 2016 9737647 2016 single work autobiography

'In 2010, 24-year-old Sydneysider Adele Dumont volunteered to teach English to men in immigration detention on Christmas Island. She didn't expect to find the work so rewarding or the people she met so interesting. So when she was offered a job working at Curtin detention centre near Derby in Western Australia, she took it.

'Working at Curtin required a fly-in fly-out lifestyle. Adele lived in a donga in WA, her life full of bus trips to the detention centre; back home in Sydney, she was overwhelmed by the choices and privileges people had. What kept her returning to Curtin were her students: men from many lands who had sacrificed all they knew for a chance to live in Australia; men who were unfailingly polite to her in a situation that was barbarous. Men who were looking for an opportunity for a better life.

'NO MAN IS AN ISLAND is a unique personal story that takes a humanitarian stance on immigration detention. It makes the issue of immigration detention accessible to far more interested Australians than newspaper articles. It is a vividly told story full of characters and humanity. It is the story about immigration detention all Australians need to read.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 No Man Is an Island Adele Dumont , 2014 single work prose
— Appears in: Long Paddock , vol. 74 no. 2 2014; The Lifted Brow , June no. 26 2015; (p. 29-32)
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