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Fiona Wright Fiona Wright i(A90102 works by)
Gender: Female
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Works By

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1 Midsummer, Night Fiona Wright , 2024 single work short story
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 18 March 2024;
1 Carly-Jay Metcalfe Breath Fiona Wright , 2024 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 11 March 2024;

— Review of Breath : A Triumphant Story of Hope and Survival Carly-Jay Metcalfe , 2024 single work autobiography

'The most surprising – and refreshing – thing about Carly-Jay Metcalfe’s memoir is how raunchy and raucous it is, especially for a book about lifelong illness. In Breath, Metcalfe discusses her cystic fibrosis and the complexities of survival.' (Introduction)

1 ‘Ballsy’, ‘very Funny’, ‘read in One Sitting’ : The Best Australian Books Out in October Alyx Gorman , Imogen Dewey , Fiona Wright , Sian Cain , Lucy Clark , Yvonne C Lam , Janine Israel , Celina Ribeiro , Ben Doherty , 2023 single work review
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 4 October 2023;

— Review of Edenglassie Melissa Lucashenko , 2023 single work novel ; Stone Yard Devotional Charlotte Wood , 2023 single work novel ; Late : A Novel Michael Fitzgerald Page , 2023 single work novel ; Killing for Country : A Family Story David Marr , 2023 multi chapter work criticism ; Gunflower Laura Jean McKay , 2023 selected work short story ; The Man Who Wasn't There Dan Box , 2023 single work biography ; Home to Biloela Priya Nadesalingam , Rebekah Holt , 2023 single work autobiography
1 Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood Review – A Masterful Novel of Quiet Force Fiona Wright , 2023 single work review
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 3 October 2023;

— Review of Stone Yard Devotional Charlotte Wood , 2023 single work novel
'Set at a rural Australian monastery, with a minimal plot and a looming climate catastrophe, this is a book of introspection – and of despair'
1 The Astronomer Fiona Wright , 2023 single work poetry
— Appears in: A Line in the Sand 2023;
1 Katherine Brabon : Body Friend Fiona Wright , 2023 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 9-15 September 2023;

'Most of the events and interactions in Katherine Brabon’s Body Friend occur in the months immediately after the narrator undergoes major surgery, to ameliorate some of the effects of her chronic autoimmune illness. She returns to work – and by extension, to the greater social world – towards the end of the novel. On her first day back, she feels herself “on a pendulum between two different selves”. One of these selves is distant and almost skittish, longing for nothing more than to be alone and back at home. The other is “a more clear and confident person” who moves and speaks with ease, and, importantly, “control[s] the illness” – or, at least, her reaction to its fluctuations and pain.' (Introduction)   

1 On Being Precedent Fiona Wright , 2022 single work essay
— Appears in: Open Secrets : Essays on the Writing Life 2022;
1 To Begin / It Broke Fiona Wright , 2022 single work prose
— Appears in: Heat (Series 3) , December no. 6 2022; (p. 8-20)

'Time, I kept hearing people say that year, has broken. Time broke: as if it were an object knocked from a shelf, or an ancient stuttering machine with parts worn through,

'I'm getting ahead of myself already.

'Time is a function of narrative. (Introduction)

1 Fiona McFarlane The Sun Walks Down Fiona Wright , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 19-25 November 2022;

— Review of The Sun Walks Down Fiona McFarlane , 2022 single work novel

'“How are they losing their children like this, all over the country?” asks an Afghan cameleer as he passes through the town of Fairly, where The Sun Walks Down is set. Days earlier, the farmhand Billy considers the fear that “a lost child” evokes in the people now implanted on his Country: it is “the one cost of settling on this land that they consider unreasonable”. His sister, once employed as a nursemaid, retells the tale of the Pied Piper, speaking of her two stolen daughters; an Irish housekeeper, in counterpoint, describes an Indigenous story once overheard, about a mother spirit looking for her missing children.' (Introduction)   

1 Having and Not Having the Cake : Baking in a Time of Lockdown Fiona Wright , 2022 single work autobiography
— Appears in: Griffith Review , no. 78 2022; (p. 100-106)
1 Robbie Arnott Limberlost Fiona Wright , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 15-21 October 2022;

— Review of Limberlost Robbie Arnott , 2022 single work novel

'Driving his young daughters home from school, Limberlost’s protagonist, Ned, stumbles through an accidental telling of an anecdote from childhood. The details, for which his children press him, suddenly feel distant, strange. Ned is struck for a moment by some fundamental grief, and wonders “if the troubled boy of that summer would recognise the man he’d become”.'(Introduction)   

1 A Serving of Insurgency with Breakfast Fiona Wright , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , August 2022;

— Review of Sneaky Little Revolutions : Selected Essays of Charmain Clift Charmian Clift , 2022 selected work essay
1 Sleepers Awake Fiona Wright , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , May 2022;

— Review of A History of Dreams Jane Rawson , 2022 single work novel

'History happens to us in dreams: it is experienced and understood there as much as in our waking lives. Neuroscientists have known this for some time, but these pandemic years have provided a sudden abundance of data, intensive and immediate, and global in scale, for those who work with dreams. Their reports are of dreams about swarming insects, billowing gas, and other transferred contaminations; about shadowed monsters and snipers lurking on the other side of a window or wall. There are more literal dreams about funerals and hospitals, accidental handshakes or hugs; about forgotten face masks, a new variant of that archetypal dream of public nakedness realised suddenly and far too late. In pandemic dreams, the dead speak. The dreamer cannot find their way home, is pursued. All of these are dreams that grapple with upheaval and threat, with fear, with the difficult adjustments to a world unsteadied suddenly, transformed.'(Introduction)

1 Chloe Hooper : Bedtime Story Fiona Wright , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 7-13 May 2022;

— Review of Bedtime Story Chloe Hooper , 2022 single work autobiography
1 Careful Archaeology Fiona Wright , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , January 2022;

— Review of Leaping into Waterfalls : The Enigmatic Gillian Mears Bernadette Brennan , 2021 single work biography

'Sometimes when we read, and never quite when we expect it, there are encounters that feel like a recognition. They lodge within us: I have friends who call these burrs in the brain, or splinters – but to me they’ve never felt like foreign bodies, stuck on or stuck in the skin. They go deeper. They become a part of who we are. Living within me like this, I know, is a single image from The Grass Sister, the first of Gillian Mears’ books that I ever read. A snapshot: it’s from a small and deeply intimate scene between the protagonist Avis and her lover Lavinia; the pair are lying in bed and one of them – I think it is Avis, but can’t be sure – admires the soft and downy line of darker hair running down the other’s lower belly, beneath her navel. Snail trail, I sometimes hear this now, although when I first read the book, just over ten years ago, I had never heard that term. I’d never seen one on another woman (though not for lack of trying) and was strangely ashamed of my own – but for Avis, it is not only beautiful and individual but electric: erotically charged, terribly and irresistibly so.' (Introduction)

1 The Believer by Sarah Krasnostein Review : The Faces of Faith, from Religion to UFOs Fiona Wright , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 19 March 2021;

— Review of The Believer Sarah Krasnostein , 2021 single work non-fiction
1 Game Plan Fiona Wright , 2021 single work short story
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 13-19 November 2021;
1 Love and Virtue, Diana Reid Fiona Wright , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 9-15 October 2021;

— Review of Love and Virtue Diana Reid , 2021 single work novel
1 The Airways by Jennifer Mills Review : Deeply Vivacious and Arresting Ghost Story Fiona Wright , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 13 August 2021;

— Review of The Airways Jennifer Mills , 2021 single work novel
1 Old Orphan Creek Fiona Wright , 2021 single work short story
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 12-18 June 2021;
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