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Bernadette Brennan

Bernadette Brennan is the award-winning biographer of Helen Garner and Gillian Mears. She is currently researching a literary biography of Drusilla Modjeska.

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A woman with short brown hair in a white suit leaning on a desk and smiling

Bernadette Brennan is a biographer, critic and researcher of contemporary Australian writing. She is the author of a number of publications, including a monograph on Brian Castro and two edited collections: Just Words?: Australian Authors Writing for Justice (UQP 2008), and Ethical Investigations: Essays on Australian Literature and Poetics (Vagabond 2008). In 2017 she published her award-winning literary biography A Writing Life: Helen Garner and Her Work (Text). Her most recent book, Leaping Into Waterfalls: The Enigmatic Gillian Mears (A&U 2021), was shortlisted for the 2022 NSW Premier’s Douglas Stewart award and won the Magarey Medal for Biography, the National Biography Award and the Age Book of the Year (non-fiction). Bernadette is currently working on a literary biography of Drusilla Modjeska.

Bernadette Brennan

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Newcastle Writers Festival would like to acknowledge the Awabakal and Worimi peoples, the Traditional Custodians of the land on which the festival takes place, and recognise their continuing connection to land, water and community. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging and extend this respect to all First Nations people attending our festival.

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