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National Biography Award Talk & Podcast
[i]excerpt[/i]…
Tonight, because I am in the Friends Room of the splendid Mitchell Library, talking to people who can be assumed to be interested in biographical writing, it seemed like a fine opportunity to talk a little about some of my time away from here when I was writing a complex biography.
Talking about the book at all is hemmed around by stop signs and no-go areas – most of them in my head, some of them the normal restraints of confidentiality and privacy, some of them might sound a little paranoid to you, like an episode from Spooks, but I was in a world of security concerns, where emails are vetted regularly, at least for keywords, where computer files sometimes seemed to come and go – and formal communications are always coded and oblique.
A few years ago, I was solicited for the task of writing a biography of a well known public figure in Amman – a man greatly respected all over the Arab world and in Europe. He is not at all well known in Australia, which is a pity because we could do with his insights, but it does make talking about the project slightly easier. I don’t need to name him but will try to ensure he gets a copy of this paper. He doesn’t ‘do’ emails, his staff do. And it’s a world of multiple agendas. Continue reading
Posted in Blog Posts
Tagged Amal Ghandour, Amman, Australian writing, Biography, Hanan Al-Shakyh
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Wordlines
The published introduction can be downloaded in Adobe Acrobat format here . WORDLINES a selection of recent Australian writing I returned to Australia not long ago after a three-year absence, much of it spent working and writing in the Middle East. … Continue reading
Posted in My Books
Tagged Abigail Ulman, Alex Miller, Amman, Amra Pajalic, Australian Literature, Biography, Carmel Bird, Cate Kennedy, Drusilla Modjeska, Evelyn Juers, Gerald Murnane, International Writing, Joan London, Nam Le, Paul Mitchell, Rod Jones, Sophie Cunningham, Tom Cho
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