Vivienne Cleven
Vivienne Cleven (born 1968) is an Indigenous Australian fiction author and writer of the Kamilaroi people.[1][2] Her writing includes the novels Bitin’ Back and Her Sister’s Eye.
Early life
[edit]Born in 1968 in Surat, Queensland, Cleven grew up in the homeland of her Aboriginal heritage (Kamilaroi Nation[3][2]). Leaving school at thirteen, she worked with her father as a jillaroo: building fences, mustering cattle, and working various jobs on stations throughout Queensland and New South Wales.[1]
Writing career
[edit]In 2000, with the manuscript Just Call Me Jean,[4] Cleven entered and won the David Unaipon Award for Unpublished Indigenous Writer – The David Unaipon Award.[1] Re-titled and published the following year, Bitin’ Back was shortlisted in the 2002 Courier-Mail Book of the Year Award and in the 2002 South Australian Premier’s Award for Fiction.[3] Cleven adapted Bitin’ Back into a play-script in 2005 which was staged by Brisbane’s Kooemba Jdarra Indigenous Theatre Company.[4]
Her Sister’s Eye was published in 2002, and was chosen in the 2003 People’s Choice shortlist of One Book One Brisbane.[3] In 2004, Her Sister’s Eye won the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Prize for Indigenous Writing.[3]
In 2006, Cleven won the Kate Challis RAKA Award for both Bitin' Back and Her Sister's Eye.[3][5]
Cleven’s writing is included in Fresh Cuttings, the first anthology of UQP Black Australian Writing, published in 2003, and the collection Contemporary Indigenous Plays in 2007.[1]
In 2017, Cleven penned a column for the journal Lesbians on the Loose, entitled, “Dyketopia: The Internet's most popular cyberspace precinct has plenty going on for lesbians.”
Themes
[edit]Cleven’s works delve into themes of gender identity, queer expression, mental health, domestic and sexual abuse, connection to land, and racial prejudice in a postcolonial Australian context.[6][7] Both Bitin' Back and Her Sister's Eye critically forefront the Indigenous woman's experience in situations where their race and gender are seminal to their stories.[6] Her Sister's Eye is considered part of the modern wave of postcolonial gothic fiction.[8]
Published works
[edit]- Bitin' Back, 2001
- "Writing Bitin’ Back." Writing Queensland, no. 96, 2001
- Her Sister’s Eye, 2002
- "Bitin’ Back." Contemporary Indigenous Plays, 2007
- "Dyketopia: The Internet's most popular cyberspace precinct has plenty going on for lesbians.” Lesbians on the Loose, vol. 18, no. 11, 2007
Awards
[edit]Bitin’ Back (2000):
- Winner of the David Unaipon Award, 2000
- Shortlisted for the Courier-Mail Book of the Year Award, 2002
- Shortlisted for the South Australian Premier's Awards for Fiction, 2002
- Winner of the Kate Challis RAKA Award, 2006
Her Sister’s Eye (2002):
- People's Choice shortlist of One Book One Brisbane, 2003
- Winner of the Kate Challis RAKA Award, 2006
- Winner of the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Prize for Indigenous Writing, 2004
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d "Vivienne Cleven". AustralianPlays.org. Archived from the original on 5 April 2016. Retrieved 24 October 2018.
- ^ a b Austlit. "Vivienne Cleven: (author/organisation) | AustLit: Discover Australian Stories". www.austlit.edu.au. Retrieved 24 October 2018.
- ^ a b c d e "UQP - Vivienne Cleven". www.uqp.uq.edu.au. Archived from the original on 15 April 2018. Retrieved 24 October 2018.
- ^ a b Austlit. "Bitin' Back | AustLit: Discover Australian Stories". www.austlit.edu.au. Retrieved 24 October 2018.
- ^ "More past winners". University of Melbourne. Faculty of Arts. 21 November 2019. Retrieved 25 February 2021.
- ^ a b Little, Janine (2003). "Incantations of Grief and Memory". Australian Women's Book Review. 14 (2): 24–26.
- ^ Mayr, Suzette (2017). "A Place With Its Own Shying". Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. 17 (2).
- ^ Baines Alarcos, Maria Pilar (2012). Gothic Fiction in an Australian Landscape: an analysis of Gabrielle Lord's Tooth and Claw, Elizabeth Jolley's The Well and Tim Winton's In The Winter Dark (PDF) (Doctoral thesis). University of Zaragoza.
External links
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