Drusilla Modjeska (born 17 October 1946) is a contemporary Australian writer and editor.

Life

Drusilla Modjeska was born in England and lived in Papua New Guinea before arriving in Australia in 1971. She studied at the Australian National University and the University of New South Wales completing a PhD which was published as Exiles at Home: Australian Women Writers 1925-1945 (1981).

Modjeska's writing often explores the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. The best known of her work are Poppy (1990), a fictionalised biography of her mother, and Stravinsky's Lunch (2001), a feminist reappraisal of the lives and work of Australian painters Stella Bowen and Grace Cossington Smith. She has also edited several volumes of stories, poems and essays, including the work of Lesbia Harford and a ‘Focus on Papua New Guinea’ issue for the literary magazine Meanjin.

In 2006 she was a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, “investigating the interplay of race, gender and the arts in post-colonial Papua New Guinea”.

Awards

• 1983 - Walter McRae Russell Award for Exiles at Home
• 1991 - New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Douglas Stewart Prize for non-fiction for Poppy
• 1995 - New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Douglas Stewart Prize for non-fiction for The Orchard
• 2000 - New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Douglas Stewart Prize for non-fiction for Stravinsky's Lunch
• 2000 - Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for Stravinsky's Lunch

Bibliography

Novels

• Poppy. (1990) ISBN 086914099X
• The Orchard. (1994) ISBN 0-330-35655-0 Review

Non-fiction

• Women Writers: A study in Australian cultural history, 1920-1939. (1979)
• Exiles at Home: Australian women writers 1925-1945. (1981)
• Inner Cities: Australian women's memory of place. (1989)
• Stravinsky's Lunch. (Picador, 2001) ISBN 0-330-36186-4 Review
• Timepieces. (Picador, 2002) ISBN 0330363727 Review SMH Review 2002
• The Green in Glass: The work of Janet Laurence. (Sydney: Pesaro, 2005)

Edited

• The Poems of Lesbia Harford. (1985)
• Sisters. (Angus & Robertson, 1995) ISBN 0207190321
• The best Australian essays. (Black Inc. 2006) ISBN 1863952780

References

External links

• Our Future Thinkers Essay from The Monthly
• Re-storying the self by Lekkie Hopkins