Mining Modjeska’s archive with Dr Bernadette Brennan

Join Dr Bernadette Brennan as she presents a lecture on her 2024 National Library Fellowship research into the archives of award-winning author and editor Drusilla Modjeska.

Drusilla Modjeska is the award-winning author and editor of 14 books and scores of essays and reviews. She is perhaps best known for her boundary-crossing works of biography and memoir which celebrate the legacies of women writers and artists, and wrestle with questions about love, writing and independence. Modjeska’s embargoed archive, held by the National Library, tells a rich, complex and, at times, heart-breaking story about her life and work.

Dr 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).