Thea Beatrice May Astley (25 August 1925 – 17 August 2004) was an Australian novelist and short story writer. She was a prolific writer who was published for over 40 years from 1958. At the time of her death, she had won more

Miles Franklin Award The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879–195 ...

s, Australia's major literary award, than any other writer. As well as being a writer, she taught at all levels of education – primary, secondary and tertiary. Astley has a significant place in Australian letters as she was "the only woman novelist of her generation to have won early success and published consistently throughout the 1960s and 1970s, when the literary world was heavily male-dominated"."Introduction" in Sheridan, Susan and Genomi, Paul (eds) (2008) ''Thea Astley's Fictional Worlds'', Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Life

Born in

Brisbane Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the states and territories of Australia, Australian state of Queensland, and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a populati ...

and educated at

All Hallows' School , motto_translation = God and Duty , city = Brisbane , state = Queensland , postcode = 4000 , country = Australia , coordinates = , type ...

, Astley studied arts at the

University of Queensland , mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work , established = , endowment = A$224.3 million , budget = A$2.1 billion , type = Public research university , chancellor = Peter Varghese , vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry , city = B ...

then trained to become a

teacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...

. After marrying Jack Gregson in 1948, she moved to

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

where she taught at various high schools, as well as kept up with her writing. She tutored at

Macquarie University Macquarie University ( ) is a public research university based in Sydney, Australia, in the suburb of Macquarie Park. Founded in 1964 by the New South Wales Government, it was the third university to be established in the metropolitan area of S ...

from 1968 to 1980, before retiring to write full-time, at which time she and her husband moved to Kuranda in North Queensland. In the late 1980s they moved to

Nowra, New South Wales Nowra is a city in the South Coast, New South Wales, South Coast region of New South Wales, Australia. It is located south-southwest of the state capital of Sydney (about as the crow flies). As of the 2021 census, Nowra has an estimated popula ...

, on the state's south coast, and, after her husband's death in 2003, she moved to Byron Bay to be near her only child, Ed Gregson, a musician and television producer. In addition to her passion for writing, Astley, along with her husband, had a great love of music, particularly jazz and chamber music. Wyndham writes that "in person and in print, the chain-smoking Astley was unsentimental, wickedly funny and yet had a deep kindness and a loathing of injustice towards Aborigines, underdogs and misfits".Wyndham (2004a) p. 79 Thea Astley died at the John Flynn Hospital on the Gold Coast in 2004. In 2005, the Thea Astley lecture was instituted at the Byron Bay Writers Festival, with

Kate Grenville Catherine Elizabeth Grenville (born 1950) is an Australian author. She has published fifteen books, including fiction, non-fiction, biography, and books about the writing process. In 2001, she won the Orange Prize for '' The Idea of Perfectio ...

delivering the inaugural one.

Career

Astley's novels won four

s and in 1989 the author won the

Patrick White Award The Patrick White Award is an annual literary prize established by Patrick White. White used his 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature award to establish a trust for this prize. The $25,000 cash award is given to a writer who has been highly creative o ...

for services to Australian literature and was awarded an honorary

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

by the University of Queensland. Much of her writing, which draws heavily from her early childhood, is set in

Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , established_ ...

, which she has described as "the place where the tall yarn happens, where it is lived out by people who are the dramatis personae of the tall yarns."Thea Astley
(Jessie Street National Women's Library) Accessed: 22 January 2007. Astley nearly became a journalist, following her father's footsteps, but was refused a position by the ''Brisbane Telegraph'' for being too old when she applied after having finished her university degree. She sold her first poem under the name "Phillip Cressy" because men were paid £5, while women were only paid £3.cited by Wyndham (2004) p. 79 Her first book, ''Girl with a monkey'' was published in 1958. The author noted that "I wrote quite a bit of it before Ed was born and entered it in the ''Herald'' and got an honourable mention. So I thought. 'Oh well, I'll bung it into A&R's, which was the only publisher I knew'". After the publication of her third book, ''The Well-dressed Explorer'', the ''Herald's'' reviewer,

Sidney J. Baker Sidney may refer to: People * Sidney (surname), English surname * Sidney (given name), including a list of people with the given name * Sidney (footballer, born 1972), full name Sidney da Silva Souza, Brazilian football defensive midfielder * ...

, wrote "With this book, Miss Astley earns a place among the leaders of modern Australian fiction". He associated her with writers such as

Patrick White Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990) was a British-born Australian writer who published 12 novels, three short-story collections, and eight plays, from 1935 to 1987. White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, ...

and

Hal Porter Harold Edward "Hal" Porter (16 February 1911 – 29 September 1984) was an Australian novelist, playwright, poet and short story writer. Biography Porter was born in Albert Park, Victoria, grew up in Bairnsdale, and worked as a journalist, te ...

who wrote "poetic prose ... an important but by no means popular dimension to Australian fiction". Her early style, in particular, used "obscure polysyllables, formal syntax and lush imagery

hich Ij ( fa, ايج, also Romanized as Īj; also known as Hich and Īch) is a village in Golabar Rural District, in the Central District of Ijrud County, Zanjan Province, Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also ...

divided critics and daunted many readers". In 1997, Thea Astley wrote in a column for ''Australian House & Garden'' magazine that "For me the chief advantage of writing is that it can be done anywhere. I recall writing almost the whole of a short story in ''Hunting the Wild Pineapple'' on a plane coming down from Cooktown. I've taken copious notes at a luncheon table in Santo, in small pub rooms in Charleville and Roma when I was on the Writers' Train. I've written in a convent bedroom on Palm Island, on the wharf at Magnetic sland. Two weeks before her death, Astley appeared at the Byron Bay Writers' Festival and gave "a brilliantly comic reading of 'Why I Wrote a Story Called the Diesel Epiphany', a short story about one of her many journeys by bus with all its annoyances". A plaque commemorating Astley's writing is included in the

Sydney Writers Walk The Sydney Writers Walk is a series of 60 circular metal plaques embedded in the footpath between Overseas Passenger Terminal on West Circular Quay and the Sydney Opera House forecourt on East Circular Quay. The plaques were installed to honour ...

at Circular Quay.

Influences

In her early years she was friends with

and

Thomas Keneally Thomas Michael Keneally, AO (born 7 October 1935) is an Australian novelist, playwright, essayist, and actor. He is best known for his non-fiction novel ''Schindler's Ark'', the story of Oskar Schindler's rescue of Jews during the Holocaust, wh ...

. She had few female literary contemporaries until the 1980s.

Style and themes

According to the ''AustLit Gateway News'' Astley was "revered for her meticulous and controlled use of language and her portrayals of the Queensland landscape and character, ndwas renowned for her quick wit, raspy voice, and ever-present cigarettes". Many of her books explore the "geography and politics of the small community". Astley built a reputation as a "metaphoric" writer, resulting in a style that alienated some readers and critics. In an interview with Candida Baker, Astley quotes

Helen Garner Helen Garner (née Ford, born 7 November 1942) is an Australian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. Garner's first novel, ''Monkey Grip (novel), Monkey Grip'', published in 1977, immediately established her as an origina ...

as saying "I simply hate her style" and goes on to say "I can't resist using imagistic language. I like it. I really don't do it to annoy reviewers". In her review of ''An Item from the Late News'', Garner wrote "Great story, great characters ... Stylistically, however, this book is like a very handsome, strong and fit woman with too much makeup on ... This kind of writing drives me berserk". Despite tepid reception among some, there were also many who admired Astley's writing for both its style and for the subject matter, such as writer

Kerryn Goldsworthy Dr. Kerryn Lee Goldsworthy (born 14 May 1953) is an Australian freelance writer and former academic. Life and career Goldsworthy has edited four anthologies of Australian writing. She has also written many articles, essays and reviews. She has ...

, who was quoted as saying, "I love its densely woven grammar, its ingrained humour, its uncompromising politics, and its undimmed outrage at human folly, stupidity and greed".Goldsworthy (1999) Goldsworthy continues to say that "her body of work ver four decadesadds up to a protracted study in the way that full-scale violence and tragedy can flower extravagantly from the withered seeds of malice and resentment ... The perps in ''

Drylands Drylands are defined by a scarcity of water. Drylands are zones where precipitation is balanced by evaporation from surfaces and by transpiration by plants (evapotranspiration). The United Nations Environment Program defines drylands as tropical ...

'' are all her usual suspects: racists, developers, hypocritical gung-ho civic do-gooders, and assorted unreconstructed male-supremacist swine". Academic and literary editor, Delys Bird, summarises the author's themes as follows: "Astley's novels and stories typically present a sceptical view of social relationships among ordinary people, one often coloured by her former Catholicism, and directed through the struggles of her self-conscious protagonists to find an expressive space within their uncongenial surroundings". In several novels, such as ''A Kindness Cup'' and ''The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow'', she explores the relationships between white and Indigenous Australian societies. Leigh Dale writes that ''A Kindness Cup'' "focuses on the massacre of a group of Aborigines and the efforts made to forget and to remember this violence at a town reunion twenty years later, is marked largely by the rage and frustration felt by its central character who seems to mirror Astley's horror at the genial amorality that pervades some rural communities." Astley found her material in newspaper stories and through her travels, but mostly in the various communities she and her husband lived in. In north Queensland, for example, she "found a wealth of stories and 'screwball' characters by listening to people in the small towns and wilderness of the tropics". In 1997, she wrote "Sadly, the north has changed. As we say up there: beautiful one day, developed the next. I keep writing about it. I can't help myself".

Influence

Astley encouraged many friends and students to pursue careers in writing, and is regularly quoted by other teachers, particularly her advice that writing one page a day "adds up to a book in a year".

Adaptations

*1983: ''Descant for gossips'' (

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster ** Disney–ABC Television ...

, miniseries) *2004: ''Drylands'' optioned by

Anthony Buckley Anthony Buckley AO (born 27 July 1937) is an Australian film editor and producer. Career On leaving school, Buckley went to work for Cinesound Productions as a projectionist and assistant editor. He worked in Canada and Britain before return ...

(but not made as of 2008)

Awards and nominations

* 1962:

for ''

The Well Dressed Explorer ''The Well Dressed Explorer'' (1962) is a Miles Franklin Award-winning novel by Australian author Thea Astley Thea Beatrice May Astley (25 August 1925 – 17 August 2004) was an Australian novelist and short story writer. She was a prolifi ...

'' * 1965:

for ''The Slow Natives'' * 1965: Moomba Award for ''The Slow Natives'' * 1972:

for ''The Acolyte'' * 1975: The Age Book of the Year Fiction Award for ''The Kindness Cup'' * 1980: Australian Literature Studies Award for ''Hunting the Wild Pineapple'' * 1980: Member of the Order of Australia (AM) * 1986:

ALS Gold Medal The Australian Literature Society Gold Medal (ALS Gold Medal) is awarded annually by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature for "an outstanding literary work in the preceding calendar year." From 1928 to 1974 it was awarded by the ...

for ''Beachmasters'' * 1989:

* 1990:

New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards The New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, also known as the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, were first awarded in 1979. They are among the richest literary awards in Australia. Notable prizes include the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, th ...

, Christina Stead Prize for fiction for ''Reaching Tin River'' * 1992: Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) * 1996: The Age Book of the Year Fiction Award for ''The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow'' * 1999:

for ''Drylands'' * 2000:

Queensland Premier's Literary Awards The Queensland Premier's Literary Awards were an Australian suite of literary awards inaugurated in 1999 and disestablished in 2012. It was one of the most generous suites of literary awards within Australia, with $225,000 in prize money across ...

, Fiction Book Award for ''Drylands'' * 2002:

, Special Award for being "a trailblazer"

Bibliography

Novels

*'' Girl with a Monkey'' (1958) *'' A Descant for Gossips'' (1960) *''

'' (1962) *'' The Slow Natives'' (1965) *'' A Boat Load of Home Folk'' (1968) *'' The Acolyte'' (1972) *'' A Kindness Cup'' (1974) *'' An Item from the Late News'' (1982) *''

Beachmasters ''Beachmasters'' (1985) is a novel by Australian author Thea Astley. It won the 1986 ALS Gold Medal The Australian Literature Society Gold Medal (ALS Gold Medal) is awarded annually by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature fo ...

'' (1985) *''It's Raining in Mango'' (1987) *'' Reaching Tin River'' (1990) *''

Vanishing Points ''Vanishing Points'' (1992) is a novel by Australian author Thea Astley. It consists of two loosely linked novellas, ''The Genteel Poverty Bus Company'' and ''Inventing the Weather''. Reviews A reviewer for ''Publishers Weekly'' noted: "As depi ...

'' (1992) *''

Coda Coda or CODA may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * Movie coda, a post-credits scene * ''Coda'' (1987 film), an Australian horror film about a serial killer, made for television *''Coda'', a 2017 American experimental film from Na ...

'' (1994) *'' The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow'' (1996) *''

'' (1999)

Short stories

*''Hunting the Wild Pineapple'' (1979) *''Collected Stories'' (1997)

Notes

References

*Astley, Thea (1997) "Writing Rooms" in ''Australian House & Garden'', 98 (5): 63–64, October 1997
AustLit Gateway News September/October 2004
*Baker, Candida (1986) ''Yacker: Australian writers talk about their work'' *Bird, Delys (2000) "New narrations: contemporary fiction" in Webby, Elizabeth (ed.) ''The Cambridge companion to Australian literature'', Cambridge, Cambridge University Press *Dale, Leigh (1999) "Colonial History and Post-Colonial Fiction: The Writing of Thea Astley", ''Australian Literary Studies'', Vol. 19 *Falkiner, Suzanne (1992) ''Settlement'' (Series: Writers' Landscape), East Roseville, Simon and Schuster

(Incomplete article available on website) *Sheridan, Susan and Genoni, Paul (Eds) (2006), ''Thea Astley's Fictional Worlds'', Cambridge Scholars

Accessed 25 August 2006 *Wyndham, Susan (2004a) "Journey of a literary trailblazer: Thea Astley, author, 1925-2004", ''

The Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...

'', Weekend Edition, 21–22 August 2004, p. 79
Wyndham, Susan (2004b) "Literary World Mourns Thea Astley" in ''The Sydney Morning Herald'', 2004-08-17
Accessed: 2008-04-18

External links

at middlemiss.org
AustLit entry on Thea Astley
{{DEFAULTSORT:Astley, Thea 1925 births 2004 deaths Australian women novelists Australian women short story writers Writers from New South Wales Writers from Brisbane Miles Franklin Award winners Patrick White Award winners 20th-century Australian novelists 20th-century Australian women writers ALS Gold Medal winners 20th-century Australian short story writers Australian Book Review people People educated at All Hallows' School Officers of the Order of Australia