Some of Australia’s best-known literary hoaxes are examined in detail in a new book to be launched this month.
The hoaxes, impostures and identity crises in Australian literature are featured in a special issue of the scholarly journal Australian Literary Studies, published by University of Queensland Press.
The 179-page book, entitled Who’s Who? will be launched at The University of Queensland’s Fryer Library on February 17, at 5pm, at a function hosted by the Friends of Fryer.
Mr Michael Williams, Director of UQ’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit will do a welcome to country, and Friends of Fryer patron Mrs Kaye de Jersey will welcome guests to the Library.
Dr Leigh Dale, of UQ’s School of English, Media Studies and Art History and general editor of the journal, has handed over the reins of the special issue to UQ graduates Dr Maggie Nolan and Dr Carrie Dawson.
Dr Nolan, now a lecturer at Australian Catholic University, and Dr Dawson, who is based at Dalhousie University in Canada, have both published extensively in the area of hoaxes and identity crises.
Dr Nolan said she and Dr Dawson had become interested in literary hoaxes and identity crises while undertaking their Masters and PhD studies respectively at UQ in the 1990s.
“One of the first people I met at UQ was Helen Demidenko, whose prize-winning novel The Hand That Signed the Paper was said to be based on her family’s experiences of the Ukrainian famine in the 1930s, and their subsequent collaboration with the Nazis in the Holocaust” Dr Nolan said.
“The public debate about Demidenko’s identity led to a reconsideration of other instances of alleged imposture, and of what they might tell us about the desire for authenticity in multicultural Australia.”
The book includes articles on identity crises in Australian literature over the past 140 years, with the earliest subject the Tichborne Claimant, a Wagga Wagga butcher who proclaimed himself an English heir in the 19th century.
Topics also include controversies surrounding Ern Malley, Mudrooroo, Wanda Koolmatrie, and popular novelists ‘Carter Brown’ and Nino Culotta, who had their identities created and then questioned.
UQ academics with chapters in the book include Professor Gillian Whitlock, from the School of English, Media Studies and Art History, whose essay ‘The Khouri Affair’ focuses on Norma Khouri’s autobiography Forbidden Love, which was an international best-seller until it was revealed to be a fabrication, and last year withdrawn from sale.
Other UQ contributors turned their attention to popular writers: Associate Professor David Carter, Director of the Australian Studies Centre, considers Nino Culotta, while Dr Toni Johnson-Woods from the Contemporary Studies Program has an intriguing essay on pulp fiction writer ‘Carter Brown’.
Who’s Who? will be launched by Professor Elizabeth Webby, Professor of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney, and winner of the A.A. Phillips Prize for her distinguished and foundational role in the field.
Australian Literary Studies is a refereed scholarly journal, which publishes essays and reviews for readers and scholars of Australian Literature (UQ Press, $22.50), web address: www.uq.edu.au/~enldale
Media: Further information, please contact Dr Maggie Nolan, telephone 0419 744482 or Dr Leigh Dale, telephone 07 3365 2338.
