Suzanne Falkiner

Suzanne Falkiner (born 1952) is an Australian writer. Born in Sydney, she grew up in western New South Wales and was educated at the University of New South Wales, Columbia University and University of Technology, Sydney. After travelling extensively and working in various publishing and editing positions, she currently lives in Sydney and works as a full-time writer.

Awards and nominations

• 1980: Runner up in the Australian Vogel award
• 1981: Runner up in the Australian Vogel award for Rain in the Distance
• 1996: Shortlisted for the Nita B. Kibble Award in 1996 for Ethel: A Love Story
• 2001: Shortlisted (with Alan Oldfield) for the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards (History) for Lizard Island: The Journey of Mary Watson
• 2002: Shortlisted (with Alan Oldfield) for the NSW Premier's History Awards for Lizard Island: The Journey of Mary Watson

Bibliography

Fiction

• Rain in the Distance (1986) novel
• After the Great Novelist (1989) travel stories

Non-fiction

• Australian Aborigines: Shadows in a Landscape 1979 (with photographs by Laurence Le Guay): an essay on Aboriginal Australia
• Australians Today 1985 (with photographs by Lorrie Graham): a portrait of multicultural Australia
• Eugenia: A Man (1988) biography: the story of Eugenia Falleni, and the ‘Man-Woman Case’, about a transsexual accused of murder in 1920s Sydney. New edition with revisions and update chapter published by Xoum, Sydney, in 2014.
• The Writer's Landscape: Wilderness and Settlement (1992) an essay in two volumes on the role of landscape in defining Australian literature. Deals with the writings of early settlers, explorers and social commentators through to later writers and poets including Henry Lawson, Eve Langley, Douglas Stewart, Thea Astley, Patrick White, Randolph Stow, Elizabeth Jolley, Robin Davison
• Ethel: A Love Story (1996) biography: a portrait of early 20th-century Australian society
• Lizard Island: The Journey of Mary Watson (2001) biography, accompanied by a monograph on the artist Alan Oldfield and his narrative series of paintings 'The story of Mrs Watson 1881': explores the death of Mary Watson, her Chinese servant and her four-month-old baby son after their escape from Lizard Island in Far North Queensland, and the previously-unrecorded massacre of Aborigines that followed
• Joan in India (2008) biography: the story of Joan Falkiner, an Australian woman who married the Muslim ruler H.H. Taley Muhammed Khan, the Nawab of Palanpur, in 1939, and lived with him in Gujarat throughout the period leading to Indian Independence
• The Imago: E. L. Grant Watson & Australia (2011) biography, describes the Australian journeys of English biologist and writer Elliot Lovegood Grant Watson, and his subsequent works
• Mrs Mort's Madness (2014), the true story of a Sydney scandal from 1920, involving the murder of Claude Tozer by his lover Dorothy Mort. Mort was found not guilty on the ground of insanity.
• "Mick: A Life of Randolph Stow", biography.

As editor

• Room to Move: The Redress Press Book of Australian Short Stories (1985, United States 1986)

External links

• Interview with Suzanne Falkiner on Joan in India, presenter Phillip Adams Late Night Live, ABC Radio National, 25/11/09
• [http://suzannefalkiner.com]] Suzanne Falkiner website
• Dark Star Safari; Swahili for the Broken-Hearted; Sahara, By Suzanne Falkiner, 28 December 2002