Dr Stephanie Bishop

Overview

Stephanie Bishop’s first novel, The Singing, was published in 2005. As a result of this publication she was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian Novelists (2006). The Singing was also Highly Commended for the Kathleen Mitchell Award.

Stephanie went on to complete her PhD at Cambridge where she worked on contemporary American poetry and poetics. Her thesis examined the work of Jorie Graham and explored the way in which time is experienced through sound.

Her second novel (recently completed) was supported by an Australia Council New Work grant (2008) and an Asialink Fellowship (2011). This novel draws on family history in order to examine the experience of Ten Pound Poms and the Anglo-Indians among them who migrated to Australia from England during the time of the White Australia Policy.

Her research and writing interests include the modernist and contemporary novel, visual theory in the novel, thing theory, contemporary free verse, philosophical aesthetics, psychoanalysis, life writing and the nature-writing tradition. She is currently working on her third novel.

Stephanie writes regular reviews for the Times Literary Supplement. Her reviews have also appeared in The Weekend Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Book Review.

Teaching

Stephanie teaches widely in the area of contemporary literature and creative writing. She lectures on the short story form, the Anglo-American novel and the composition of the novel.

Courses Convened:
ARTS1010 The Life of Words
ARTS3051 Fiction Writing

Publications

Books
The Singing, Brandl & Schlesinger, Sydney, 2005

Children of England, manuscript completed 2012. Currently under consideration.


Journal Papers
‘Weatherman’ (memoir currently being considered by Griffith Review)

‘Reading with Freud’, review of Surrealism, Feminism, Psychoanalysis by Natalya Lusty and Modernism, Memory and Desire by Gabrielle McIntire in Women: A Cultural Review, Vol. 20, Issue 3, December 2009, (pp. 339-341)

‘In the New Hours’, The Cultural Studies Review. Vol. 8, No. 2 November 2002, (pp. 142-149)

Chapters
‘This Little Piggy’ in 4 Plays by Young Australian Playwrights, Queanbeyan, New South Wales: Queanbeyan Cultural Centre, 1999, (pp. 69-87)

Other Publications:

Poetry
‘Versions’, Overland. No.177, Summer 2004, (p. 90)

Reviews and Review Essays

The Times Literary Supplement:
‘Mysterious Ways’, review of The Land of Decoration by Grace McCleen and The Revelations by Alex Preston, April 6, 2012, (p. 20)

‘That Sunday Feeling’, review of Landfall by Helen Gordon, November 18, 2011, (p.21)

‘English Ways’, review of The Novel in the Viola, by Natasha Solomons, May 20, 2011, (p.20)

‘Circles of Age’, review of The Summer Without Men, by Siri Hustvedt, March 4, 2011, (p. 20)

‘Besotted With Pain’, review of Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa, June 18, 2010, (p. 20)

‘Adrift in Mobile’, review of Savage Lands by Clare Clark, March 5, 2010, (p.21)

The Australian Literary Review:
‘Odd Lives Laid Bare’, review of Nightstreet by Kristel Thornell, Utopian Man by Lisa Lang, The Vintage and The Gleaning, by Jeremy Chambers, Milk Fever by Lisa Reece-Jones, Vol. 5, No. 8, September 2010, (p. 17)

‘There’s No Place Like Home’, review of The Blue Plateau by Mark Tredinnick, Sydney Harbour: A History by Ian Hoskins and Smalltown by Martin Mischkulnig and Tim Winton, Vol. 5, No.2, March 2010, (pp. 18-19)

‘Prisoners of Consciousness’, review of The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams and One Foot Wrong by Sofia Laguna. Vol. 3, No. 8, September 2008, (p. 22)

‘Clock Teaser Under Cover’, review of Anonymity: A Secret History of English Literature by John Mullan, Vol. 3, No. 4, May 2008, (p. 22)


The Weekend Australian (Review Section):
‘The Nearness of Heartbreak’, review of The Voyagers: A Love Story by Mardi McConnochie, May 28 2011, (p.21)

‘Shouting in the Kitchen’, review of Too Close to Home by Georgia Blain, May 7 2011, (pp. 20-21)

‘Celebrity Watch in Byron’, review of Me, Myself and I by Julietta Jameson, February 26, 2011, (pp.20-21)

‘The Formative Pull of the West’, review of Sand by John Kinsella and Robert Drewe, November 13, 2010, (pp. 26-27)

‘What Price Mr Right?’, review of Fall Girl by Toni Jordan, October 30, 2010, (p.22)

‘Tragic Vicissitudes of the Vulnerable’, review of I Came to Say Goodbye by Carline Overington, October 23, 2010, (p. 27)

‘How to Find Your Mr Wrong (Again)’, review of Men of Bad Character by Kathleen Stewart, September 25, 2010, (p. 24)

‘The Darkness of A Girl’s Own Adventure’, review of This is Shyness by Leanne Hall, September 4, 2010, (pp. 18-19)

‘A Stoic Sisterhood Mired in Marriage’, review of Private Life by Jane Smiley, June 19, 2010, (p. 24)


The Australian Book Review:
‘The Nearest thing to Life’, review of How Fiction Works by James Wood, No. 301, February 2008, (p. 14-15)

‘Cutting to the Quick’, review of The Children by Charlotte Wood, No. 295, October 2007, (p. 29)

‘Mixed Grill’, review of Island (108) and Etching (2), No. 294, September 2007, (pp. 50-51)

The Sydney Morning Herald (Spectrum Section)
‘Dull Points in a Shiny Life’, review of By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham, October 2, 2010, (p. 34)

‘Time Turned on its Head’, review of How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall, August, 15, 2009, (p. 30)

‘From Privilege to Exile’, review of Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee, March 9, 2007, (p. 34)

‘The Birth of the Blues’, review of Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk, December 2, 2006 (p. 39)

‘What Shapes a Human Life?’ review of Dark Roots by Cate Kennedy, September 23, 2006, (p. 34)

Other
Review of Changing Ways of Death in Twentieth Century Australia by Pat Jalland in Jas Review of Books, No. 44, July 2006, available online

Review of The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers by Delia Falconer in Jas Review of Books, No. 40, January 2006, available online

Review of The Transparent Body by José van Dijk in Jas Review of Books No. 36, August 2005, available online

Contributions

Co-ordinator of the UNSW Postgraduate Writers’ Group
Co-ordination of UNSWriting (2012)
UNSW representative for the Sydney Writers’ Festival (2012)
Judge for the Lionel Bowen Young Writers Award (2012)