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Most generously donated by Adjunct Professor Susan Magarey, the Magarey Medal for Biography is awarded to the female person who has published the work judged to be the best biographical writing on an Australian subject. The awarding of the prize is administered and judged by a panel established by the Australian Historical Association and the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. Sylvia Martin Ida Leeson: A Life. Not a Blue-Stocking Lady Allen & Unwin, 2006 Citation This is a beautifully written life of Ida Leeson, the first woman to be appointed to a senior Australian library position in 1932, as Mitchell Librarian. It was a controversial appointment, and easily marks the central narrative of the Leeson's life, and yet it forms only one of many fascinating aspects of this biography.
This is a compelling and intellectually fascinating book, which models the very best of contemporary biographical writing.
Alison Bartlett (UWA) Chair
David McCooey (Deakin) Melanie Nolan (Victoria U, Wellington) Prue Torney-Parlicki Behind the News: A Biography of Peter Russo Perth, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 2005 Citation Behind the News by Prue Torney (formerly known as Prue Torney-Parlicki), published by the University of Western Australia Press, is a meticulously researched and engagingly written study of Peter Russo, journalist and commentator, linguist and Asian specialist. As one of the most controversial media figures of twentieth-century Australia, Russo proved an ideal subject for very intriguing biographical study. To quote from the biography: 'Urbane and charming, yet also haughty, acerbic and cynical, with more than a touch of malice, Russo was a gadfly, a provocateur'. Fluent in eight languages and with an abiding interest in Asia, Russo interpreted events in Japan, Korea, Indo-China, Malaysia and Egypt in a confronting and unorthodox manner, during the most trenchant years of the 'White Australia Policy' and the Cold War. His expertise in this field, especially his knowledge of Japan, meant that he played an important, though unacknowledged role in Australian politics and foreign policy. The book succeeds admirably in bringing back into the spotlight a leading public intellectual whose contribution to building links between Australia and Asia and to making Australians more conscious of their Asian neighbours was clearly very influential.
Behind the News is the second of two important books on Australia's relations with Asia by Prue Torney (1956–2006). In Somewhere in Asia: War, Journalism and Australia's Neighbours 1941–75 (UNSW Press, 2000) she explored the role of war correspondents in shaping the attitudes of Australians to neighbouring countries in Asia. Prue Torney had an abiding interest in the history of journalism in Australia. She contributed an entry on war reporting to the Oxford Companion to Australian History (OUP, 1998), and her book chapters were included in several edited collections on the history of journalism. Her articles were published in such journals as Australian Historical Studies, Australian Journal of Politics and History, the Journal of Australian Studies, War and Society, and Overland. Prue Torney had a long association with the History Department at the University of Melbourne. She returned to study as a mature-aged student in the 1980s, and completed combined Honours in History and English. She was awarded the Gyles Turner Prize in Australian History in 1990, the Kathleen Fitzpatrick Exhibition in English and History (Combined Honours) in 1992 and the Brian Fitzpatrick Prize in History (Honours) in 1992. She went straight on to doctoral studies on the role of war correspondents in educating the Australian public about Asia, and this was the basis of her first monograph, Somewhere in Asia. She maintained a close association with the History Department, as a tutor, lecturer, research assistant and research associate. In 2005, she was appointed to a Research Fellowship in the History Department to work on her project on column writing in Australian newspapers.
Elizabeth Webby
Penny Russell Mary Spongberg July 2006 2006 Magarey Medal Highly Commended
The book is beautifully illustrated with photographs of the artist's paintings and other memorabilia from the sea chest. Cassi Plate deftly weaves discussion of these images into her text, so enhancing the hybrid nature of her biography.
Penny Russell
Mary Spongberg Elizabeth Webby July 2006 Isabel Flick and Heather Goodall Isabel Flick: The Many Lives of an Extraordinary Aboriginal Woman Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2004 Citation Isabel Flick: The Many Lives of an Extraordinary Aboriginal Woman, by Isabel Flick and Heather Goodall, and published by Allen & Unwin, is, as Linda Burney says in her Foreword, the story of an Australian hero. It is also an outstanding example of a collaboration between its subject, Isabel Flick, and her chosen interviewer, adviser and editor, Heather Goodall, in which it remains Isabel's autobiography despite her death halfway through the process. Before she died, Isabel Flick asked Goodall and her family to complete her story. The result is a multi-layered account of her 'many lives' which accurately reflects the circles of family, friends, communities and political organisations that Flick sustained and within which she worked. Isabel Flick: The Many Lives of an Extraordinary Aboriginal Woman does what a good biography or autobiography does: it tells the story of a life, and through that life it tells the story of a family, a community, a series of networks, and a nation.
When Isabel Flick returned to Collarenebri in 1978 she remained at the centre of local and national networks concerned with housing, education, deaths in custody, land rights and women's welfare. She was awarded the Order of Australia in 1986. When Isabel Flick asked Heather Goodall to help record and edit her life story, they had been friends for many years. They had met in 1974 when Heather was a graduate student recording Aboriginal oral histories. Since then she had become a prize-winning scholar of Aboriginal history and was an Associate Professor of History at the University of Technology, Sydney. Beginning in 1997, they recorded Isabel's memories, visited important sites, and had many group discussions with family and friends. Their recording sessions had only reached 1972 when Isabel died of lung cancer in February 2002. The book therefore is mainly in Isabel's voice in the first five chapters and has more of Heather Goodall's voice in the final seven chapters. But as Goodall says in her introduction, "it has been important for me that it remains Isabel's book, with an autobiography at its core which explores the questions she wanted to ask about her life." She has succeeded admirably in this, drawing on Isabel's carefully saved papers, on conversations with Heather over the years and the vivid and eloquent memories of those who knew her well, to make a seamless book that remains, very much, Isabel's. The book is beautifully produced by Allen & Unwin, with good quality paper and an attractive font. The narrative flows smoothly through Isabel's words, Goodall's contextual links (marked by italics) and the interspersed narratives of others (marked by a line at the side). Sustaining the differences of tone and point of view in this syncretic melding of voices is one of the book's most remarkable achievements, as events are recounted by more than one participant and the angle of view shifts. The multi-planed portrait of Flick that emerges is a testimony to the worth of such embedded, multi-voiced biography, drawing on the collective model of ethnography and yet sustaining Flick's own account of herself and her life as its centre. There are charming and helpful maps, a family tree and numerous photographs drawing on family albums and other archival sources. Heather Goodall is currently an Associate Professor in Social Inquiry and a member of the Centre for Trans/forming Cultures at the University of Technology, Sydney. She has worked in collaboration with Aboriginal people on many projects since the early 1970s. Her book, Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales, was awarded the NSW Premier's Prize for Australian History in 1997. As Ann Curthoys says in her tribute at the front of Isabel Flick: The Many Lives of an Extraordinary Aboriginal Woman, this is a wonderful book that made her laugh, cry, and think afresh. This is what the best life stories can do, and that is why this book has been awarded the inaugural Magarey Medal for Biography.
Professor Desley Deacon (Chair)
History Program, Research School of Social Sciences Australian National University Associate Professor Barbara Milech Communication and Cultural Studies Curtin University Dr. Nicole Moore Department of English Macquarie University |
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