NRB’s Australian Women Writers’ Quiz
Here’s a quiz to test your knowledge of Australian women’s writing, past and present. With bonus points it’s possible to get 23 out of 20 – and give yourself an elephant stamp if you can identify the photos as well. Good luck and let us know how you go!
1 The Stella Prize was founded in 2013 to recognise Australian women’s writing. Who won the 2015 Stella Prize and with what book?
2 What are the real names of: Henry Handel Richardson, Brent of Bin Bin, Helen Demidenko, Sara Douglass?
3 A recent Australian novel is about a woman obsessed with Wuthering Heights. Name the novel and the author.
4 The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet continues Jane Austen’s classic beyond the marriage of Elizabeth and Darcy. Which Australian author wrote it?
5 Discovered by Lucy Sussex, who is now acknowledged to have been Australia’s first woman crime writer?
6 Who wrote Am I Black Enough For You? published in 2012 and winner of the Victorian Premier’s Award for Indigenous Writing?
7 The first Australian novel by a woman writer – a gothic romance called The Guardian: A tale – was published in 1838. Who was the writer?
8 The following quote is from which book, by which author? Maybe I couldn’t make it. Maybe I don’t have a pretty smile, good teeth, nice tits, long legs, a cheeky arse, a sexy voice. Maybe I don’t know how to handle men and increase my market value, so that the rewards due to the feminine will accrue to me. Then again, maybe I’m sick of the masquerade?
9 She was profoundly deaf and wrote 14 successful crime novels in the 1960s and 1970s. Who was she? Bonus point if you can name any of the books.
10 … And continuing that theme, a recent debut crime novel had a deaf protagonist called Caleb Zelic. What was the book called and who wrote it?
11 Name the Australian author who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006. What was the title of the winning book?
12 She wrote Ducks on the Pond: An autobiography, among other books, but is best known for her feminist manifesto published in 1975. Who is she and what is the title of that book?
13 Kylie Tennant (1912–1988) wrote 11 novels. Name two of them.
14 The novel The Transit of Venus won the US National Book Critics Circle Award. Who was its Australian author?
15 The author of the novel Lambs of God is also known for her crime fiction. Who is she? Bonus point if you can name the protagonist in the crime novels.
16 Sea Hearts is a novel inspired by the ancient myth of the selkie. Who wrote it?
17 Peter Pierce said in Meanjin: she ‘talks dirty and passes it off as realism’. Who was he reviewing? Bonus point for the title of the book.
18 Comedian Magda Szubanski recently published a memoir. What is its title?
19 In the 13th century a woman willingly walls herself up, away from the world. What is the title of the book about this woman and who wrote it?
20 This is a quote from which book, from which writer? An that mama, in the Bible, she float that baby right on down the river, away from the strife that was headin to him, even though it broke her heart.
Answers below.
Answers
1 Emily Bitto The Strays
2 Ethel (Florence Lindesay) Richardson and/or married name Robertson), Stella (Maria Sarah) Miles Franklin, Helen Darville, Sara Warneke
3 The Women’s Pages, Debra Adelaide
5 Mary Fortune
7 Anna Maria Bunn
8 The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer
9 Patricia Carlon novels – Child of Fear, Danger in the Dark, Who Are You, Linda Condrick? The Price of an Orphan, The Unquiet Night, Crime of Silence, Betray Me If You Dare, The Running Woman, See Nothing, Say Nothing, Hush, It’s a Game, Forty Pieces of Alloy, The Whispering Wall, The Souvenir, Death By Demonstration
10 Resurrection Bay, Emma Viskic
11 Geraldine Brooks, March
12 Anne Summers
13 Kylie Tennant titles: Tiburon, Foveaux, The Battlers, Time Enough Later, Ride On Stranger, Lost Haven, The Joyful Condemned, The Honey Flow, Tell Morning This, The Man on the Headland, Tantavallon
14 Shirley Hazzard
15 Marele Day. Character’s name, Claudia Valentine
17 Helen Garner, Honour and Other People’s Children
18 Reckoning
19 The Anchoress, Robyn Cadwallader
20 Foreign Soil, Maxine Beneba Clarke
Pictures – top, Henry Handel Richardson; middle, Kylie Tennant
