Heroines Festival Book Month Program

Cathy
Perkins
& The Shelf Life of
Zora Cross
Cathy’s Book Club
Nomination
Cathy Perkins is a writer and editor from Sydney with an
interest in the life stories of forgotten literary figures. Her
recent biography The Shelf Life of Zora Cross uncovers
the life of a once-famous poet, journalist and actress who
published a provocative series of sonnets in 1917. The
Sydney Morning Herald’s Spectrum called the book an
‘imaginatively conceived biography’ and a ‘fascinating
read’, and it was shortlisted for the Australian History
Prize of the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Cathy edits
the award-winning SL magazine and other publications
at the State Library of NSW, and has worked as a book
editor, literary agent, bookseller, and for the Australian
Society of Authors. Her essays on Zora Cross have been
published in the literary journal Meanjin.
Cathy’s Book Club Nomination - Friends
and Rivals by Brenda Niall
Brenda Niall’s Friends and Rivals is a
vivid account of the intersecting lives of
four Australian women writers in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries:
Ethel Turner, author of the children’s classic
Seven Little Australians, Barbara Baynton,
who wrote of the harshness of bush life,
Nettie Palmer, essayist and critic, and
Henry Handel Richardson, of The Getting
of Wisdom and The Fortunes of Richard
Mahoney fame. Even readers unfamiliar
with the work of these writers will enjoy
this group biography that reveals the
challenges faced by women writers and
illuminates a fascinating time in Australia’s
literary history.
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