Event:

Katharine Susannah Prichard

Online events | 9 – 30 November 2020

In its annual Honouring Australian Writers series, Writing NSW pays tribute to writers who have made an important contribution to our literary culture.

In 2020 we honour renowned author, journalist, playwright, and political activist Katharine Susannah Prichard (1883-1969). Her writing was informed by socialist ideals that embraced anti-racism, feminism and anti-colonial nationalism. She published many major novels, including Working Bullocks (1926), hailed on publication as the first Australian modern novel, and Coonardoo (1929), joint winner of the Bulletin Prize.

This year we will re-examine the legacy of Katharine Susannah Prichard with an exciting interactive program across November. Each week will release videos, images, sound recordings and further reading about one of Australia’s most distinguished writers of the first half of the twentieth century.

Honouring: Katharine Susannah Prichard will launch on Monday 9 November with a guide to reading her work from author and biographer Nathan Hobby.

Write to Katharine Susannah Prichard!

Do you have a question for Katharine Susannah Prichard? Want to let her know what her books mean to you?

Your questions to K.S.P. will be answered via the wonders of technology. Want a sneak-peak? Check our the official K.S.P twitter account below.

The Joys of Reading K.S.P.

Why read Prichard in the year 2020, fifty-one years after her death? KSP biographer Nathan Hobby wants to answer that by focusing on the joys her work can bring us today.

Child of the Hurricane

What events shaped the life of Katharine Susannah Prichard? Biographer Nathan Hobby takes us through her early years and most productive era. Take a virtual tour of ‘Katharine’s Place’ and listen to an interview with K.S.P about her career in journalism during WW1.

Critiquing the work of Katharine Susannah Prichard

As part of re-examining Prichard’s legacy, Dr Jeanine Leane and Jacqueline Wright critically consider Prichard’s 1929 novel Coonardoo, and its place within a broader context of how Aboriginal people have been portrayed in their colonisers’ stories.

The Red Witch

In this final part of the program, biographer Nathan Hobby explores Katharine’s years as ‘The Red Witch’, from 1934 to her death in 1969, and the granddaughter of Katharine Susannah Prichard, poet Karen Throssell, reads two pieces inspired by her grandmother.

Follow K.S.P. on Twitter!

Tweets by KSP1883

Image credit May Moore, from the State Library of NSW collection.

The Honouring Australian Writers series is supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund, this year with thanks to the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre

Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers' Centre