Amanda Curtin – January 24 2021

Amanda is a freelance book editor and is currently the fiction editor for the literary journal Westerly. She holds a PhD in Writing and is an Adjunct Lecturer at Edith Cowan University, Perth. In addition to her novels Amanda has written a short story collection, Inherited, and the part biography, part travel narrative, Kathleen O’Connor of Paris. Amanda has undertaken writing residencies at some of the most beautiful places in the world: Kelly’s Cottage in Hobart, Tasmania, courtesy of the Tasmanian Writers Centre; Hawthornden Castle in Lasswade, Scotland, courtesy of Mrs Drue Heinz; the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, Ireland, courtesy of the Australia Council for the Arts; and Ledig House, Ghent, New York State, courtesy of Writers Omi.

The Sinkings
UWA Publishing, 2008; ISBN 9781921401114
In 1882, dismembered human remains were discovered at a lonely campsite called the Sinkings near Albany, WA. The surgeon conducting the autopsy claimed the remains were those of a woman. Why, then, was the victim identified as Little Jock, a sandalwood-cutter and former convict? And why was the murder so brutal, so gruesome? More than a hundred years later, Willa Samson, a recluse after having lost her daughter, embarks on a search to find out and is drawn back into the world as she negotiates and researches various archives, communicates with family historians, and journeys to Scotland, Northern Ireland, and England, looking for clues to her questions. While the book is a work of fiction, the discovery of Little Jock’s remains and the controversy surrounding their identification are actual events.

Elemental
UWA Publishing, 2013; ISBN 9781742585062
Nearing the end of her life, Meggie Tulloch takes up her pen to write a story for her granddaughter, Laura. It begins in the first years of the twentieth century, in a place where howling winds spin salt and sleet sucked up from ice floes. A place where lives are ruled by men, and men by the witchy sea. A place where the only thing lower than a girl in the order of things is a clever girl with accursed red hair. A place schooled in keeping secrets. Thirty years after her grandmother’s death, Laura receives her notebooks and discovers the painful past that Meggie spent a lifetime trying to forget. Moving from the north-east of Scotland to the Shetland Isles to Fremantle, Australia, this is a novel about the life you make from the life you are given.