Jo Dutton – December 30 2018

Jo spent her early childhood years in the Solomon Islands, her teenage years in Perth and has, for the last twenty years, called the Arrernte country of Alice Springs home after moving there for a short-term job. She worked for some time as a teacher, including at the Irrkerlantye Learning Centre, which offered a unique inter-generational approach to education for a number of Eastern Arrernte families, an experience which inspired From Alice with Love. In 2003 Jo was a recipient of Varuna’s Development Program for a new work, Not to Scale. Her short stories and poetry have been widely published to critical acclaim and her work appears in Living Room, an anthology of Central Australian poets, and True North: Contemporary Writing from the Northern Territory. Jo currently has a novel, Wrecked, under consideration with Allen and Unwin.

Out of Place
Random House Australia, 2006; ISBN 9781741664683
Three generations of women search for love and acceptance. Daughter of Italian immigrant Eve, and mother of beautiful Jasmine and headstrong Ella, Nina’s life has always been bound to those of other women. For the girl who longed for freedom and art, her dreams seem distant when she finds herself raising her daughters with only her mother’s support. Out of Place charts Nina’s course through life, from her girlhood, when her mother’s European ways are a puzzle and an embarrassment, through her troubled marriage to a man who is always looking elsewhere for happiness, to her struggles as a mother. But just when these three generations of feisty women seem to be pulling together and looking to a happier future, where their lives and loves can be balanced by distance and independence, a tragic accident tears them apart.

From Alice with Love
Allen & Unwin, 2013; ISBN 9781743313343
After the end of a long-term relationship, Alicia’s life is at a crossroads when news that her mother is critically ill takes her back to her childhood home of Alice Springs. Though she hasn’t consciously intended to remain in Central Australia, when Alicia is offered a job setting up a school on an Indigenous outstation she decides to stay. Surrounded by the mesmerising beauty of the desert, Alicia takes charge of the school and, though the challenges are substantial, she finds the work deeply fulfilling. When Alicia meets Patrick through her work, she’s instantly attracted to him. Patrick shares much of Alicia’s outlook on life and their relationship flourishes until they hit a crisis regarding their future together .… From Alice with Love is both a beautiful love story and a thought-provoking novel set in the exotic red centre of Australia.