Vivienne Cleven – March 24 2019

Vivienne is an award-winning author and playwright of Kamilaroi nation heritage.
Leaving school at 13 she worked as a jillaroo on stations throughout Queensland and New South Wales. Her writing career began in 2000 with her manuscript Just Call Me Jean winning the David Unaipon Award for unpublished Indigenous writers. Retitled and published the following year as the novel Bitin’ Back, Vivienne adapted it as a play and it was staged by Brisbane’s Kooemba Jdarra Indigenous Theatre Company. Vivienne won the Kate Challis RAKA Award jointly for Bitin’ Back and Her Sister’s Eye, which also won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards Prize for Indigenous Writing. Dealing with themes of gender identity, queer expression, mental health, domestic and sexual abuse, connection to land, and racial prejudice in a postcolonial Australian context, Vivienne’s writing has also been included in Fresh Cuttings, the first anthology of UQP Black Australian Writing, and the journal Lesbians on the Loose.

Bitin’ Back (published in Contemporary Indigenous Plays)
Currency Press, 2007; ISBN 9780868197951
Full length; 3 female, 5 male (doubling required)
Adapted from her award-winning novel, Vivienne Cleven’s Bitin’ Back is a ‘zany and uproarious black farce’ (National Indigenous Times) which explores stereotyping, identity and race relations in a Queensland country town.
“When the Blackouts’ star player Nevil Dooley wakes one morning to don a frock and ‘eyeshada’, his mother’s idle days at the bingo hall are gone forever. Mystified and clueless, single parent Mavis takes to bush-cunning and fast footwork to unravel the mystery behind this sudden change of face. Funny and cleverly covert, too, this is a truthful rendering of small town prejudice and racist attitudes. Hilarity prevails while desperation builds in the race to save Nevil from the savage consequences of discovery in a town where a career in footy is a young black man’s only escape. Neither pig-shoots, bust-ups at the Two Dogs, bare-knuckle sessions in the shed or even a police siege can slow the countdown on this human time bomb.” – Novel synopsis

Her Sister’s Eye
University of Queensland Press, 2002; ISBN 9780702232831
‘… always remember where you’re from … ‘ To the Aboriginal families of Mundra this saying brings either comfort or pain. To Nana Vida it is what binds the generations. To the unwilling savant Archie Corella it portends a fate too cruel to name. For Sophie Salte, whose woman’s body and child’s mind make her easy prey, nothing matters while her sister Murilla is there to watch over her. For Murilla, fierce protector and unlikely friend to Caroline Drysdale, wife of the town patriarch, what matters is survival. In a town with a history of vigilante raids, missing persons and unsolved murders, survival can be all that matters. The stories – of the camp, the boy and his snake, the shooting – told and passed on, offer a release from the horrors of our past. As Nana Vida says, “That’s the story. I let it go now”.