Life

Drusilla Modjeska was born in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and lived in Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...

 before arriving in Australia in 1971. She studied at the Australian National University

Australian National University

The Australian National University is a teaching and research university located in the Australian capital, Canberra.As of 2009, the ANU employs 3,945 administrative staff who teach approximately 10,000 undergraduates, and 7,500 postgraduate students...

 and the University of New South Wales

University of New South Wales

The University of New South Wales , is a research-focused university based in Kensington, a suburb in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...

 completing a PhD which was published as Exiles at Home: Australian Women Writers 1925-1945 (1981).

Modjeska's writing often explores the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. The best known of her work are Poppy (1990), a fictionalised biography of her mother, and Stravinsky's Lunch (2001), a feminist reappraisal of the lives and work of Australian painters Stella Bowen

Stella Bowen

Esther Gwendolyn "Stella" Bowen was an Australian artist, born in North Adelaide in the southern part of the country. As a young girl, Bowen enjoyed drawing and convinced her mother to allow her to study with Margaret Preston...

 and Grace Cossington Smith

Grace Cossington Smith

Grace Cossington Smith AO OBE was an Australian artist and pioneer of modernist painting in Australia and was instrumental in introducing Post-Impressionism to her home country...

. She has also edited several volumes of stories, poems and essays, including the work of Lesbia Harford

Lesbia Harford

Lesbia Harford was an Australian poet.Lesbia Venner Harford, daughter of E. J. and Helen Keogh, was born at Brighton, Victoria, on 9 April 1891. She was educated at the Sacré Coeur school at Malvern, Victoria, Mary's Mount school at Ballarat, Victoria, and at the University of Melbourne, where she...

 and a 'Focus on Papua New Guinea' issue for the literary magazine Meanjin

Meanjin

Meanjin is an Australian literary journal. The name - pronounced Mee-AN-jin - is derived from an Aboriginal word for the land where the city Brisbane is located.It was founded in December 1940, in Brisbane, by Clem Christesen...

.

In 2006 she was a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sydney

University of Sydney

The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...

, "investigating the interplay of race, gender and the arts in post-colonial Papua New Guinea".

Awards

• 1983 - Walter McRae Russell Award for Exiles at Home
• 1991 - New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards
  New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards
  The New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards were established in 1979 by the New South Wales Premier Neville Wran. Commenting on its purpose, Wran said: "We want the arts to take, and be seen to take, their proper place in our social priorities...
  
  , Douglas Stewart Prize for non-fiction for Poppy
• 1995 - New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards
  New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards
  The New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards were established in 1979 by the New South Wales Premier Neville Wran. Commenting on its purpose, Wran said: "We want the arts to take, and be seen to take, their proper place in our social priorities...
  
  , Douglas Stewart Prize for non-fiction for The Orchard
• 2000 - New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards
  New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards
  The New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards were established in 1979 by the New South Wales Premier Neville Wran. Commenting on its purpose, Wran said: "We want the arts to take, and be seen to take, their proper place in our social priorities...
  
  , Douglas Stewart Prize for non-fiction for Stravinsky's Lunch
• 2000 - Australian Literature Society Gold Medal
  ALS Gold Medal
  The Australian Literature Society Gold Medal is awarded annually by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature for “an outstanding literary work in the preceding calendar year.” From 1928 to 1974 it was awarded by the Australian Literature Society, then from 1983 by the Association for...
  
   for Stravinsky's Lunch

External links

• Our Future Thinkers Essay from The Monthly
  The Monthly
  The Monthly is an Australian national magazine of politics, society and the arts, which is published eleven times per year on a monthly basis except the December/January issue. Founded in 2005, it is published by Melbourne property developer Morry Schwartz...
  
  
• Re-storying the self by Lekkie Hopkins