The Australian Women Writer’s Challenge is an initiative aimed to address the gender imbalance in our literary culture by having people undertake to read a certain number of books by, as the name of the challenge suggests, Australian Women Writers. I signed up for the Franklin level challenge, which meant I was committed to reading 10 books and reviewing at least 6. One of the requirements of completing the challenge is to write a completed challenge post. This is that post.
The books I have read so far are:
Jordie Albiston
XIII Poems
(Rabbit Poets Series 2013)
Alexis Wright, The Swan Book (Giramondo 2013) 
Dorothy Porter, The Bee Hut
(Black Inc 2009)
Maree Dawes, brb: be right back (Spineless Wonders 2014) 
Eileen Chong, Peony
(Pitt Street Poetry 2014)
Michelle de Kretser,
Questions of Travel
(Allen & Unwin 2012)
Jenny Blackford
The Duties of a Cat
(Pitt Street Poetry 2014)
Mabel Lee (editor)
Poems of Hong Ying, Zhai Yongming & Yang Lian
(Vagabond Press 2014) – translated by Mabel Lee, Naikan Tao and Tony Prince
Jennifer Maiden,
Drones and Phantoms
(Giramondo 2014)
Helen Garner,
This House of Grief: The Story of a Murder Trial
(Text 2014)
Lily Brett, Only in New York
(Hamish Hamilton 2014)
The book of Chinese poems in translation is probably borderline, but Mabel Lee is definitely an Australian Woman Writer, and editors surely count for something. I’m also not sure I should claim that my blog entries are actually reviews, but if you put 11 blog entries maybe they can count as six reviews.
So, two hefty novels, one non-fiction work, a collection of essays and seven books of poetry; seven books published in 2014 and nothing earlier than 2009; one e-book; one expat, a couple of people born elsewhere and one Indigenous woman.
I may read some more by Australian women writers before the year finishes in two weeks’ time, but that will be outside the challenge.
Me fail? I fly! 