Australian Women Writers Challenge 2014 Wrap Up

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:

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.