Thea Astley ─ Selected Poems

Thea Astley won multiple prizes for her fiction, including four Miles Franklin Awards. However, her earliest ambition was to write poetry. It remained her private passion throughout her student days into adulthood. This exciting volume brings together for the first time many poems that have never been seen or published. It traces Astley’s development as a writer as she evokes wartime Brisbane, her fascination with the natural landscape and her encounters with small-town life.

Australian writer Thea Astley (1925–2004) published seventeen novels and more than a dozen free-standing short stories. She studied arts at The University of Queensland and held a position as Fellow in Australian Literature at Macquarie University until 1980, when she retired to write full time. In 1989 she was granted an honorary doctorate of letters from The University of Queensland. Astley lived and wrote on the New South Wales south coast until her death in 2004. Cheryl Taylor lectured in literature at James Cook University in Townsville before retiring as an Associate Professor in 2006.