Meera Atkinson

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Meera Atkinson is a Sydney-based literary writer, academic, and the author of Traumata (UQP, 2018), The Poetics of Transgenerational Trauma (Bloomsbury, 2017), and co-editor of Traumatic Affect (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013). Meera was awarded the 2017 Varuna Eric Dark Fellowship for non-fiction. She teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales. You can find her online at www.meeraatkinson.com and on Twitter @meeraatkinson.

Articles

On ‘Carpentaria’, by Alexis Wright

GR OnlineWright’s reflections on her own creative process show that in working on Carpentaria, she was keenly aware of the need to invent a way of writing that could embody both the negative effects of colonialism and her proud Aboriginal heritage.

Up-skirt

FictionA YOUNG WOMAN walks down the street towards an unremarkable terrace house wearing a fetching combination of op-shop style and nonchalance. Her upper lids are lined; her brunette hair falls in layers around her pretty face. She opens the...

Girls talk

EssayGIRLS TALK IS a classic Dave Edmunds song, penned by Elvis Costello, and it captures in a few verses and choruses the complexities of a girl culture that thrives in the corridors and toilets of schools around the world....

From a moving car

MemoirIT'S 1979 AND I'm 15, fucked up and restless. My mother and I are living alone after years of domestic violence with her deranged or drunken boyfriends. Finally, everything is quiet. Too quiet. I've long left school, having refused...

The exiled child

EssayThere have been many times in my life when people have come to negative conclusions about me, and many terms applied: juvenile delinquent, alcoholic, drug addict, drama queen, borderline personality disorder, self-destructive, hysteric, depressive, neurotic, phobic and hypochondriac. But I've discovered a new one, and according to the literature it may be at the heart of all the others: chronic trauma survivor.

My Mount Everest

EssayWe stand at the precipice of a grave threat to our public health ... [Hepatitis C] affects people from all walks of life in every state, in every country. And unless we do something about it soon, it will...

Invisible moon

FictionSHE STANDS AT the window, dropped into a jet-lagged dream. The street below is covered in snow. She knows what subtropical heat feels like. She knows the frisson of an electrical storm, the thundering sound of violent rain on...

Beauty and the bêtê noire

MemoirI COME FROM a long line of beautiful women. This short, simple statement raises immediate questions: why am I so sure? How is this beauty defined? I am sure because I have observed others' responses to my mother, my...

Child’s play

MemoirIn memory of Harvey. Dedicated to Donna.   IN 1977, ON a windy summer day, two thirteen-year-olds walked into a milk bar on Sydney's Broadway and, as they often did, struck up a conversation with a complete stranger, sharing their love...

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