Susan Varga

Varga_Susan

Susan Varga has worked in film and video and briefly as a lawyer. Her first book, Heddy and Me (Penguin, 1994), won the Christina Stead Award for non-fiction and was shortlisted for several other awards. It was followed by the novel Happy Families (Hodder Headline, 1999), winner of the Vision Australia Talking Book of the Year and Braille Book of the Year, and a non-fiction book Broometime (Hodder, 2001), co-authored with Anne Coombs. Her novel Headlong (UWA Press, 2009) was shortlisted for the Barbara Jefferis Award, and Rupture (UWA Press, 2016), her first book of poetry, was nominated in the ABR’s Best Books of the Year in 2016. Her work has previously appeared in Griffith Review 6, 17, 24, 32 and 44.

Articles

Shadow life

Memoir I WAS LESS than five when I left Hungary for Australia, yet many of my formative experiences had already taken place – mostly unremembered and deep in the subconscious. Hungary was in my blood. In my Hungarian Jewish blood, I have...

Sydney

PoetryIt's been a long time, you old harlot. From my rented flat I see your big-ticket items – solid arc of Bridge, glinting slivers of Opera House. Still heart stoppers, old girl. This corner of the Cross is the closest I'll get to Europe now. You were my...

Opting out

EssayFOR MANY AUSTRALIANS, suicide is still a secret, shameful business. Like incest and child abuse, it doesn't happen to us. The secrecy lies, I think, in its universal and seductive power. It can tempt anyone at any time, as...

The gift of tongues

MemoirLANGUAGE AND PLACE no longer define us as simply as they once did. We can slip and slide between languages and places in ways difficult for our parents, impossible for our grandparents. Language, culture, family, place. Out of that...

Dark times

EssayThis is to let you know that I have arrived safely in Australia and am being detained in immigration detention. I am currently unable to telephone or write a letter to you but as soon as I can I...

The silence

EssayMANY AUSTRALIAN JEWS take an intense interest in Israel. They find it difficult to ignore the miracle of its creation so soon after the Holocaust, but also impossible to ignore the underside of that miracle: the tragic dispossession of...

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