Historical research

As an historical novelist, I spend many months researching each project.

You can find out about fiction projects I’m working on right now under Work in progress.

And my major nonfiction projects include Sisterhood, and a biography of Mademoiselle de Maupin, drawing on my research for Goddess.

Here are some of my tips on research for writers.

Academic research and publishing

My scholarly research interests reflect my own writing and reading: gender in fiction, young adult and children’s literature, historical fiction and life writing, particularly biofiction.

I retired from full-time university work and am now an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at La Trobe University. You can find my academic writing here.

My PhD project, undertaken at La Trobe many years ago, was Tragédie. It comprised a novel based on the life of Mademoiselle de Maupin (published as Goddess) and a thesis around questions of narrative voice in historical fiction and my research into this remarkable woman.

Read more about Mademoiselle de Maupin and my work.

My Masters thesis (undertaken at Deakin University) was Poetry, Politics and Place: Black and White Perspectives on Landscape in Modern Australian Poetry.

It is published in full on Poetry, Politics and Place.

You can read the abstract here.