A little book of breathing was first published as ‘My father’s body in nine drawings’ in Verity La, 23 September 2010. It was then made into an artists book and exhibited in String Books at The Left Hand Gallery in Braidwood NSW in December 2010. The State Library Queensland acquired a copy for its collection….
Category: Writing A Father
Not/Knot Father: Alzheimer’s, Nonfiction and Writing the Father
ABSTRACT of this work is as follows: Alzheimer’s disease or AD is characterised by neurofibrillary knots, or tangles, and beta-amyloid plaques in the brain. Nerve cells waste away and wither and eventually decay and die. AD is a state of atrophy, degeneration, and negation. It is about not thinking right, about not being able to…
Poetic Cartography, Love, and Loss
This work is in two pieces: the essay or “an intervention as paradox” Poetic Cartography, Love, and Loss and artefact A Matter of View: (From a Book of Annotations). Denis Wood writes of this work in Katy?, an introduction of sorts: ‘Rendle-Short’s “Poetic Cartography, Love and Loss” is exemplary. A writer of essays, memoir, and fiction,…
Tyrone Guthrie residency
Francesca went to Tyrone Guthrie Centre Annaghmakerrig, Co Monaghan in Ireland for an artist’s residency in July 2014, where she made new work. Read more.
Killing the Buddha – Impossible without a body
Read Francesca’s redacted exegesis on her father’s work “Impossible without a body: a song, (breath), and dust” in Killing the Buddah, 7 January 2014.
Tyrone Guthrie Centre Annaghmakerrig
Francesca went to Tyrone Guthrie Centre Annaghmakerrig, Co Monaghan in Ireland for an artist’s residency, July 2014, where she made new work. She squeezed these two weeks in between a conference in London (Great Writing Conference) and one in Singapore (Asia Pacific Writers Conference) where she gave papers, a workshop and did a reading.
My father’s body: On creation, evolution, Alzheimer’s disease
The essay ‘My father’s body’ has been reprinted in NewSouth Books The Best Australian Science Writing 2013 eds Jane McCredie and Natasha Mitchell. It is to be launched in November 2013. ‘Last Sunday I went to church to be with my father, to say goodbye. As I looked in from the vestibule, I could…
International Writing Fellowship
Francesca was awarded an International Writer’s Fellowship at the University of Iowa, City of Iowa, United States. Francesca is a guest of the Nonfiction Writing Program (NWP) in the Department of English. She is doing a reading at the Prairie Lights Bookshop, a radio interview for The Lit Show with Gemma de Choisy, masterclasses with graduate…
Bookshop and library readings
Prairie Lights Bookstore, Iowa City Francesca read from her essay ‘My father’s body’ in The Best Australian Science Essays (published November 2013) and excerpts from Bite Your Tongue at the Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City on 23rd October 2013. It was a great success, the audience so attentive. It was broadcast ‘Live from Prairie Lights’…
Affettuoso: meditation on the body
Bumf has published Francesca’s story/fragment/observation entitled Affettuoso: meditation on the body. About Bumf: “A life of letters is wont to create bumf: stories, fragments, and observations that seem too short, strange, or frivolous to publish. Bumf, a literary website from Brisbane, Australia, provides a loving home for the best of these.”
Field guide to writing a father
Francesca’s ‘Field guide to writing a father: piecing together a relationship’ published by Overland Literary Journal is now online (#210 Autumn 2013). Read more here. Image: My father in the car, Buderim, 2008
Writing as curatus
Francesca’s paper ‘Writing as curatus: archival practices, encounter and response’ has been published as part of the conference proceedings for Encounters: Refereed Conference Papers of the 17th Annual AAWP Conference, Geelong, Victoria, November 2012. ABSTRACT: ‘This paper sets out some preliminary thoughts on how one might conceive of a body of practice in creative writing as both…
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