Amanda Curtin

 

Amanda Curtin is the author of three books.  Elemental (novel, 2013) was shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards—Fiction and People’s Choice categories;  Inherited (short story collection, 2011); and The Sinkings (novel, 2008).  Her award-winning short fiction has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies. Amanda has been awarded writing residencies in New York State, Ireland, Scotland and Tasmania. 

 

Her new book, 'Kathleen O'Connor of Paris' will be published in Australia in November 2018 (Fremantle Press).   amandacurtin.com

The Sinkings

Published 2008  UWA Publishing, Australia

 

In 1882 dismembered human remains were discovered at the Sinkings, near Albany in Western Australia. The surgeon conducting the autopsy claimed they were those of a woman. Why, then, was the victim identified as Little Jock, a mail convict? And why was the murder so gruesome?

 

‘An effortless novelistic debut … Cool, musical and mysterious, The Sinkings is a fine achievement’     Weekend Australian

Inherited

Published 2011 UWA Publishing, Australia

 

Characters range from the odd and quirky to the heartbreakingly ordinary; a dancer in a wheelchair, a collector of corks; one woman seduced by a mountain and another by Freddo Frogs …

 

‘Only an experienced editor could understand how to achieve such graceful economy of utterance. Only a born writer – the kind of novelist who produced a debut as assured as The Sinkings could make those few words count’    Weekend Australian

Elemental

 

Published 2014  UWA Publishing, Australia

The novel moves from the north-east of Scotland, where lives are ruled by men, and men by the witchy sea, a place schooled in keeping secrets, to the Shetland Isles to Australia – a novel about the life you make from the life you are given.

 

‘Curtin is an author of exceptional talent and in this novel she tugs at the heartstrings without being maudlin, sentimental or twee. This is one of those novels that is at once both tender and brutal so that  the reader becomes emotionally bound to the world that has been so skilfully created, not wanting to stop reading and yet not wanting the book to ever end’     ANZ LItlovers

 

Scribe UK will publish Elemental in February 2016.