Amanda Curtin
Amanda Curtin is the author of four books - Elemental (novel, UWAP, 2013; Scribe UK, 2016) was shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards—Fiction and People’s Choice categories; Inherited (short story collection, UWAP, 2011); and The Sinkings (novel, UWAP, 2008). Amanda's latest published book is a work of non-fiction, Kathleen O'Connor of Paris (Fremantle Press, 2018).
Amanda's award-winning short fiction has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies and she has been awarded writing residencies in New York State, Ireland, Scotland, China and Tasmania.
Amanda was awarded the Western Australian Writer's Fellowship at the 2020 WA Premier's Book Awards.
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
Elemental was published in the UK by Scribe Publishing in February 2016.