Australian Women Writers Challenge

I have signed up this year for the Australian Women Writers Challenge.  The challenge is to commit to reading - and preferably reviewing - a certain amount of Australian women writers over the year.  Elizabeth Luedge began the challenge last year in response to the fact that male writers are more likely to be reviewed than female writers around the world, including this country.

And so here is the mixed bag of books I am planning on reading and reviewing for the year (mostly adult fiction, but also some YA, children's, fantasy and non-fiction):

• Anna Funder - All That I Am
• Helen Garner - The Children's Bach (a reread, seeing last time I read it I was chronically fatigued and now, years later, my memory is so bad that I can't even remember it)
• Margo Lanagan - Sea Hearts
• Geraldine Brooks - People of the Book
• MJ Hyland - How the Light Gets In
• Leanne Hall - This is Shyness
• Alice Pung - Her Father's Daughter
• Chardi Christian - The Selkie and the Fisherman
• Enza Gandolfo - Swimming
• Elizabeth Harrower - The Watch Tower
• Simmone Howell - Notes from the Teenage Underground
• Kylie Ladd - After the Fall
• Favel Parrett - Past the Shallows
• Ananda Braxton-Smith - Tantony

Lists can be deceiving, can't they.  You would think by looking at mine that I'm a connoisseur of Australian women's writers.  The reality is that I don't recognise many of these writers' names, let alone would know whether they are Australian.  I certainly wouldn't know any of them if I accidentally fell over them in the street.  (Well, except for Helen Garner, of course, and I would, like, totally, like, be so embarrassed if I fell on Helen Garner in the street 'cause, like, I would squeal a lot.  And I would probably recognise Ananda Braxton-Smith, because I went to uni with her back in the late '90s.  But it was a while ago now, and I have such a bad memory that maybe I wouldn't recognise her either).

So while I'm a bit self-conscious about my measly ability to be able to name Australian women writers, I am very happy that when I consulted my ongoing and regularly updated Books to Read list that there happened to be so many Aussie women writers on there.