With recent advances in digital technology, a number of exciting and innovative approaches to writing lives have emerged, from graphic memoirs to blogs and other visual-verbal-virtual texts. This edited collection is a timely study of new approaches to writing lives, including literary docu-memoir, autobiographical cartography, social media life writing and autobiographical writing for children. Combining literary theory with insightful critical approaches, each essay offers a serious study of innovative forms of life writing, with a view to reflecting on best practice and offering the reader practical guidance on methods and techniques. Offering a range of practical exercises and an insight into cutting-edge literary methodologies, this is an inspiring and thought-provoking companion for students of literature and creative writing studying courses on life writing, memoir or creative non-fiction.

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This volume is a tribute to the life and work of Hazel Rowley, internationally acclaimed biographer who died unexpectedly in March 2011. Her passions were many and varied: biography, politics, questions of race and sexuality, the ways in which couples negotiate the dilemmas posed by the need to retain their individuality while building a life as a couple, the deleterious effects of imposing a corporate mentality on universities – all these, and more, were subjects of intense interest to her. This collection combines essays responding to many of those interests with creative writing to honour the complexity and variety of her own magnificent contribution. Hazel Rowley, whose life and work are honoured in this collection, was the author of many articles and essays and four outstanding biographies, Christina Stead: A Biography, Richard Wright: The Life and Times, Tête-à-Tête: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre, and Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage.

This guide contains over 1000 entries listing Australian gay and lesbian writers and their publications, as well as subject entries ranging from AIDS to sado-masochism. Non-fiction as well as fiction writers are represented, and the text provides information on the reception of these publications.

A girl sails steerage to make good in the boom-time colonies. The 1890s Depression hits. How does a young woman with a baby make a living? Minnie Thwaites, also know as Mrs Frances Knorr, aged 24, hanged at the Old Melbourne Gaol despite the pleas of the great and good. In her first major work since the 2002 opera 'Lindy', Judith Rodriguez recounts in vivid verse and lyrics the bleak tragedy of a woman trying to make good against the odds. As the Brunswick Baby Farmer, Minnie Thwaites ekes out a precarious existence by taking in the unwanted babies of other women. But there is something shocking about her business that has ramifications long after her death. This is a fascinating piece of true crime, compellingly told by one of Australia's leading poets.

The notorious baby killer Frances Thwaites, in her day as famous perhaps as Ned Kelly, and whose execution in 1894 led the hangman to kill himself rather than perform the deed. Frances was alternately demonized and fantasised over, though her role as one of the colony's most infamous baby farmers has usually been depicted as evidence of a depraved psychopath. This novel, based on a meticulous re-examination of letters, trial transcripts and first-hand accounts, tells a different tale. In the style of Alias Grace and The True History of the Kelly Gang, The Notorious Frances Thwaites tells the poignant story of a young girl unfairly condemned to life in the colony who struggled through adversity to survive the harsh environment of Australia - a girl hanged for a crime she may not have committed. Beautifully written and evocatively told, this is a story at once lyrical and bold. The first work in a trilogy about the lives of Frances and her two daughters, this book both introduces a fresh new voice into the Australian literary scene, and resurrects the voice of a tragic Australian heroine so that her true story can at last be told.

Who are the heroines women look to? Twenty-two Australian writers of fiction, drama, poetry, journalism, TV scripts and non-fiction reflect on their heroines. There are extraordinary women and ordinary women; mothers, detectives, old women, teenagers, sisters, lesbians, rural women, urban women. Dale Spender is the author and editor of over thirty books including the internationally acclaimed, Man Made Language and Women of Ideas, Heroines, Writing a New World and The Penguin Anthology of Australian Women's Writing. She is also the author of Nattering on the Net.