Louis Nowra is regarded as one of Australia's leading dramatists. This book presents an overview of the playwright's life and work and a critical analysis of his plays.

In the first play a matriarchal imitation of English society is destroyed by an outbreak of 'holy fire' madness from a wheat fungus in Western NSW (9 men, 4 women). In the second, the child-like Su-ling in China in the 1920s, learns there is no place for compassion in the execution of social change (10 men, 4 women). Music by Sarah de Jong.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A mesmerizing new historical novel” (O, The Oprah Magazine) from Lisa See, the bestselling author of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, about female friendship and devastating family secrets on a small Korean island. Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends who come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility—but also danger. Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook find it impossible to ignore their differences. The Island of Sea Women takes place over many decades, beginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War, through the era of cell phones and wet suits for the women divers. Throughout this time, the residents of Jeju find themselves caught between warring empires. Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator. Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers in their village. Little do the two friends know that forces outside their control will push their friendship to the breaking point. “This vivid…thoughtful and empathetic” novel (The New York Times Book Review) illuminates a world turned upside down, one where the women are in charge and the men take care of the children. “A wonderful ode to a truly singular group of women” (Publishers Weekly), The Island of Sea Women is a “beautiful story…about the endurance of friendship when it’s pushed to its limits, and you…will love it” (Cosmopolitan).

Post-Colonial English Drama is the first critical survey of contemporary Commonwealth drama. Besides essays on such individual dramatists as Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott, David Williamson, Louis Nowra, Athol Fugard, George Walker, Sharon Pollock and Judith Thompson there are surveys of the dramatic literature and developments in the theatre in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa, Papua New Guinea, Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica and Trinidad. Canadian woman dramatists and the new radical South African theatre are also among the topics.

Ashley M. Williard argues that early Caribbean reconstructions of masculinity and femininity sustained occupation, slavery, and nascent ideas of race.

Analyzing such cultural practices as selling and shopping, political and social activism, urban field work and rural labor, radical discourses on feminine sexuality, and literary and artistic experimentation, this volume contributes to the rich vein of current feminist scholarship on the "gender of modernism" and challenges the assumption that modernism rose naturally or inevitably to the forefront of the cultural landscape at the turn of the twentieth century.".