Thea Astley facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Thea Astley
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| Born | 25 August 1925 Brisbane, Queensland
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| Died | 17 August 2004 (aged 78) Byron Bay, New South Wales
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| Other names | Phillip Cressy, Thea Gregson |
| Occupation | Novelist and short story writer |
| Spouse(s) | Jack Gregson |
| Children | Ed Gregson |
Thea Beatrice May Astley AO (born August 25, 1925 – died August 17, 2004) was a famous Australian writer. She wrote many novels and short stories for over 40 years, starting in 1958. When she passed away, she had won the Miles Franklin Award more times than any other writer. This award is Australia's most important prize for books. Besides writing, Thea Astley also taught students of all ages, from primary school to university.
Thea Astley is very important in Australian literature. She was "the only woman novelist of her generation to have won early success and published consistently throughout the 1960s and 1970s." This was a time when most writers were men.
Contents
Life Story of Thea Astley
Thea Astley was born in Brisbane, Australia. She went to All Hallows' School and then studied arts at the University of Queensland. After her studies, she trained to become a teacher. In 1948, she married Jack Gregson. They moved to Sydney, where she taught at different high schools. She also continued to write during this time.
From 1968 to 1980, she taught at Macquarie University. After that, she decided to focus on writing full-time. She and her husband moved to Kuranda in North Queensland. In the late 1980s, they moved again to Nowra, New South Wales, on the south coast of New South Wales. After her husband died in 2003, she moved to Byron Bay. She wanted to be close to her only child, Ed Gregson, who is a musician and TV producer.
Thea Astley loved music, especially jazz and chamber music, just like her husband. People described her as a very honest and funny person. She was also very kind and strongly disliked unfairness, especially towards Indigenous Australians and people who were treated badly.
Thea Astley passed away in 2004 at the John Flynn Hospital on the Gold Coast. In 2005, the Thea Astley lecture was created at the Byron Bay Writers Festival. This special lecture honors her memory and her work.
Thea Astley's Writing Career
Thea Astley's novels won the Miles Franklin Award four times. In 1989, she also won the Patrick White Award for her great contributions to Australian literature. The University of Queensland gave her an honorary doctorate degree. Much of her writing is set in Queensland, where she grew up. She called Queensland "the place where the tall yarn happens." She meant that it was a place where amazing stories came to life through its people.
Thea Astley almost became a journalist, like her father. However, the Brisbane Telegraph newspaper told her she was too old when she applied after finishing university. She sold her first poem using the name "Phillip Cressy." She did this because men were paid more for their writing than women at that time.
Her first book, Girl with a monkey, was published in 1958. She said she wrote a lot of it before her son Ed was born. She sent it to a competition and got an honorable mention. This made her think, "I'll send it to A&R's," which was a publisher she knew.
After her third book, The Well-dressed Explorer, was published, a reviewer said she was one of the top Australian fiction writers. He compared her to other famous writers who wrote "poetic prose." This means their writing was like poetry, which was important but not always popular. Her early writing style used long words and detailed descriptions. This sometimes made it hard for some readers and critics.
In 1997, Thea Astley wrote in a magazine that she loved writing because she could do it anywhere. She wrote parts of a short story on a plane. She took notes at lunch, in small hotel rooms, and even on a wharf.
Two weeks before she died, Thea Astley spoke at the Byron Bay Writers' Festival. She gave a very funny reading of one of her short stories. A special plaque honoring her writing is part of the Sydney Writers Walk at Circular Quay.
Who Influenced Thea Astley?
When she was younger, Thea Astley was friends with other famous writers like Patrick White, Hal Porter, and Thomas Keneally. For many years, she had very few female writer friends until the 1980s.
Thea Astley's Writing Style and Themes
Thea Astley was known for her careful use of language. She was also famous for describing the Queensland landscape and its people. People remembered her for her quick wit and her constant cigarettes. Many of her books explore the "geography and politics of the small community." This means she wrote about how people live and interact in small towns.
Astley became known as a "metaphoric" writer. This means she used a lot of comparisons and vivid imagery in her writing. Some readers and critics found this style difficult. In an interview, Astley mentioned that another writer, Helen Garner, said, "I simply hate her style." Astley replied that she loved using descriptive language and didn't do it to annoy anyone.
Even though some people found her style challenging, many admired her writing. Writer Kerryn Goldsworthy loved Astley's "densely woven grammar, its ingrained humour, its uncompromising politics." She also admired Astley's strong anger at human foolishness and greed. Goldsworthy said that Astley's work showed how violence and sadness can grow from small acts of meanness and anger. Her books often featured characters like racists, greedy developers, and unfair people.
Delys Bird, a literary editor, explained Astley's main themes. She said Astley's novels often showed a questioning view of how ordinary people relate to each other. Her Catholic background sometimes influenced this view. Her main characters often struggled to express themselves in difficult surroundings. In some novels, like A Kindness Cup, she explored the relationships between white and Indigenous Australian societies. One book, A Kindness Cup, is about a massacre of Indigenous Australians. It shows how people tried to forget or remember this violence years later. The main character feels great anger and frustration, which seems to reflect Astley's own horror at the casual cruelty in some rural towns.
Thea Astley found ideas for her stories in newspapers and during her travels. But mostly, she found them in the communities where she and her husband lived. In North Queensland, for example, she found many stories and interesting characters by listening to people in small towns. In 1997, she wrote that North Queensland had changed. She said, "beautiful one day, developed the next." She kept writing about it because she couldn't help herself.
Thea Astley's Influence on Others
Thea Astley encouraged many of her friends and students to become writers. Other teachers often quote her advice. She famously said that writing one page a day "adds up to a book in a year." This simple advice helped many aspiring writers.
Books and Stories Made into Films
- 1983: Descant for gossips (ABC, a TV miniseries)
- 2004: Drylands was considered for a film by Anthony Buckley (but was not made by 2008)
Awards and Nominations
- 1962: Miles Franklin Award for The Well Dressed Explorer
- 1965: Miles Franklin Award for The Slow Natives
- 1965: Moomba Award for The Slow Natives
- 1972: Miles Franklin Award for The Acolyte
- 1975: The Age Book of the Year Fiction Award for The Kindness Cup
- 1980: Australian Literature Studies Award for Hunting the Wild Pineapple
- 1980: Member of the Order of Australia (AM)
- 1986: ALS Gold Medal for Beachmasters
- 1989: Patrick White Award
- 1990: New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Christina Stead Prize for fiction for Reaching Tin River
- 1992: Officer of the Order of Australia (AO)
- 1996: The Age Book of the Year Fiction Award for The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow
- 1999: Miles Franklin Award for Drylands
- 2000: Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, Fiction Book Award for Drylands
- 2002: New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Special Award for being "a trailblazer"
