Drusilla Modjeska

Drusilla Modjeska (born 1946) is a contemporary Australian writer and editor.

Life

Modjeska was born in London and was raised in Hampshire. She spent several years in Papua New Guinea (where she was briefly a student at the University of Papua New Guinea) before arriving in Australia in 1971. She studied for an undergraduate degree at the Australian National University before completing a PhD in history at the University of New South Wales which was published as Exiles at Home: Australian Women Writers 1925–1945 (1981).

Modjeska's writing often explores the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. The best known of her work are Poppy (1990), a fictionalised biography of her mother, and Stravinsky's Lunch (2001), a feminist reappraisal of the lives and work of Australian painters Stella Bowen and Grace Cossington Smith. She has also edited several volumes of stories, poems and essays, including the work of Lesbia Harford and a 'Focus on Papua New Guinea' issue for the literary magazine Meanjin.

In 2006, Modjeska was a senior research fellow at the University of Sydney, "investigating the interplay of race, gender and the arts in post-colonial Papua New Guinea".

Awards

1983 – Walter McRae Russell Award for Exiles at Home 1991 – New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Douglas Stewart Prize for non-fiction for Poppy 1995 – New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Douglas Stewart Prize for non-fiction for The Orchard 2000 – New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Douglas Stewart Prize for non-fiction for Stravinsky's Lunch 2000 – ALS Gold Medal for Stravinsky's Lunch