Dr Belinda Castles
Discipline of English and Writing
Belinda Castles is the award-winning author of four novels, most recently Bluebottle, and the editor of an essay collection, Reading like an Australian Writer. She has studied and taught in the UK, where she was Creative Writing Lecturer and Director of the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Exeter, and Australia, where she has been a Lecturer in Creative Writing since 2018.
- Place in fiction
- Walking and writing
- Family memory in fiction, including traumatic histories
- Reading as a writer
- Contemporary Australian fiction
- Craft aspects of writing
Teaching, previous and current
- ENGL3696: Advanced Creative Writing
- ENGL6908: Creative Writing Supervised Project
- ENGL6936: Writers at Work
- ENGL6119/20: Creative Writing Dissertation 1&2
- ENGL6987: (Previously) Advanced Novel Writing Workshop
Supervision
- Fiction and narrative non-fiction projects, in particular those with an emphasis on place, walking, family and/ or memory
- Cuckoo(a novel)
- Walking Sydney: writers in a changing city (place-based essay collections drawn from 'walking talks' with Sydney writers)
- Stella Prize 2019 Longlist (Bluebottle)
- Asher Literary Award 2013 (Hannah and Emil)
- Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist 2008 (The River Baptists)
- Australian/ Vogel Literary Award 2006 (The River Baptists)
- FASS Award for Excellence in Teaching 2022
Project title | Research student |
---|---|
'Battered', a novel, and exegesis exploring the use of multiple voices in fiction to bear witness to female trauma and the plight of abused women who kill | Samantha BOWERS |
Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of the Diaspora - A Sri Lankan migrant perspective | Sharmila JAYASINGHE |
Finding Dorothea: the hunt for evidence of the elusive life and contribution of Lady Dorothea Banks 1758-1828 | Christina KING |
Selected publications
Publications
Edited Books
- Castles, B. (2021). Reading like an Australian writer. Sydney: NewSouth Publishing. [More Information]
Book Chapters
- Castles, B. (2021). How to build a glass church: Peter Carey's 'Oscar and Lucinda'. In Belinda Castles (Eds.), Reading like an Australian writer, (pp. 127-133). Sydney: NewSouth Publishing.
Journals
- Castles, B. (2024). When the world gets worse: Form and feeling in Australian climate fiction. Text, 28(2), 1-17. [More Information]
- Castles, B. (2019). 'A body in time': reading and writing Australian literature. Text, Special Issues Series('Peripheral Visions' Number 57). [More Information]
- Castles, B. (2014). The Sydney Language: William Dawes in Australian Literature. New Scholar: An International Journal of the Humanities, Creative Arts and Social Sciences, 3(2), 1-10.
Textual Creative Works
- Castles, B. (2018). Bluebottle, (pp. 1 - 249). Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin. [More Information]
- Castles, B. (2012). Hannah and Emil. Crows Nest, Australia: Allen and Unwin. [More Information]
- Castles, B. (2007). The River Baptists. Crows Nest, Australia: Allen and Unwin. [More Information]
Magazine / Newspaper Articles
- Castles, B. (2023). 'The unlooked-for and idiosyncratic was her stock-in-trade': last words from the unclassifiable Janet Malcolm. The Conversation. [More Information]
- Castles, B. (2023). Friday essay: a poet, a disciplinarian, an illiterate grandfather - writers reflect on the teachers who shaped them. The Conversation. [More Information]
- Castles, B. (2022). 'In the place of creation there was only fear': Oliver Mol rides to recovery in his memoir Train Lord. The Conversation. [More Information]
Other
- Altmann, K., Castles, B., Gruen, N., Spark, S. (2024), Remembering the Dunera: Voices of descendants. Panel discussion. [More Information]
2024
- Altmann, K., Castles, B., Gruen, N., Spark, S. (2024), Remembering the Dunera: Voices of descendants. Panel discussion. [More Information]
- Castles, B. (2024). When the world gets worse: Form and feeling in Australian climate fiction. Text, 28(2), 1-17. [More Information]
2023
- Castles, B. (2023). 'The unlooked-for and idiosyncratic was her stock-in-trade': last words from the unclassifiable Janet Malcolm. The Conversation. [More Information]
- Castles, B. (2023). Friday essay: a poet, a disciplinarian, an illiterate grandfather - writers reflect on the teachers who shaped them. The Conversation. [More Information]
2022
- Castles, B. (2022). 'In the place of creation there was only fear': Oliver Mol rides to recovery in his memoir Train Lord. The Conversation. [More Information]
- Castles, B. (2022). True writing is a convulsive act: inside the mind of Elena Ferrante. The Conversation. [More Information]
2021
- Castles, B. (2021). How to build a glass church: Peter Carey's 'Oscar and Lucinda'. In Belinda Castles (Eds.), Reading like an Australian writer, (pp. 127-133). Sydney: NewSouth Publishing.
- Castles, B. (2021). Reading like an Australian writer. Sydney: NewSouth Publishing. [More Information]
2019
- Castles, B. (2019). 'A body in time': reading and writing Australian literature. Text, Special Issues Series('Peripheral Visions' Number 57). [More Information]
2018
- Castles, B. (2018). Bluebottle, (pp. 1 - 249). Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin. [More Information]
2014
- Castles, B. (2014). The Sydney Language: William Dawes in Australian Literature. New Scholar: An International Journal of the Humanities, Creative Arts and Social Sciences, 3(2), 1-10.
2012
- Castles, B. (2012). Hannah and Emil. Crows Nest, Australia: Allen and Unwin. [More Information]
2007
- Castles, B. (2007). The River Baptists. Crows Nest, Australia: Allen and Unwin. [More Information]
2000
- Castles, B. (2000). Falling Woman. Sydney, Australia: Hodder Headline Australia Pty Ltd.
Selected Grants
2022
- Walking Sydney: Writers in a Changing City, Castles B, The Council of the City of Sydney/Cultural and Creative Grants and Sponsorship
In the media
Critical reception:
Reading like an Australian Writer
-
Sydney Morning Herald
Susan Wyndham, May 2021
‘The success ofReading Like an Australian Writeris heightened by Castles’ inspired arrangement of the essays, creating clusters and flow that enhance every piece. Many pairings speak lightly to each other...You’ll find your own windows upon windows into our literature.Reading Like an Australian Writeris a snapshot of Australian writing that is of its moment and, like the books in its pages, will reward rereading into the future.’ -
The Canberra Times
Lucy Neave, May 2021‘Reading like an Australian Writer…offers a form of remediation by recognising the importance of Australian books to our culture, while also expanding and including a wide range of Australian voices and subject positions. Most importantly, in its essays’ discussion of books ranging from David Malouf'sRansomto Michelle de Kretser'sThe Life to Come, it communicates the experience of how reading can spark a connection between the reader and the text, and how this connection in turn inspires more writing. In its discussion of a range of novels and collections of stories, in essays written by writers who have themselves won literary awards and been recognised as significant, from Debra Adelaide to Roanna Gonsalves to Julienne van Loon, it maps the fabric of Australian literary culture now.’
Bluebottle
-
Stella Prize judges’ comments
‘Bluebottle is a dexterous, assured work of a rare kind: a literary novel with the mesmerising force of a thriller…The precision of Castles’ observations, her attentiveness to nature and her remarkable understanding of family dynamics make this novel outstanding. Central to Castles’ achievement is the formidable sense of menace she creates around Charlie, which brings The Man Who Loved Children to mind.’ -
The Australian
‘an elegantly crafted, psychologically complex novel that takes up the motif of the dysfunctional family haunted by its past, and renders from it a story that is gripping and incredibly moving.’
Hannah and Emil
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Sydney Morning Herald
Peter Pierce, October 2012
‘This is an ambitious novel that keeps its focus on the here and now, on the hard-to-manage particulars of daily life. The sentimentality to which its form and events could have succumbed is altogether avoided for a clear-eyed, absorbing and intelligent account.’ -
The Australian
Lucy Clark, August 2012
‘The most gripping passages of Hannah & Emil involve the fearsome prospect of Emil losing his young son, Hans, to the terrible ideology of Nazism and here Castles writes with great poignancy about the corruption of innocents.’
The River Baptists
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The Australian Literary Review
Debra Adelaide, October 03, 2007
‘The stories of [the characters] eventually intersect as they unfold in a beautifully structured manner that allows intense and even shocking dramas to develop, but never produces sensationalism.’
‘Castles exploits deep and telling silences in her story, and portrays people intensely connected to place and land…’ -
Australian Book Review
Kate McFadyen, September 2007
‘The persistent symbolism of baptism and rebirth is delicately handled, from the title of the novel to the final pages. Castles uses the quietness of the river, its distinctive hidden waterholes and inlets, to great effect…The dramatic backdrop at once feeds the symbolic world of the novel, diluting it with its immensity and the comparative smallness of human concerns.’