Dr Anita Marianne Heiss (1968 - ?)
Writer - Novelist
Introduction
Dr Anita Heiss is a member of the Wiradjuri nation of
central New South Wales and author of a number of books, from her historical
novel, Who Am I? The Diary of Mary Talence, Sydney 1937, to a children’s
book and poetry collections.
Dr Anita Heiss is the award-winning author of
non-fiction, historical fiction, commercial women’s fiction, children’s
novels and poetry. She is a
board member of University of Queensland Press and Circa Contemporary
Circus. Anita is a Professor of Communications at the University of
Queensland and an Ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and the
GO Foundation.
Anita has performed her works nationally (Sydney Writers' Festival, Perth
International Arts Festival, Adelaide Writers' Week, Melbourne Writers'
Festival, Byron Bay Writers' Festival, Message Sticks, Brisbane Writers
Festival, Somerset Festival of Literature, Watermark and Wordstorm, among
others) as well as internationally in Spain, Austria, the USA, Canada, Fiji,
Japan, New Zealand, China, France, the UK, Tahiti and New Caledonia. She has
also been published widely in journals, anthologies and on-line.
Early Life
She was born in Matraville, Sydney in 1968. Her mother Elsie Heiss née Williams was born
at Erambie Mission, Cowra in Wiradjuri country. Her father Josef Heiss was
born in St Michael in the Lungau, Salzburg, Austria.
Elsie started dating Joe Heiss, an Austrian carpenter, in 1957. Two years
later she moved into a flat in Redfern with her sister Nellie, and they both
got jobs at White Wings cake factory.
In 1960 Elsie married Joe in the St
Vincent’s Church in Redfern. Elsie travelled to Austria for six months in
1964 to meet her husband’s family. She was welcomed by her in-laws and
quickly picked up the local dialect. The Heiss family moved to Matraville
when they returned and had five children: Monika, Anita, Gisella, Josef and
Mark. Elsie worked nights at the local Skyline Drive-In and worked at the
school tuckshop and did housework during the day. She was well liked and
respected by the Matraville community.
Anita's parents on their
wedding day 5 November 1960 (Source: Prof
Anita Heiss)
Education
Anita attended primary school at St Andrews in Malabar.
She was educated at St Clare's
College, Waverley then the University of New South Wales where she completed
her Bachelor of Arts in History (Honours),1991; she gained her PhD in
Communication and Media at the University of Western Sydney, 2000.In 2001 she became the first Indigenous student to graduate with a
PhD from the University of Western Sydney. Her PhD was published as
Dhuuluu-Yala [To Talk Straight]: Publishing Indigenous LiteratureHS) (2003).
Career
Anita was the
Coordinator of Aboriginal projects at Streetwize Comics: an organisation
that published free education media for young people. In this role she
worked with young Aboriginal people creating comics and posters and
organising workshops. Anita resigned from Streetwize Comics after two years
and established a consultancy communications firm, Curringa Communications.
Anita also began working as a freelance writer, and began composing a book
confronting Aboriginal stereotypes. Her first manuscript, Sacred Cows, was a
comical account of Australian icons from an Aboriginal perspective. It was
rejected by all major publishing companies, but eventually accepted by
Magabala Books.
Anita enrolled in a PhD in Media and Communications at
the University of Western Sydney in 1996. She spent two years working on her
doctoral thesis on the Gold Coast, before returning to Sydney and renting a
writers studio at the New South Wales Writers’ Centre.While completing her
doctorate Anita ran writing workshops in regional New South Wales. She also
travelled to Canada and New Zealand for research, and gave many guest
lectures.
Anita published a second novel in 1998, which was based
on her encounters with white people. Token Koori was followed by a
historical novel about a member of the Stolen Generations, Who Am I? The
Diary of Mary Talence, Sydney, 1937.
After finishing her PhD in 2001, Anita taught an
Introduction to Indigenous Australia course at the University of Western
Sydney. She enjoyed challenging her student’s preconceived ideas about
Aboriginality. Anita became increasingly disenchanted with academia, which
she viewed as a system that privileged white knowledge above black
experience. She decided to leave the university while at a conference on
Indigenous epistemologies in Fiji. Anita resigned from her role at the
University of New South Wales, but retained her unpaid role as an adjunct
associate professor attached to the Badanami Centre of Indigenous Education
at the University of Western Sydney.
Look at book 3: Growing up Aboriginal in Australia edited
by Anita Heiss
In 2004 Anita worked three days a week as a writer in
residence at Macquarie University. She spent a lot of time outside of these
hours working from home. During this time Anita did the research for her
children’s book, Yirra and her Deadly Dog, Demon. She worked also worked on
her next novel, Not Meeting Mr Right. Anita was pleased when her novel was
accepted by the multinational, commercial publishing agency, Random House.
Anita later penned three more accessible novels aimed at women: Avoiding Mr
Right, Manhattan Dreaming and Paris Dreaming.
Anita was also the voluntary chair of Gadigal/Koori radio
station until September 2008.
In 2010 Anita ran a literacy-based project with year
twelve Aboriginal students in south-west Sydney, as part of the Twugia
Project coordinated by the New South Wales Department of Employment,
Education and Training.
Anita is an advocate for
Indigenous literature and literacy through her writing for adults and
children and her membership of Boards and committees. She is a role model
for the National Aboriginal Sporting Chance Academy and an Advocate for the
National Centre of Indigenous Excellence and an Indigenous Literacy Day
Ambassador.
Anita has made guest appearances on television shows including The Einstein
Factor, Message Stick, Vulture, Critical Mass, A Difference of Opinion, The
Catch Up, Living Black, The Gathering (NITV), 9am with David and Kim and The
Circle.
I’m Not Racist, But… (2007) by
Anita Heiss
This poetry collection from activist, writer and member of the
Wiradjuri Nation, Professor Anita Heiss, skewers Australia’s racist
underbelly.
I’m Not Racist, But… explores identity, pride and political
correctness; proposes alternative words to the national anthem; and
reveals how it is to grow up as an Indigenous woman in Australia.
This is a landmark work along Australia’s slow road to racial
reckoning.
10 'Lost' Australian literary treasures you should read - and can
soon borrow from any library
Since 2000 she has undertaken writers-in- residence positions at Macquarie
University, Sydney and throughout NSW. She was Deputy-Director at Warawara
Department of Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University; Communications
Advisor, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board, Australia Council
for the Arts and consultant researcher / writer for the Aboriginal History
website at the City of Sydney.
Anita was Communications Adviser for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Arts Board (2001-2003), was a member of the Australian Society of
Authors (ASA) Committee of Management from 1998-2004 and Chaired the
organisation 2008-2009. Anita was Deputy Director of Warawara Department of
Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University from 2005-2006.
In 2004, Heiss wrote and directed her first short film, 'Checkerboard Love'
as part of the Lester Bostock mentorship program through Metro Screen,
Sydney.
Anita is an Ambassador of the GO Foundation, Worowa Aboriginal College and
the Sydney Swans. She was a finalist in the 2012 Human Rights Awards and the
2013 Australian of the Year Awards. Anita is a Board Member of the
University of QLD Press, Circa and the National Justice Project.
In 2017 Anita joined the University of Canberra [UC] as a
Postdoctoral Fellow.
Dean of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Leadership and Strategy Professor Peter Radoll with Anita Heiss at UC (Source:
University of Canberra)
In 2019, she was appointed a Professor of Communications at the University
of QLD. When she's not teaching she is writing, public speaking, MCing and
being a 'creative disruptor'.
Did You Know?
Awards
In 2002 she was awarded the
New South Wales Premier's History Prize (audio-visual category) for the
creation of the website Barani : The Aboriginal History of the City of
Sydney.
In 2003 in recognition of
her literary achievements Anita was awarded the ASA Medal for Under 35s for
her contribution to Australian community and public life.
2004 – NSW Indigenous Arts Fellowship
2004 – Nominee: Deadly Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to
Literature
2007 – Winner: Deadly Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to
Literature for Not Meeting Mr Right.
2008 – Winner: Deadly Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to
Literature, with Peter Minter, for the Macquarie PEN Anthology of
Aboriginal Literature
2010 – Winner: Deadly Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to
Literature for Manhattan Dreaming
2011 – Winner: Deadly Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to
Literature for Paris Dreaming
2012 – Finalist: Human Rights Awards, Media, for Am I Black Enough
for You?
2012 – Winner: Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Indigenous
Writing for Am I Black Enough for You?
Some Examples of Anita's Books
River
of Dreams
Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray
Barbed
Wire & Cherry Blossoms
Tiddas
Not
Meeting Mr. Right
Quotes about Anita Heiss in The Conversation
5 August 2019 - The Cowra breakout: remembering and reflecting on
Australia's biggest prison escape 75 years on
"The most recent work
which revisits the breakout is by Wiradjuri author Anita Heiss.
Her 2016 work Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms provides an Indigenous
voice to the history of Cowra, a voice that has often been silenced
in accounts of Australian history.
Issues of race, discrimination and loyalty take on a new sense of
urgency in this wartime setting, yet also highlight that while much
has changed in the last 75 years, so much has stayed the same.
Heiss echoed this view when she asserted there “are lessons still to
be learned from the history of Cowra”, lamenting the regression in
Australia’s treatment of detainees in centres such as Manus Island
or Don Dale."
28 December 2018 - Ten great Australian beach reads set at
the beach
"Not Meeting Mr Right by
Anita Heiss
Prominent Australian Indigenous author Anita Heiss straddles both
fiction and non-fiction, with her work often grounded in ideas
around Indigenous identity. Her series of “chick lit” novels
includes Not Meeting Mr Right (first published in 2007).
In the novel, Alice lives beachside in Coogee and regularly walks
the coastal path between it and Bondi. A proudly single, Indigenous
woman, Alice has a change of heart about marriage and decides to get
serious about settling down - which means embarking on the rocky
road towards finding love. In contrast to the challenges - including
racism - she encounters along the way, the beach is a comfortably
ordinary presence in this novel. However, Heiss also parodied the
white Australian beach experience in an earlier book Sacred Cows
(1996)."
"Popular media forms, from Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s poetry to the
dystopian sci-fi television series Cleverman, have often been used
by Aboriginal Australians to inform and entertain. The latest
example of this type of political and artistic endeavour is
Wiradjuri author Anita Heiss’ new work Barbed Wire and Cherry
Blossoms.
Set in Cowra during the second World War, her novel recounts a love
story between a young Aboriginal woman, Mary, and an escaped
Japanese POW, Hiroshi.
Hiroshi has been given food and shelter by Mary’s family, despite
the considerable risk their kindness involves – they live on Erambie
Mission under the Aborigines Protection Act 1909, with no rights,
scraps for clothes and barely any food. Their very existence depends
on the whim of the station manager, King Billie.
Heiss is well-known as the author of five “choc”-lit novels and her
writing takes inspiration from the genre made famous by Bridget
Jones’s Diary (1996). What sets Heiss apart are the avowedly
political ends to which she puts her popular fiction. She wrote in
Am I Black Enough For You? (2012): I want people to be
challenged, to think about their role in the world and how their
behaviour impacts on other people, particularly Aboriginal people. I
want readers to learn…
The importance of Heiss’ fiction as an educational device should not
be underestimated: the recent example of Bill Leak’s cartoon in The
Australian is simply the latest of many shameful examples that
highlight mainstream Australia’s ignorance of Aboriginal culture,
politics and people. This cultural illiteracy is neither abstract
nor theoretical: as Chelsea Bond (and the hashtag #IndigenousDads)
argue, it hurts Aboriginal people, it hurts communities and it hurts
Australia. It’s a pretty dismal picture. Heiss is a realist, but an
optimist. On one hand, her popular fiction aims to instruct the
reader in Aboriginal culture, history and politics. On the other, it
captures the day-to-day life of Aboriginal women, whether they live
on the mission or in the Big Apple, in a style that is entertaining
and accessible.
Barbed Wire can, and should, be read as a romance. Heiss’ sensitive
portrayal of Mary and Hiroshi’s growing attraction is one of the
novel’s chief pleasures: their first kiss is full of everything
the war lacks: love, compassion, respect. It lasts only seconds but
will linger with them both for a long time after.
With deftness and a lightness of touch, Heiss accords her
protagonists privacy in their intimate moment. The war is unshakably
present, but it recedes into the background without overpowering the
shy advances of her two protagonists. Heiss’ strengths as a writer
are on full display: the blossoming romance between Hiroshi and Mary
refuses an “us vs. them”, “goodies vs. baddies” mentality, instead
presenting a complex view of cross-cultural relationships. Japanese,
Italian, Aboriginal and white identities are brought into sometimes
uncomfortable proximity. It would be selling Heiss short to say that
love erases race, but she goes to great pains to show that respect
and trust, patience and compassion far outweigh skin colour in
matters of the heart. The genre of popular romance, long associated
with female readers, also allows Heiss to make a broader point about
similarities between women. Commentary on her 2014 novel Tiddas
still rings true: As women what makes us the same is that we
value our friendships, we treasure the relationships with our
mothers and our sisters, and so forth. … It’s about being human
beings. When we think about it, we’ve got more in common than we
haven’t.
But Heiss refuses to sugarcoat the past for the reader. Questions of
enmity and friendship are snarled and unpleasant: who is fighting
whom? If white Australia has declared war on its First Peoples at
the same time as enlisting Aboriginal men to die for the British
Empire, where should Mary’s loyalties lie? With the nation? With her
people? And, more disquieting still for the white reader, are the
Japanese and Aboriginal Australians united by a common enemy?
These questions are designed to unsettle the non-Aboriginal reader,
destabilising conventional historical narratives and challenging the
reader to learn their country anew through the eyes of its First
Peoples.
Re-learning the nation, though necessary, comes at a cost. It is
worn on the bodies of Aboriginal women, who frequently (and not
always willingly) find themselves cast in the role of educator. Over
seven pages, Mary explains to Hiroshi the degradations and
deprivations of living under the Protection Act. When she stops,
finally, “she takes a deep breath, exhausted by what feels like
schooling”.
The psychic toll extracted by this “schooling” is immense, wrought
firstly by living through the Protection Act and secondly by
explaining it to others. Heiss’ fiction comes with a warning to the
non-Aboriginal reader: don’t expect Aboriginal people to do the hard
work for you. But it is also offers hope for the future: education
can create change.
Although Barbed Wire is set in 1944, it presents an unerringly apt
commentary on contemporary Australian society, because it precisely
identifies the racism that sits at the heart of the Australian
psyche. Heiss recently wrote, referring to Manus Island, Nauru and
revelations of abuse in Don Dale:
I wanted Australians generally to realise that while we treated
the POWs here in the 1940s as we were meant to under the Geneva
Conventions, we have gone backwards as a nation today …
Work in the same vein as Leak’s will continue to be produced,
printed and defended, and Indigenous youth will continue to be
disproportionately incarcerated, until something fundamental shifts
in Australia.
For that shift to happen, it’s incumbent upon non-Aboriginal
Australians to educate themselves about the past and present of
Australia’s First Peoples. A vital first step is listening to
Aboriginal voices."
Writing
a letter to encourage a Writer's Workshop for the School
Primary
Middle
Secondary Australian
Curriculum General Capability:Critical and creative thinking
Australian
Curriculum General Capability:Literacy Australian
Curriculum General Capability:Personal and social capability
Australian
Curriculum Cross Curriculum Priorities:
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures
Cooperative
Learning Activity
1. Divide into groups of 3 - 4 students.
Introduction: Anita has worked with La Perouse Primary School as a
Writer in Residence and produced books with the students at this school.
For example:
This time, your school would also like a local writer to
be involved with the students to create great literacy works just like the
students at La Perouse PS.
2. To do this [create books with an author], you need to
contact an author who would be willing to help your class or school. There
are various Writing Groups across Australia. An example is
Writing NSW
Contact your local State or Territory Writing Group to
see if they could help you or send your developed letter to your local
newspaper for help.
3. The Letter.
In groups of 3 - 5 students, decide what type of writing
you would like to produce - fiction, adventure, fantasy - in a book.
Ask the writers of the Writing Groups if they could
provide you with an author who will help you with your book - co-write with
you.
The writers would need to
Brainstorm ideas with you
Provide you with a plot and
you provide the characters [or the other way around]
Fill in the gaps: you write a
"sizzling start" & an "exciting ending" and they write the body of the
story.
Edit your work
Find a publisher and
illustrator [if you have drawn the story yourselves] and get the book
printed.
4. Selling the book
You will need to let your community know about your
combined effort with an author and the resultant book.
What makes me the SAME as another person?
Middle
Secondary
Australian
Curriculum General Capability:Critical and creative thinking
Australian
Curriculum General Capability:Personal and social capability
Australian
Curriculum General Capability:Literacy
Australian
Curriculum General Capability: Ethical Understanding
Australian
Curriculum General Capability: Intercultural Understanding
Australian
Curriculum Cross Curriculum Priorities:
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures
Philosophy
Cooperative
Learning Activity
1. In groups of 3 - 4 students, you are to view the
following video