books

sifting fire writing coast (Walleah Press, 2023)

Elanna Herbert's debut poetry collection. Over half of the poems in this collection have been published in literary journals, anthologies, or recognised in Australian literary awards. Divided into three sections 'fire', 'sifting' and 'coast' - the collection achieves a vibrant, accessible work of quality which engages current issues related to our physical and social environment.  Using a variety of forms: from list poems, prose, stanzas, to non standard typography, she deftly explores, sifts and works on issues of place and being, and our shaky connections to the land as settlers on this arid country.

To purchase go to Walleah Press

Frieda & the Cops: & other Laminex table stories (Ginninderra Press, 2005) 

In this evocative short prose collection Elanna Herbert effectively grasps the complex dual nature of life in suburban Canberra of decades past, showing the smooth veneer of suburban normality and the hidden underside of isolation, family conflict or personal lives spinning out of control. This collection makes rich and inviting reading.

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Neohistorical Fiction and Hannah’s Place: A Creative Response to Colonial Representation (VDM Verlag, 2008)

This book draws together new combinations of ideas and takes new investigative directions in dealing with the concept of an experimental historical fiction based on the notion of collaged texts, imagery and meaning.

It examines traditional historical fiction for chinks in the hegemonic armour and drives through these towards strategies for recovering lost female voices. Unlike middle class women who wrote diaries and letters, illiterate women did not leave us stories of their colonial Australia. Instead their experiences were recorded in newspaper and archival documents reflecting patriarchal and class ideologies, which represent them as the 'other'. This book in two parts, shows that by working within neohistorical fiction, a richer, non-linear view of female experience can be found.

Part Two, Hannah's Place, plays with the idea of historical facts and fiction. It gives textual equality to the two, blurring the borders between them and questioning the reliability of past textual facts as accurate records of lower class women's experience. 

This compelling multi-layered narrative suggests neohistorical fiction as a form of bringing textual agency to silenced women.

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