Latest NewsThe China Garden has won the 2010 Barbara Jefferis Award. 
The award, provided by a bequest from the writer Barbara Jefferis and her husband, the film critic John Hinde, is given annually for the best Australian novel that positively depicts women or enhances the image of women and girls.
The award, administered by the Australian Society of Authors, was presented at a ceremony in Sydney on March 14 by John and Barbara's daughter, Rosalind Hinde.
The China Garden was chosen from a short-list of five novels: Steven Carroll's The Lost Life (Fourth Estate) Enza Gandolfo's Swimming (Vanark Press) Cate Kennedy's The World Beneath (Scribe) and Susan Varga's Headlong. (UWA Press). The China Garden was published by the University of Queensland Press.
Two books were highly commended: Judith Lanigan's A True History of the Hula Hoop (Picador) and Lili Wilkinson's Pink (Allen & Unwin).
In their report the judges, Susan Martin, Gina Mercer and Elizabeth Webby, said that 'unusually for a story about relinquishment and adoption, this fine novel deals with the impact on the mother and her remaining child, rather than her lost one…The title refers to Angela's garden and its broken pieces of china. This evocative image suggests that beauty can be created from what is broken and apparently irretrievable, but also the danger and sharpness of buried secrets.
'Kristina Olsson traces different possibilities of mothering, in Angela's mutually enriching friendship with a young man, Kieran, in Kieran's relationship with his grandmother, Cress, and in Cress's tentative friendship with Angela's daughter. Without feeling the need to resolve every absence or mystery, Olsson gently suggests that it is always possible to make new things out of the past, however fractured or painful.'
Barbara Jefferis was also a founding member of the Australian Society of Authors and its first woman president. Previous winners of the award include Rhyll McMaster and Helen Garner.
An edited version of Kristina's acceptance speech, 'A Gift Across Time', appeared in Australian Author, April 2010.
More photos of the ceremony are on the ASA's website, www.asauthors.org
The China Garden was this week short-listed for another prestigious prize, the Nita B. Kibble Award.
The award will be announced in June. The short-list of three includes Josephine Emery's The Real Possibility of Joy (Murdoch Books) and Shirley Walker's A Ghost at the Wedding (Penguin).
Full details of the short-listing and judges' comments can be found at:
http://www.perpetual.com.au/pdf/2010_Kibble_Shortlist_media_release_270410.pdf
A review in the Sydney Morning Herald 4th April 2009
The China Garden
Straight to the emotional point - Click here for the article PDF 74Kb
Grandma Magic
I'm chuffed and proud to have an essay in a new anthology called 'Grandma Magic', published by Allen & Unwin. It will be available in bookstores on March 31. The collection is edited by Janet Hutchinson and includes pieces by Gabrielle Lord, Anne Deveson, Marion Halligan, Eva Cox, Sara Dowse, Ruby Langford Ginibi and fellow Brisbane writer Michele Di'Bartolo, to name a few.
Click here to visit the Allen & Unwin Website.
Youtube movie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VksR0ODMj9c
My essay, 'She Says: Naming and Grandmother Magic' roams around the territory of how, as grandparents, we are brought into being by our grandchildren. We become new beings, if you like, as our grandchildren name us and claim us. It's primarily about my beautiful granddaughter Amber Jean, a true magician in my life, but it's also about my grandmothers, Kristina and Veronica, and about my mother and me.
Olvar Wood - Literary LunchJoin Kristina Olsson at Olvar Wood Writers Retreat this Mothers Day weekend as she discusses her incredible new novel over a relaxed three-course lunch.
Guests will be part of an intimate gathering, and will each receive a personalised, signed copy of The China Garden.
When: Saturday, May 9. From 12:00
Where: Olvar Wood Writers Retreat is in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, nestled in the foothills of the Blackall Range between Maroochydore and Montville. Easy-to-follow directions will be sent to you with your booking confirmation.
Cost: The Literary Lunch with Kristina Olsson is $80.00 including a scrumptious organic meal, a signed copy of The China Garden and the pleasure of hearing Kris speak about her work.
Bookings: For bookings and enquiries, please call 5445 9222 or email Olvar Wood: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Book Launch " The China Garden "
Click here for the flyer from Queensland Press PDF 550kb
When: Thursday 26th February 2009, Time 6pm
Venue: Avid Reader Bookshop.
193 Boundary Street, West End Queensland 4810
Click this message for a map showing the location of the Avid Reader Bookshop
University of Queensland Press in partnership with Avid Reader, West End are delighted to invite you to the launch of Kristina Olsson's, The China Garden on Thursday 26 February 2009, 6.00pm for 6.30pm. Matthew Condon, Journalist, The Courier-Mail, will launch this captivating story about betrayal and its echoes across generations. The launch will also feature entertainment by Brisbane band, One Good Woman.
We hope you can join us at Avid Reader to celebrate this beautiful and disturbing novel which will strike a chord with anybody touched by adoption or family secrets. Please find your official invitation attached with further details.
Please note that bookings are essential. Contact Krissy at Avid Reader on: 07 3846 3422 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to secure your place at this exciting event.
Peter Blazey Fellowship 2009 awarded to NSW writer Maggie Mackellar at Writers’ Festival
Media Release, Friday 29 August 2008
The $15,000 Peter Blazey Fellowship for biography, autobiography and life writing was presented yesterday at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival by actor, director and writer, Graeme Blundell, at a ceremony hosted by Professor Joy Damousi, Head of School of Historical Studies at the University of Melbourne.
The award was presented to the New South Wales writer, Maggie Mackellar, for her work in progress, ‘Anatomy of Grief’.
The judges also highly commended the work of Kristina Olsson (Queensland) and Mark O’Flynn (NSW).
Olsson’s work in progress ‘The Secretive Century’ was highly commended as a ‘striking memoir of family secrets, addressing the hidden pain and trauma of the separation of child from parent. It examines a specific event from multiple perspectives, and how trauma ripples across generations and relationships. But it is also a story about ordinary people attempting to cope amid the devastating consequences of apathy and ignorance’.
Julianne Schultz (ed.) - GRIFFITH REVIEW 21
ABC Books, $19 95 pb, 288 pp, 14482924
In recent times, Queensland has developed a reputation as 'an engine of national growth and innovation'. This reputation was boosted by the 2007 election of Queenslander Kevin Rudd as prime minister. In this edition of Griffith Review, subtitled 'Hidden Queens-land', a range of contributors explore the evolution of the Australian state once best known 'for its extremes of weather and politics'.
Much emphasis is given to Queensland's history of radical political activism. Various contributors discuss the campaigns against the Vietnam War and (some time later) Joh Bjelke-Petersen's conservative government. However, there are also descriptions of this state's artistic and cultural achievements, an account of an adolescent girl's ill-fated sexual dalliances with an older married couple, and a photographic essay on the lives of mentally ill Queensland residents.
I found Edwina Shaw's short story on the 'corrupt' Queensland police force during the 1980s to be the strongest contribution to 'Hidden Queensland' Shaw creates a vision of a police state that is both nightmarish and totally believable.
I was deeply moved by Kristina Olsson's memoir piece entitled 'A War, An Attic, A Gun', in which Olsson reflects on the heartache her mother faced when her son (Olsson's brother) went missing around the time of Australia's participation in Vietnam. Olsson observes, her brother was 'of a conscriptable age' and their mother 'must have felt the terrible irony of losing him not once but twice. The possibility.'
There are some prominent Queenslanders who are given surprisingly little attention throughout the journal. I am thinking specifically of Pauline Hanson and Schapelle Corby, both of whom have been famously held up by the Australian media as examples of a 'white trash' underclass. As a whole, though, 'Hidden Queensland' offers a fascinating insight into the darker and more cornplex side of the so-called 'Sunshine State'.
Jay Daniel Thompson
Current Affairs: Griffith Review21 - Hidden Queensland - Reviewed by Sandra Hogan
The spring edition of Griffith Review has a crumpled brown paper bag on the front cover. There's something familiar about that bag. Could it once have contained large wads of dollar bills destined for government ministers?
One of the most moving and perfect pieces of writing in the book, is the memoir : A war, an attic, a gun by Kristina Olsson. A journalist, Olsson investigated the history of the anti-conscription movement in Queensland and, in the process, discovered a disturbing link to her own family. Two other pieces to admire for the great beauty of their writing are the short story Justine and Col and Mr Heggarty by Julie Gittus and the poem Breaking the Lease by Anna Krien