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Merrill
Findlay is an independent Australian writer, scholar, teacher and
community cultural development (CCD) practitioner. Her
feature articles, essays and works of fiction have been widely
published in Australia and internationally. More
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PROJECTS
The Wenz Project
A
community-based initiative to conserve and extend the literary heritage of
French-Australian writer Paul Wenz and his wife Hettie Wenz More >>
Imagine The Future Inc
A small project-based
not-for-profit futures organisation Merrill founded in the late
1980s More >>
Redreaming the
plains
An e-journal established by Merrill Findlay about the pasts,
presents and possible futures of plains landscapes More
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www.merrillfindlay.com last revised 25 April, 2008. |
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CURRENT PROJECTS
COMING SOON: THE KELSO POSSUM SKIN CLOAK PROJECT
at the Kelso Community Centre, Bathurst. This 20 week Aboriginal writing and multimedia project is expected to begin on 30 April, 2008. More >>
Saving
Kate Kelly
A community music-theatre
work-in-progress, by Merrill and NZ composer Ross Carey with others, on the life and times of Kate
Kelly, whose decomposing body was found in a NSW lagoon
in October 1898. More
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NEW! Stage 1 of the KK Project begins, with a grant from the Royal Australian Historical Society through Forbes Museum, to conduct oral history interviews and documentary research about Kate Kelly's life in and around Forbes, NSW.
STORIES WANTED: Are you the custodian of family folklore or other stories about Kate Kelly, her husband ‘Brickie’ Foster, or any of the people Kate associated with in central western NSW, in the 1880s and '90s?
If so, then this writer would like to hear from you ... More >>
KK Project leaflet >> [pdf 67kb]
Community
writing workshops >>
COMING SOON: The Possum Skin Cloak Project, an innovative 20 week series of workshops at the Kelso Community Centre starts in April 2008. More >>

Merrill
Findlay supports creative writing in
regional Australia with community writers workshops, such as The Possum Skin Cloak Project at Kelso, NSW, and Fictions,
non-fictions, memoirs and family histories: writing stories that
people want to read. Contact Merrill for a workshop in your area. More
>
Other
creative CCD interventions by Merrill Findlay >>
Into
Australia's 'heartlands': a journey
An extended narrative meditation on Australia's 2001
'Tampa Incident' drawing on Merrill's engagement with refugees and
asylum seekers and her visits to refugee communities in the
Pakistan-Afghanistan border regions. More >>
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RECENT WORK
Forbes, 9 March, 2008
NEWS FLASH: A new cultural organisation, the Paul Wenz Society, was founded today over a working brunch in Merrill's garden ... More >>
NEW: Breasting cancer in the bush: a personal narrative
It was early Spring and the jonquils were flowering, I remember. I was looking forward to ... More >>
Understanding
Place Through Narrative
Chapter for the forthcoming book Making
Sense of Place, National Museum Australia, Canberra,
April 2008
...
No continent can be invaded, no massacre committed, no abuse
perpetrated, no people subjugated, vilified or discriminated
against, no land degraded, no wetlands drained, no climate changed,
no species made extinct and no creeks or rivers despoiled by humans– unless
stories make it so. More
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Balochistan,
the invisible war: politics, land and terror in remote Pakistan

Article first published in Arena magazine, Oct.
2007
Even my Pakistani friends warned me about
Balochistan, and not without reason. In the days immediately before
I was to catch the train to Quetta, the provincial capital near
Pakistan’s borders with Afghanistan and Iran, ‘terrorists’ detonated
a bomb in a shopping plaza in the city’s military cantonment and
fired rockets at a couple of express trains .... More >> [pdf 126kb]
Re-imagining Australia's futures
Special
double issue of the British journal Futures
(v. 39/2-3, March 2007) guest-edited by Merrill
Findlay calling for radical systemic change, for an
intellectual and cultural revolution, a complete renewal of both
civil society and our public institutions .... More
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FROM THE ARCHIVES
Past work by Merrill
Findlay on themes she is passionate about.
Republic
of Women >> (UQP 1999, ISBN 0-7022-3078-2)
St Kilda is home to a vital community
of free-thinking individuals, and Merrill Findlay introduces an
exotic cavalcade of characters... Read more
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READ the reviews >>
ENJOY an extract >>
BUY
the book >>
Eddie
Mabo Comes Home to Murray Island
Article first published in
Good Weekend, June 1, 1996.
It's hot on the rim of this extinct volcano at
the far northern end of the Great Barrier Reef. Bonita Mabo has been
waiting in the shade of a battered fibro shed all morning.
More
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Timeless
bond between birds and people
First published in The
Age, Saturday Extra, 22 August 1998. With photos by Sandy
Scheltema.
As the days grow shorter
in the far-off waters of the North Pacific, hundreds of thousands of
hungry, dun-coloured seabirds, millions even, begin their long
annual flight south to Big Dog Island ... More >>
Eritrea: just a question of time
First published in Canberra
Times, 7 June, 1989.
In a stone room dug into
the side of a narrow rocky gorge we bent towards a tiny transistor
radio ... More
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Read more of Merrill's non-fiction and fiction
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