
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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Hunza Wear Project >>
a visionary community development intervention in the remote Karakoram, Hindu Kush and Pamir Mountains of northeastern Pakistan >>
www.merrillfindlay.com last revised 14 January 2008 |
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CURRENT PROJECTS
Into
our ethnic 'heartlands': a work-in-progress >>
An extended narrative meditation on Australia's 2001
'Tampa Incident' drawing on my engagement with refugees,
asylum seekers and indigenous peoples over the last 30 years, my rural upbringing and my visits to Afghan refugee communities in Pakistan. I'm now completing this literary non-fiction work as a Creative PhD project in the School of Design and Creative Practice, University of Canberra. More >>
KATE KELLY PROJECT
A community music-theatre
work-in-progress, by Merrill Findlay and NZ composer Ross Carey with project partners, about the life and times of Kate
Kelly, whose body was found in the Forbes lagoon
in October 1898. More
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KK Project leaflet >> [pdf 67kb]
Press coverage >>
SAVING QUONG LEE'S STORE IN FORBES >>
A campaign to save an historic Chinese building in Forbes, NSW, where Kate Kelly almost certainly shopped in the 1880s and '90s. This old shop is now threatened with demolition to create 20 extra car parking spaces for a shopping mall >>
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP SAVE QUONG LEE'S >>
Regional Arts Funding for the Kate Kelly Project!
December 2008: Stage II of the Kate Kelly Project has received substantial funding from Regional Arts Australia. The money will be used to complete a song cycle and script treatment, and to undertake further commuity consultation in 2009 >>
Community
writing workshops >>

Merrill
Findlay is supporting creative writing in
regional Australia through her community writers workshops, including 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
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More creative CCD interventions by Merrill Findlay >>
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RECENT WORK
From terra incognita to cognita >>
Pre-print version of an essay for No Such Thing As A Free Ride: the Australian edition, a forthcoming collection of hitch-hiking stories due for publication in February 2009 >>
[pdf 50kb: posted 1 November 2008]
The Australian edition of No Such Thing As A Free Ride, edited by Tom Sykes and Simon Sykes, follows the British (2005) and North American (2008) versions. More >>
Understanding
Place Through Narrative >>
Pre-print version of my essay published in Making
Sense of Place, National Museum Australia, Canberra,
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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BUY Making Sense of Place >>
Balochistan,
the invisible war >>
Article first published in Arena magazine, Oct.
2007
... 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
Publications by Merrill
Findlay on themes she is passionate about.
Republic
of Women: a novel >>
(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 of this critically acclaimed novel >>
ENJOY an extract >>
BUY the book >>
Breasting cancer in the bush, a personal story >>
It was early Spring and the jonquils were flowering, I remember >>
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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