Assoc Professor Francesca Rendle-Short

Position

Associate Professor

School /
Work Unit

Media and Communication

Contact Details

+(61 3) 9925 9052

francesca.rendle-short@rmit.edu.au

Location

Building: 36
Level: 3
Room: 8

City Campus

College/Portfolio

Design & Social Context

 

Francesca Rendle-Short

Key activities

Francesca Rendle-Short is the Program Director of Creative Writing at RMIT and Co-Director of the nonfictionLab in the School of Media and Communication.

Francesca’s most recent book the novel/memoir Bite Your Tongue (Spinifex Press), Imago (Spinifex Press), and Big Sister (Redress Novellas). She is also co-author with scriptwriter Felicity Packard (Underbelly, MDA, Home and Away) of the play short for Six Pack entitled Us. Her fictions, photo-essays, exhibition text, and poetry for the page and for the wall, have been published in literary journals and magazines, online and in exhibitions.

Francesca grew up in Queensland and studied at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales, and at the University of Wollongong where she was awarded a Doctor of Creative Arts in creative writing. She has worked variously as a radio producer, teacher, editor, freelance writer and arts journalist and has spent nearly two decades teaching in the tertiary sector.

Francesca’s research interests explore the potential of practice-led creative research. Her doctorate interrogated ideas of shame and silence, and how a writer’s body operates and survives as the language of process. Specifically, her research to date relates to the writing of autobiography and memoir, how images fit creatively into writing narrative and writing performance, and the relationship or space between fiction and nonfiction. She is also very interested in the way an arts practice and the process of making imaginative work can inform the direction research and writing can take, and in the use of fiction or story in scholarly writing. The current debate about fiction’s role in illuminating our history is of great interest to her, and her work.

Personal website: www.francescarendleshort.com

Qualifications

  • Doctor of Creative Arts (DCA), University of Wollongong
  • Bachelor of Education (BEd), University of New England
  • Diploma of Education (DipEd), University of New England
  • Bachelor of Arts (BA), University of New England

Awards and achievements

  • Bite Your Tongue shortlisted 2012 Colin Roderick Literary Award
  • 2011 Dean’s Award for Outstanding Achievement, School of Media and Communication
  • 2009–2012, Writers in Residence Program (with Professor Catherine Cole) Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) Cultural Fund
  • 2009, Doctor of Creative Arts awarded examiner’s commendation for outstanding thesis, University of Wollongong
  • 2005, Vice-Chancellor's Distinction Award for Teaching and Learning, University of Canberra
  • 2002, Gold Award, editor of report, Institute of Public Administration Australia: Australian Electoral Commission Annual Report 2001–2002, ‘Best annual report for a small agency reporting under the FMA Act (1977)’
  • 1999, Writing for Theatre Project with BITS Theatre Co and The Company, artsACT
  • 1999, The Secret Life of Canberra, FoCA99, Myer Foundation
  • 1998, Highly Commended, Marian Eldridge Award
  • 1997, ACT Book of the Year, for Imago, Chief Minister’s Department, ACT Government
  • 1997, Professional Development Grant, Melbourne Writers Festival, Monstalvat, artsACT
  • 1996, Varuna New Writers Fellowship, awarded ACT Government
  • 1995, ANUTECH Short Story Award, for Swimming Breaststroke Again with Pink Plastic Fish
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