Index
Dr Francesca Rendle-Short
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Position |
Program Director (Creative Writing) |
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School / |
Media and Communication |
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Contact Details |
+(61 3) 9925 9052 |
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Location |
Building: 36 |
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College/Portfolio |
Design & Social Context |
- Profile
- Publications
Key activities
Francesca Rendle-Short is the Program Director of Creative Writing at RMIT.
Francesca is a novelist, author of the novel/memoir Bite Your Tongue (Spinifex Press), the novel Imago (Spinifex Press), and novella 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
Links to industry
Francesca has held the following honorary positions:
- Member, 2012 ACT Poetry Prize Panel, artsACT
- Member, Advisory Panel, Belconnen Arts Centre, ACT Government, 2008
- Member, Advisory Panel, Marian Eldridge Award for Emerging Women Writers, 2005–2007
- Member, ACT Cultural Council, Chair of the Literature Committee, Chair ACT Book of the Year, ACT Government, 2002–2006
- Member, Arts at the Cutting Edge Committee, ACT Cultural Council, ACT Government, 2002
- Member, Literature Committee, ACT Cultural Council, ACT Government, 2001
- Member, Canberra International Film Festival Advisory Board, 1999–2001
- Member, Visual Arts/New Media Committee, ACT Cultural Council, ACT Government, 2000
Francesca has worked with the following organisations, companies and institutions as editor and writer:
- National Library of Australia
- National Portrait Gallery
- National Museum of Australia
- Australian Electoral Commission
- Australian National University
- Helen Maxwell Gallery
- Museums Australia
- Muse Inc
- ABC Radio
- Australian Art Monthly
- Wagga Wagga Art Gallery
- Australian Choreographic Centre
- Australian Tax Office
- ACT Aids Action Council
- Drill Hall Gallery
- Canberra School of Music
- Old Parliament House
- Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve
- Centrelink
- FoCA (Festival of Contemporary Art)
Awards and achievements
2011–2013, StoriesNOW (NonfictioNow conference support + Creators-in-Residence Program) with Assoc Professor David Carlin, Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) Cultural Fund
2009–2011, 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
Research
Francesca is interested in the following areas:
Creative writing, practice-led research, experimental writing and hybrid forms, autobiography and memoir, writing the body, ‘life writing’ and fiction, microfictions (twitter-fictions), creative writing and wellbeing.
She is involved in the following:
- Co-leader with Associate Professor David Carlin, newly established interdisciplinary The Nonfiction Research Group
- Co-leader with Associate Professor David Carlin, StoriesNOW (NonfictioNOW conference support + Creators-in-Residence Program)
- Member, Poetry 4 U, creating a new city of literature space adding layers over/under/through geo coordinates
- Member, steering committee for the 2012 Bedell NonfictioNOW Conference 2011–2012, a joint venture between RMIT and The University of Iowa
- Member, International Editorial Board of AXON: Creative Explorations
Research (current) supervisions
- Melody Ellis, PhD, ‘Secretly in a boat I went’
- Ann Shenfield, PhD, ‘The almost nothing poetry project’
- Bianca Frost, PhD, ‘A land without home’
- Kerry Munnery, MA, ‘The Mirror House: Writing the uncanny in the Australian suburbs’