 | Dr Merlinda Bobis Dr Merlinda Bobis |  | The Solemn Lantern Maker, Pier 9, Murdoch Books The Solemn Lantern Maker, Pier 9, Murdoch Books |
Launch of second novel for FCA creative writing lecturer
The Solemn Lantern Maker
Merlinda Bobis
The Faculty of Creative Arts celebrates the launch of new novel, The Solemn Lantern Maker (Pier 9, Murdoch Books) by senior lecturer and award-winning writer Dr Merlinda Bobis.
Launched on 4 March at Gleebooks, Sydney and on 7 March at the South Coast Writers' Centre, Wollongong, by Walkley Award winning journalist Wendy The Solemn Lantern Maker is Dr Bobis' second novel. Her first, Banana Heart Summer, was shortlisted for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal in 2006.
Dr Bobis has received various awards, prizes and fellowships for her prose fiction, poetry and plays, among them the Prix Italia for Rita's Lullaby, the Steele Rudd Award for the Best Published Collection of Australian Short Stories, the Judges' Choice Award (Bumbershoot Bookfair, Seattle Arts Festival) and the Philippine National Book Award for White Turtle or The Kissing (US ed), and more recently the Philippine Balagtas Award, a lifetime award for her fiction and poetry in English, Filipino and Bicol. Her poetry book Summer Was A Fast Train Without Terminals was shortlisted for The Age Poetry Book Award. Her plays have been performed in Australia, the Philippines, France, China, Thailand and the Slovak Republic. Her two novels will be also be released in the US by Bantam in 2008 and 2009.
The Solemn Lantern Maker is about ten-year old Noland, a mute lantern maker, who imagines an angel falling from the sky to the slums where he lives. But it is only an American tourist caught in a drive-by shooting of a political journalist. At a busy intersection in Manila, the magical and the seedy collide: shimmering lanterns and poverty, Christmas carols and prostitution, dreams of friendship and the global war on terror. This raw and hard-hitting tale of our times is delicately spare in its prose, with room for silences.
The novel will also be launched in Adelaide on 7 April by novelist and University of Adelaide Professor, Nicholas Jose and in Melbourne on 29 April by writer and Spinifex publisher Dr Susan Hawthorne. In addition, Dr Bobis will have a Conversation on Politics and Narrative at the National Library of Australia with ABC Radio Arts producer Jane Ulman (3 April), a lecture on the same subject at the History and Politics Department at the University of Adelaide.
In February, Dr Bobis worked with Campbelltown Arts Centre in the creative development of her play, 'River, River' for a possible production in November 2008.
Available at all good books stores from 1 March 2008
Pier 9, Murdoch Books
Published March 2008
208 pages
paperback with jacket
198 x 128mm
http://www.murdochbooks.com.au/media.htm
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