A
Public Memory Project
by
Chris Lee

About

History

Places

Writers
Alice Guèrin Crist
Dorothy Cottrell
Margaret Curran
Bruce Dawe
George Essex Evans
Jean Kent
David Rowbotham
Steele Rudd
A. G. Stephens
Margaret Trist
Jillian Watkinson

Writers

Dogs thrive, and boyhood’s school needs painted rooms, And small-town culture fashionably booms When tenors or pianists challenge provincial ways And step from Progress into stand-still days. Oh, somebody keep this hometown not unchanging But ever memorable, that when the heart is ranging Beyond its citizenship and the old-pensioners, The droll and the dear may make eminent the years. ‘Hometown’, David Rowbotham

Toowoomba and the Darling Downs have been associated with a significant number of writers active in different ways and in different spaces within our literary culture.

Some writers were born here and moved away, others came from elsewhere to stay for varying lengths of time, others still were just visitors. Some wrote extensively about their local place, others ignored it completely, most dealt with it in some shape or form.

The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia list of writers who have a connection with Toowoomba or the Darling Downs includes: A.G. Stephens, W.H.Trail, Steele Rudd, John David Hennessey, Heber Hedley Booth, Francis Adams, Ronald McKie, David Rowbotham, Maureen Freer, Bruce Dawe, Mary Hannay Foot, John Henry Nicholson, JE MCDonnell, Eric Partridge, Arthur Upfield, Peter Edwards, Margaret Curran, Margaret Trist, Dorothy Green, V Cunnington and Gavin Souter. [i] J.L. Blyth and P.T. McNally name hundreds more in their extremely valuable Darling Downs Writers: A Bibliography. [ii]

This section provides biographies and portraits of some of the area's more distinguished writers but it hopes to add to this list writers important to the local area who have yet to have their work collected. More information on the place of these figures within the cultural history of Toowoomba or the Darling Downs can be found in the History section.

Further Reading

[i] Peter Pierce, ed. The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia, revised edition, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1993.

[ii] J.L.Blyth and P. T. McNally, Darling Downs Writers: A Bibliography, Toowoomba: Darling Downs Institute Press, 1989.

Please use the link list on the left to access various featured writers Biographies and Portraits.

Submissions and suggestions for writers not yet included can be sent to leec@usq.edu.au