Acclaimed novelist is writer-in-residence

Creative Writing

Multi award-winning novelist Eva Sallis has become the University of Adelaide's first Writer-in-Residence.

As Writer-in-Residence until June 2008, Dr Sallis will take on a teaching and mentorship commitment for students on the University's Creative Writing program, as well as working on her current novel. She will present a graduate seminar and run a workshop in conjunction with the SA Writers' Centre called 'Three Tasks for the Emerging Writer'.

Dr Sallis, who completed her PhD at the University of Adelaide in 1996, won the 1997 Vogel Literary Award and the Nita May Dobbie Award in 1999 with her first novel Hiam. She also completed a Masters at the University of Adelaide in 1991.

Mahjar won the 2004 Steele Rudd Literary Award and her latest work of fiction, The Marsh Birds, set in Iraq, Syria, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand, won the Asher Literary Award 2005 and was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year 2005; NSW Premiers Literary Awards, Christina Stead Prize for Fiction 2006; National Fiction Award, Festival Awards for Literature 2006; and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Best Book South-East Asia and Pacific Region 2006.

Other works include novels The City of Sealions and Fire Fire, and a book of literary criticism on the Arabian Nights, Sheherazade through the Looking Glass: the Metamorphosis of the 1001 Nights.

"The Writer-In-Residency program aims to support notable writers in their creative work while making their abilities and experience available to students in the Creative Writing program," said Professor Nicholas Jose, University of Adelaide's Chair of Creative Writing.

"Eva Sallis is a generous and inspiring mentor whose creative insight and professional experience have a great deal to offer our students. Many books have entered the world already with an acknowledgement of Eva's nurturing role."

Dr Sallis said: "I am really delighted to be actively contributing to this program again. Working with writers in such an intensive hothouse environment is inspiring."

Dr Sallis is co-founder of Australians Against Racism (AAR), an organisation that seeks to raise public awareness of human rights and social justice through media, arts and education.

She coordinates Ozarabic, an Arabic language course for primary school children, and is involved with an Aboriginal language course hosted at Tauondi College. She is working with elders on editing and publishing Adnyamathanha language and literary resources. AAR's first such publication, Lily Neville's Adnyamathanha Ngawarla, is just out.

Story by Robyn Mills