Biographers in Conversation

Cathy Perkins: The Shelf Life of Zora Cross

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In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Cathy Perkins chats with Gabriella about the choices she made while writing The Shelf Life of Zora Cross, her biography of Zora Cross, a prolific writer who caused a literary sensation in 1917 with her provocative series of erotic sonnets that celebrated sexual passion. The Shelf Life of Zora Cross was shortlisted in the 2020 NSW Premier’s History Awards and highly commended in the 2021 National Biography Awards. This second edition of the acclaimed biography includes a foreword by Bernadette Brennan, winner of the National Biography Award in 2022. 

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: 

  • You’ll meet Zora Cross. 
  • The meaning of the book’s title: The Shelf Life of Zora Cross. 
  • Why Cathy opens the book with a scene of a young girl sitting and writing on her family’s verandah.
  • Why Cathy includes excerpts from Zora’s constant stream of stories published in the ‘Children’s Corner’ of the Australian Town and Country Journal. 
  • Why Cathy quotes from so many of Zora’s 340 lengthy letters to the Sydney publisher George Robertson. 
  • Why Cathy shapes the narrative with a series of self-contained chapters, each of them centered on Zora’s relationship with a literary luminary.
  • The novelistic devices Cathy employed to craft lyrical narrative. 
  • The extent to which Cathy believes she captures the truth of her subject
  • Cathy’s thoughts on the role of a biographer.

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