Evelyn Juers (born 6 March 1950) is an Australian writer and publisher.
Juers was born in
Neritz
Neritz is a municipality in the district of Stormarn, in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and th ...
, Germany, moved to Australia in 1960, and has lived in Hamburg, Sydney, London and Geneva. She has a
PhD
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...
from
University of Essex
The University of Essex is a public university, public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, it is one of the original plate glass university, plate glass universities. The university comprises three camp ...
on the Brontës and the practice of biography. As an essayist and an art and literary critic, she has contributed to a wide range of Australian and international publications. She has written on women’s literature, weavers, travellers, explorers, birds, libraries, and on the work of Imants Tillers, Mike Parr, Bill Henson, Narelle Jubelin, Anne Ferran, Anne Zahalka, Robert Mapplethorpe, Guan Wei, Jacqueline Rose, Albert Namatjira, Margaret Michaelis, Emily Brontë, Bertold Brecht, Christa Wolf, Kate Jennings, W.G. Sebald, Virginia Woolf, Brian Castro, Nicholas Jose, J. M. Coetzee, Helen Garner, Charmian Clift. With her husband Ivor Indyk, she co-founded the literary magazine ''
HEAT
In thermodynamics, heat is energy in transfer between a thermodynamic system and its surroundings by such mechanisms as thermal conduction, electromagnetic radiation, and friction, which are microscopic in nature, involving sub-atomic, ato ...
'', and is co-publisher of the
Giramondo Publishing
Giramondo Publishing (Giramondo Publishing Company) is an independent Australian literary small press founded in 1995. It is a publisher of poetry, fiction and non-fiction by Australian and overseas writers, and works in translation from Chinese ...
company.
''House of Exile''
Her book ''House of Exile'' (2008), subtitled ''The Life and Times of Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kroeger-Mann'', is a collective biography. It is based on published sources, interviews and extensive archival research in Europe and America. ''House of Exile'' was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Award for Non-Fiction (
Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-fiction
The Victorian Premier's Prize for Nonfiction, formerly known as the
Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction, is a prize category in the annual Victorian Premier's Literary Award. As of 2011 it has a remuneration of 25,000. The winner of this category ...
), the West Australian Book Awards, the
National Biography Award
The National Biography Award, established in Australia in 1996, is awarded for the best published work of biographical or autobiographical writing by an Australian. It aims "to encourage the highest standards of writing biography and autobiography ...
, and the 2009
ALS Gold Medal
The Australian Literature Society Gold Medal (ALS Gold Medal) is awarded annually by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature for "an outstanding literary work in the preceding calendar year." From 1928 to 1974 it was awarded by the ...
. In 2009 it won the
Prime Minister's Literary Awards
The Australian Prime Minister's Literary Awards (PMLA) were announced at the end of 2007 by the incoming First Rudd ministry following the 2007 election. They are administered by the Minister for the Arts.Eliza Emily Donnithorne, who was born 9 July 1821 in Capetown, South Africa, grew up in India and England, and died 20 May 1886 in Sydney, Australia. She is buried at Camperdown Cemetery in Newtown, NSW. The book examines the literary myth that she was the model for Miss Havisham in
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by ...
’ novel ''Great Expectations''. It was shortlisted for the 2014 Magarey medal for biography.
''The Dancer''
''The Dancer'' tells the story of a young woman who comes of age in the 1970s, her origins and influences and adventures, and the tragic circumstances of her early death in a remote hilltown in southern India. It is a literary biography of the experimental dance artist and choreographer Philippa Cullen, who was born 24 March 1950 in Melbourne, Australia, and died 3 July 1975 in Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India. She studied all forms of dance and dance-ideas. To create her own soundscapes, she developed theremins and movement-sensitive floors, which she called body-instruments. She believed that dance is an outer manifestation of inner energy and that it articulates more clearly than language. From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, she worked with other dancers and performers, musicians, engineers and visual artists, including electronic-music composer Greg Schiemer in Australia, composer Karlheinz Stockhausen in Germany, and academics at the Institute of Sonology in the Netherlands. With the writer George Alexander she created her sound-ballet Utter. With Stockhausen she collaborated on the meditative work Inori. The curator Kiffy Rubbo wrote: “It is almost impossible to describe the special quality of Philippa’s dance – her ability to communicate and to liberate the energy and beauty of the body...her stillness and energy...her singular spirit”.
Bibliography
Books
* ''House of Exile'' (2008)
* ''The Recluse'' (2012)
* ''The Dancer: a Biography for Philippa Cullen'' (2021)
Essays
*
Articles
*
* Juers, Evelyn (March 2012). "The burdens and genius of Charles Dickens". Australian Book Review ' (no. 339)
* Juers, Evelyn (January 29, 2013). "Tripped up, tripped out: Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser". Sydney Review of Books ''
* Juers, Evelyn (September 6, 2013). "Nature's Art". Sydney Review of Books '.
* Juers, Evelyn (August 8, 2014). "Forms of surveillance: Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life by Stephen Parker". Sydney Review of Books '
* Juers, Evelyn (February 7, 2017). "Wild Things: The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf". Sydney Review of Books '.
* Juers, Evelyn (January–February 2017). "Cursed Legacy: The Tragic Life of Klaus Mann by Frederic Spotts". Australian Book Review ' (no. 388).
* Juers, Evelyn (July 3, 2018). "Something Terrific: Emily Brontë's 200 Years". Sydney Review of Books ''
* Juers, Evelyn (September 16, 2021). "A great takes on a great: Colm Toibin's ambitious new novel". '.
* Juers, Evelyn (April 4, 2022). "The Witchery of Mallacoota Or, What Makes a True Naturalist?". Sydney Review of Books '.