Asialink

Sri Lanka

Gay Bilson

Gay Bilson (2003), Sri Lanka

Gay Bilson has been writing about food and reviewing books for many years.  During her residency in Sri Lanka Bilson completed the final draft of a book of autobiographical, gastronomical essays for Penguin Books A Pillow Book for the Table.  Bilson’s new book, How to Scrape a Coconut, based on her Sri Lankan research, is a personal exploration of culinary and agricultural practices; the education of an Australian cook and writer in the cuisine of a different country.

Supported by the Australia Council and Arts South Australia.

Nick Drayson

Nick Drayson (2004), Sri Lanka

Nick Drayson is a novelist and nature writer whose first novel, Confessing a Murder was critically acclaimed in the UK and US and short-listed for The Age Book of the Year Award.  During his residency Drayson worked on his new novel centred on the life of naturalist George Bennett and researching the late eighteenth century connections between Colombo and Australia.  Drayson arrived in Sri Lanka three weeks after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami hit the island and in between research and writing, accompanied members of the Sri Lankan Natural History Society to the east coast where they were providing care and assistance to a group of Tamil fishing families.

Supported by the Australia Council and Arts ACT.
Alan Fewster

Alan Fewster (2010), Sri Lanka

Alan Fewster is a historian, journalist and diplomat. He worked for major Australian newspapers in Sydney, Brisbane and in the Canberra Press Gallery and is the author of Capital Correspondent, the Canberra letters of Edwin Charles 1936-3 and Trusty and Well Beloved: A life of Keith Officer, Australia’s first Diplomat. Hosted by the National Archives of Sri Lanka, Fewster will research a famous legal case involving an Australian who was deported from colonial Ceylon for alleged communist agitation, and the story of his five great aunts who travelled to Ceylon to become tea planters’ brides.

Supported by Arts ACT and the Australia Council.
Bronwyn Lea

Bronwyn Lea (2003/4), Sri Lanka

At the time of her residency Bronwyn Lea was a doctoral student of writing at the University of Queensland, where she also taught Poetics.  Lea is the author of Flight Animals which won the Wesley Michel Wright Prize for Poetry and the FAW Anne Elder Award. During her six week residency, Lea wrote approximately twenty new poems many inspired by Sri Lankan art, literature and sculpture.

Supported by the Australia Council.

Christopher Kremmer

Christopher Kremmer (2000), Sri Lanka

Christopher Kremmer is author of the award-winning Stalking the Elephant Kings: In Search of Laos and The Carpet Wars.  A former foreign correspondent for print and television, he has spent over a decade in South Asia and the Middle East. During his residency in Sri Lanka, the Lunugunga Estate hosted Kremmer. There he researched and wrote a large part of a screenplay adaptation of 19th century French playwrite Octave Mirbeau’s The Torture Garden. 

Supported by the Australia Council.

Sophie Cunningham (2005), Sri Lanka

Sophie Cunningham worked in publishing for many years and now works fulltime as a writer.  Her first novel Geography, was published in 2004 and was set in India, Sri Lanka, America and Australia.  In the solitude of Pemberley House and whilst trekking in Ladakh, Cunningham was able to do some of the close work needed to bring her second novel Dharma is a Girl's Best Friend to completion.  Cunningham also explored the life and writings of Leonard Wolf during his time Sri Lanka from 1904-1911.  She spent the remainder of the Sri Lanka leg of the residency researching the people and places of Wolf’s world.

Supported by Arts Victoria and the Australia Council.