The Blue Dress

Libby Hathorn has asked some of Australia s finest writers for their response to the painting by internationally acclaimed artist Brian Dunlop. First love, joy and disappointment, secrets, violence and the vagaries of fate are interwoven in these stories that remind us things are not always as they appear. Full of pathos, insight and wry humour, The Blue Dress is a stunning display of the possibilities of imagination. The contributing writers include Brian Caswell, Gary Crew, Libby Gleeson, Sophie Masson, Jenny Pausacker and Nadia Wheatley.

These stories offer the reader different ways to define and access our common experience and in doing so the writers reflect with considerable insight on what it is to be on the threshold of childhood in an adult world. Libby Hathorn

Libby Hathorn is an award-winning author and poet of more than eighty books for children, young adults, and adult readers. Her recent picture book No! Never!, written with her daughter Lisa Hathorn-Jarman, won the CBCA Children's Picture Book of the Year Award, Younger Readers, 2021. Translated into several languages and adapted for both stage and screen, her work has won honours in Australia, the United States, Great Britain and Holland. She is the recipient of the ABIA Pixie O'Harris Award, 2022, and the Lady Cutler Award, 2020, for distinguished services to Australian children's literature. In 2014 she won The Alice Award, a national award given to 'a woman who has made a distinguished and long term contribution to Australian literature'. In 2017 she won the Asher Award, a peace prize, for A Soldier, a Dog and a Boy.

Libby is a keen educator who has lectured part-time at Sydney University and is devoted to being an ambassador for poetry anywhere and everywhere. She has been a National Ambassador for Reading and often acts as a judge for various literary prizes, including the NSW Premier's Literary Awards.

Libby Hathorn has asked some of Australia s finest writers for their response to the painting by internationally acclaimed artist Brian Dunlop. First love, joy and disappointment, secrets, violence and the vagaries of fate are interwoven in these stories that remind us things are not always as they appear. Full of pathos, insight and wry humour, The Blue Dress is a stunning display of the possibilities of imagination. The contributing writers include Brian Caswell, Gary Crew, Libby Gleeson, Sophie Masson, Jenny Pausacker and Nadia Wheatley.These stories offer the reader different ways to define and access our common experience and in doing so the writers reflect with considerable insight on what it is to be on the threshold of childhood in an adult world. Libby Hathorn

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