Carmel Bird

Carmel Bird is an Australian fiction writer. Her most recent novel is Field of Poppies, published in 2019_._ In 2016 she received the Patrick White Literary Award. Photo: Grant Kennedy.

Works By Carmel Bird

When The Old Women Take Charge
Leonora’s surreal, moving, and satirical novel The Hearing Trumpet was published as a Virago Modern Classic in 1991, which was when I first read it. It was a revelation, moving as it does from a repulsive facility for old women to apocalyptic scen...
3 Mar. 2021
How Literature Makes Reality Feel
I have used the word ‘magic’ to describe this book, and it occurs to me again that there is a spell at work here, an incantation as old as time, as fresh as a splash of clear water. Here are the stories of the world, he says; here is my story; her...
7 Sept. 2020
Carmel Bird: ‘Flying About The Place’
‘I’m always writing – even if only in my head. I take notes on paper – often backs of envelopes and other scraps, I confess. But yes, I am always writing. It’s what defines me. If I need defining, what I am is a writer. That’s what I do.’ Rachel M...
4 Dec. 2015