Vale Glenda

I've received news that Australian writer, Glenda Adams, passed last Wednesday, after some serious illnesses.

Glenda wrote several novels, including Dancing on Coral, which won the Miles Franklin Award in 1987, as well as short stories and narrative non-fiction.  Her essay, ‘On the Island of Nias, Indonesia, October 1962: Personal History’, received an honourable mention last year in the ABR Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay competition.  She also taught creative writing for some years at Columbia University and was Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Technology, Sydney.

I met Glenda a couple of years ago when she came to Alice Springs to conduct a series of creative writing workshops. I found her a greatly encouraging, yet incisive teacher: she seemed to possess the perfect blend of astuteness and diplomacy for teaching creative writing.  A gentle, almost fey personality, she exuded a grandmotherly charm that seemed to mask a fascination with the darker, more gothic aspects of life.  She also had a knack for making pithy comments about the writing process, many of which often come back to me as I try to teach and write. I remember her joking in one of our workshops, 'I keep on telling you these all bon mots, though none of them are particularly bon.'

As a friend of mine commented when he heard the news, 'I had kind of hoped we might meet her again.'