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About...

Janet Brown is an Australian writer whose work has been published and performed since the early 1990s. With Joanne Ryan she co-wrote A Hole In The Ground  which was produced at La Mama’s Carlton Courthouse and the Wyndham Cultural Centre in 2004 after extensive script development from the Melbourne Theatre Company. The play, directed by renowned theatre director David Myles, explored the No Toxic Dump Campaign fought by the Werribee community in 1996-1998. Since then she has had several plays produced in Melbourne, Sydney and regional Victoria. You can view more information about her plays on Doollee at
http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsB/brown-janet.html

Her novel The Shaded Side was published in 2003 and her short stories and essays are published in anthologies and literary journals in Australia and the US. In her first book In the Company of Strangers, former patients of Australian tuberculosis sanatoria shared their experiences and insights (1993). Janet has a Master of Arts in Creative Writing, a Graduate Diploma in Reading Education and a Bachelor of Science Education. She teaches writing workshops, hosts writing events and lives in the beautiful Victorian Surfcoast region.  

The Shaded Side - Master of Arts thesis Victoria University 1998

The purpose of this project was to research and write the novel The Shaded Side and a theoretical component exploring pathography and using reserach in fiction. The novel is based on the fictitious events that take place in an Australian tuberculosis sanatorium in the 1940s. The story locates and reflects the consequences of relationships, experiences, morals and attitudes of this early period against the contemporary story of an adult adoptee searching for the identity of her birth mother. Research into the history of TB treatment in Australia and into broader representations of illness and disease has been required for the project. General themes include: sanatorium treatment, wartime experiences of women of Footscray, the influences of Catholicism as it was generally practised in the mid 1900s, adoption, and the mechanics of searching for one's birth relatives. The exegesis consists of two essays. Essay 1 discusses comparative representations of illness and disease and the use of metaphoric language. Essay 2 explores the controversial issue of appropriation of research in realist fiction and the requirement for writers to understand and take responsibility for their choices of representation.