Professor Nicholas Jose

Chair of Creative Writing
The current Chair of Creative Writing is Professor Nicholas Jose. Please see his personal website.

He has published short stories, essays, translations, a memoir, and several acclaimed novels. He has taught at the Australian National University, Beijing Foreign Studies University and East China Normal University, and was an Adjunct Fellow at Georgetown University in 2003. He was Cultural Counsellor at the Australian Embassy, Beijing, 1987-1990. He has written widely on contemporary Asian and Australian culture. He was president of International PEN Sydney PEN, 2002-2005.

His research interests include new writing and publishing, particularly in Australia and for Australian writers. As Chair of Creative Writing, he is concerned with the contexts and traditions of Australian literature for new writers, which he has explored in a recent essay for Australian Book Review, 'A Shelf of Our Own: Creative Writing and Australian Literature'. That research links to a larger project designed to research and produce a major anthology of Australian writing from early times to 2005, The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature, of which he is General Editor. He has written widely on contemporary Australian and Asian culture, especially China, with an emphasis on literature, translation and the visual arts. Recent essays include 'Bliss and Damnation: Peter Carey in Australia', in Fabulating Beauty, ed. Andreas Gaile (Rodopi, 2005) and 'Citizens of the World', Writing a Painting, catalogue essay, UniSA 2006. His research on contemporary Chinese-Australian narratives is reflected in his most recent novel, Original Face (Giramondo, 2005).

Publications

Fiction

Paper Nautilus (1987, reissued 2006 by Wakefield Press))
Original Face (2005)
The Red Thread (2000)
The Custodians (1997)
The Rose Crossing (1994)
Avenue of Eternal Peace (1989)
Feathers or Lead (1986)
Rowena’s Field (1984)
The Possession of Amber (1980)

Non-fiction

Black Sheep: Journey to Borroloola (2002)
Chinese Whispers, Cultural Essays (1995)
Ideas of the Restoration in English Literature, 1660-1671 (1980)