Postponed: The Shelf Life of Zora Cross presented by Cathy Perkins

Blue Mountains Historical Society Inc

Next meeting:  Saturday 3rd July at

99 Blaxland Road, Wentworth Falls

Bookings essential 4757 3824 (please leave message)

The Shelf Life of Zora Cross presented by Cathy Perkins

Australian poet and journalist Zora Cross caused a sensation in 1917 with her book Songs of Love and Life. Zora was a young woman who looked like a Sunday school teacher, celebrating passion in a provocative series of sonnets. She was hailed as a genius, and many expected her to endure as a household name alongside Shakespeare and Rossetti.

While Zora’s fame didn’t last, she kept writing through financial hardship, personal tragedies and two world wars, producing an impressive body of work. Her verse, prose and correspondence with the likes of Ethel Turner, George Robertson (of Angus & Robertson) and Mary Gilmore place Zora Cross among the key personalities of Australia’s literary world in the early twentieth century.

Hear about Cathy’s process in writing the biography, including her friendship with Zora Cross’s daughter April, who lived on the family’s Glenbrook property from soon after her birth in 1924 until she died last year at the age of 96.

Cathy Perkins is a writer  and editor who lives in Sydney. Her first book The Shelf Life of Zora Cross was shortlisted for the Australian History Prize of the 2020 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Cathy edits Openbook magazine and other publications at the State Library of NSW.