Suneeta Peres da Costa

Suneeta Peres da Costa is an acclaimed Australian author best known for her tragicomic novel, Homework (1999) and a novella, Saudade (2018). She began her career as a playwright and also publishes poetry, non-fiction and literary criticism.[1][2][3]

Suneeta Peres da Costa
Suneeta Peres da Costa at Goa Arts and Literary Festival 6–8 December 2018
Suneeta Peres da Costa at Goa Arts and Literary Festival 6–8 December 2018
BornSydney, New South Wales, Australia
OccupationAuthor and playwright
NationalityAustralian
Notable worksHomework (1999), Saudade (2018)

Life

Peres da Costa was born in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Of Goan heritage, her work references Goan and subcontinental culture, history, families, diaspora and postcolonialism.[4][5] She has also written on asylum seeker justice in Australia and women and endometriosis.[6][7]

She graduated with First Class Honours and the University Medal from the Bachelor of Arts in Communication at the University of Technology Sydney, where she later taught creative writing. Among her own teachers, to whom she has paid homage, were the late Martin Harrison and Glenda Adams.[8] She was a Fulbright Scholar and received a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, New York. She pursued doctoral studies on James Joyce at the University of Sydney.[1]

Career

Peres da Costa was twenty-three years old when her tragicomic novel Homework, about a dysfunctional Goan migrant family set in suburban Sydney, was published internationally by Bloomsbury.[9] It was translated into German by Rowohlt, and shortlisted for the Dobbie Literary Award.

Her plays include I am an Island, Watermark, Angelina's Song, Children See Everything, Fire, Water. Two biographical works, The Art of Straying (which imagines the last night in the life of cultural philosopher, Walter Benjamin) and Estranged Muse (on James Joyce's daughter) were also produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.[10]

Her 2018 novella on the subject of saudade, follows Maria, a young girl from a Goan immigrant family, growing up in a political hierarchy of racism and colonialism in Portuguese Angola.[11][12] Saudade was shortlisted in the fiction category of the Prime Minister's Literary Awards 2019, the 2020 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature and was a finalist in Field Notes' 2020 Tournament of Books.[13][14]

Suneeta Peres Da Costa's—Saudade— is a beautifully conceived story told from the perspective of a young Goan migrant who lives with her family in Angola during the last years of Portuguese occupation [...] Saudade is notable for the gorgeous fluency of its prose style. Its moving story is told with an elegance and concision that exemplify the virtues of the novella form.

Judges' Comments, Prime Minister's Literary Awards'[15]

Her writing has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies and she has worked with the National Gallery of Victoria, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the National Museum of Australia, the Australian Theatre for Young People, Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney Theatre Company and Sydney Review of Books, as well as many international organisations.

Her honours include grants, fellowships, awards and residencies from the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts, the Copyright Agency, Asialink Arts, the MacDowell Colony for the Arts, the Corporation of Yaddo, the Bundanon Trust, Varuna, The Writers' House, the Valparaíso Foundation, Create NSW, and the Marten Bequest.[16][17] She has been the guest of many writers' festivals, including the Miami Book Fair, the Stuttgarter Buchwochen, the Cervantes Institute Long Night of Literatures, New Delhi and the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival.[18][19]

She is currently a Management Committee member of PEN Sydney.

Awards

References
  1. Suneeta Peres da Costa. Austlit.
  2. "Passionfruit". 16 March 2020.
  3. "Wide Sargasso Sea: Fifty Years on |".
  4. "Saudade: Memory, Place and Unmooring". 15 April 2019.
  5. Rogers, Athena (5 March 2019). "Dislocation and belonging: a review of "Saudade"". Right Now: Human Rights in Australia. Right Now. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  6. Manus children's drawings
  7. Yoga diary
  8. Why writing. Writers Victoria.
  9. Peres da Costa, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2001 Homework
  10. Australian Plays
  11. "Saudade". Giramondo Publishing. 27 August 2018. Retrieved 28 January 2020.
  12. "Saudade (Suneeta Peres da Costa, Giramondo) | Books+Publishing".
  13. "Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature". State Library of South Australia. Retrieved 28 January 2020.
  14. Schneider, Maggie. "Match Commentary". The 2020 Tournament of Books. The Morning News. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  15. "Winners and shortlist". Department of Communications and the Arts. 2 November 2018. Archived from the original on 21 December 2019. Retrieved 28 January 2020.
  16. Valparaiso 2018
  17. Asialink arts exchanges 2018
  18. "Long Night of Literature: From war to cultural osmosis – writers from Europe share divergent views". 7 October 2018.
  19. http://www.ubudwritersfestival.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/UWRF19_PROGRAM-BOOK_-All-Final-27-September_phoenix_spread.pdf
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