What does it mean to write in a language that isn’t your first — and to transform it completely?

Antigone Kefala arrived in Australia from war-torn Europe and went on to reshape Australian literature with prose that was spare, luminous and unflinching. In this episode of Fully Lit Live, recorded at Gleebooks, writers, scholars and close friends reflect on her life, her exile and her modernism — and on the fierce clarity of a voice that refused to belong neatly anywhere.

For some of the speakers, Kefala was a literary influence. For others, she was a close friend — someone whose wit, irony and indomitable spirit they continue to miss deeply. Together, they consider her historical present, her multilingual musicality, and her lasting impact on Australian letters.

Antigone was a literary original.

Voices

Hosted by publisher and friend of Antigone, Ivor Indyk, the event brought together:

Mireille Juchau — award-winning novelist, essayist and critic, and Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney. Her novels include Machines for Feeling, Burning In, and The World Without Us, which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction. She wrote the introduction to Antigone Kefala: Collected Fiction.

Anna Kerdijk Nicholson — writer, visual artist and co-director of The Shop Gallery in Glebe. A long-time friend of Kefala, she has written and spoken extensively about her life and work.

Brigid Rooney — Professor of English at the University of New South Wales and co-editor (with Elizabeth McMahon) of Antigone Kefala: New Australian Modernities. Her biography of Shirley Hazzard was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Award for Non-Fiction.

Lauren Aimee Curtis — novelist and short story writer, author of Dolores and Strangers at the Port, longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and selected for Granta’s Best of Young Australian Novelists.

Nikos Papastergiadis - is the Director of the research unit in public cultures, and a Professor in the School of Culture and Communication at The University of Melbourne.

Alex Wells — Berlin-based writer and editor, literary editor of The Berliner, whose work has appeared in The Guardian, The Paris Review and elsewhere. A long-time advocate for Kefala’s international readership.

Vrasidas Karalis — professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine Studies at the University of Sydney, translator and scholar, and an early academic supporter of Kefala’s work.

Jim Provencher — poet and long-time friend of Kefala, who reflects on her craft, musicality and uncompromising standards.

Credits

Fully Lit is brought to you by Impact Studios at UTS, the Sydney Review of Books, and the UTS Writing and Publishing Program, and is produced by Regina Botros.

This episode was recorded at Gleebooks in Sydney - for more literary events see the Gleebooks events page.

Executive Producers: Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang.

Edited and mixed by Regina Botros.

Find more episodes of Fully Lit wherever you get your podcasts.

Further reading

For those who can’t get enough of Kefala, we recommend Wells’ extended homage, ‘Alien Nation’, recently published in the Sydney Review of Books. Ranging across Kefala’s poetry and fiction, Wells argues for the lasting impact her writing left on Australian literature. Through its attunement to migrants’ sense of displacement, Kefala’s work brought new intensities of poetic vision as well as a heightened sensitivity to the alienating effects of time and language.