Christobel Mattingley: Life, worlds, words with Dr Melanie Duckworth

Christobel Mattingley (1931-2019) was a much loved, award winning Australian children’s author, writing more than fifty books, most of them for children, on topics such as social justice, refugees, and the environment. Based in Adelaide, she published picture books, poetry, early readers, middle grade and young adult fiction, and biographies. She was an advocate for Indigenous Australians, publishing Survival in Their Own Land (1988), and Maralinga: the Aṉangu Story (2009), in which she worked together with the Aṉangu people to tell the story of British nuclear testing on their lands. Over the last few months, 2024 National Library of Australia Fellowship Dr Melanie Duckworth has been delving into the National Library’s extensive collection of Mattingley’s manuscripts, papers, and published works, many of which are now out of print, as she begins to write a literary biography of Christobel Mattingley. Join us to hear what has been uncovered in the early stages of her research.