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Purple Threads:
First Nations Classics (with an introduction by Evelyn Araluen)

by

Winner of the David Unaipon Award, an engaging, moving and often funny yarn about growing up in the home of two Aunties running a sheep farm in rural Gundagai.

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Overview

Growing up in the shifting landscape of Gundagai with her Nan and Aunties, Sunny spends her days playing on the hills near their farmhouse and her nights dozing by the fire, listening to the big women yarn about life over endless cups of tea.

It is a life of freedom, protection and love. But as Sunny grows she must face the challenge of being seen as different, and of having a mother whose visits are as unpredictable as the rain.

Based on Jeanine Leane’s own childhood, these funny, endearing and thought-provoking stories offer a snapshot of a unique Australian upbringing.

Details
Jeanine Leane

Jeanine Leane

Jeanine Leane is a Wiradjuri writer, poet, essayist and critic from south-west NSW. She is the recipient of the David Unaipon Award for her first novel Purple Threads; and her latest book is the poetry collection Gawimarra: Gathering was released in 2024. Jeanine's essays in the areas of Aboriginal literature, writing otherness, poetry, and creative nonfiction have been published widely. She was the recipient of the University of Canberra Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Poetry Prize, and she has won the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Prize for Poetry twice. In 2023 she won the David Harold Tribe Award for Poetry, Australia’s richest poetry prize. She has been the recipient of a Red Room Poetry Fellowship and two Australian Research Council Fellowships for research into Blak writing and storytelling. Jeanine taught Creative Writing and Aboriginal Literature for many years at the University of Melbourne. She is the poetry editor of Meanjin; and she continues to write between Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country and the East Kulin Nations of Naarm.