Drusilla Modjeska (born 1946) is a contemporary Australian writer and editor.

Life

Modjeska was born in London and was raised in Hampshire. She spent several years in Papua New Guinea (where she was briefly a student at the University of Papua New Guinea) before arriving in Australia in 1971.^[1] She studied for an undergraduate degree at the Australian National University before completing a PhD in history at the University of New South Wales which was published as Exiles at Home: Australian Women Writers 1925–1945 (1981).

Modjeska's writing often explores the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. The best known of her work are Poppy (1990), a fictionalised biography of her mother, and Stravinsky's Lunch (2001), a feminist reappraisal of the lives and work of Australian painters Stella Bowen and Grace Cossington Smith. She has also edited several volumes of stories, poems and essays, including the work of Lesbia Harford and a 'Focus on Papua New Guinea' issue for the literary magazine Meanjin.^[2]

In 2006 Modjeska was a senior research fellow at the University of Sydney, "investigating the interplay of race, gender and the arts in post-colonial Papua New Guinea".^[3] She has also taught at the University of Technology, Sydney.^{[citation needed]}

Awards

• 1983 – Walter McRae Russell Award for Exiles at Home^[4]
• 1991 – New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Douglas Stewart Prize for non-fiction for Poppy
• 1995 – New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Douglas Stewart Prize for non-fiction for The Orchard
• 2000 – New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Douglas Stewart Prize for non-fiction for Stravinsky's Lunch
• 2000 – Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for Stravinsky's Lunch