HOW  AUSTRALIA (AND JASA)  HELPED  ESTABLISH A REERENCE LIBRARY IN SRI LANKA – by Yasmine Gooneratne In 1993 the literary magazine OZWORDS devoted its regular literary competition to the composition   of limericks. I was teaching English Literature at the time in Australia, at Maacquarie University in Sydney, New South Wales.  I was asked by my Department to teach a course in ‘Creative Writing’ (on the strength, I imagine, of a recent success in novel-writing! My first novel, A Change of Skies, had just been awarded the Marjorie Barnard Prize for fiction.) I introduced my 300-level Creative Writing class to the genre of limericks, and encouraged them to send entries to the OZWORDS competition. I sent in two myself, on the subject of Ms Pauline Hanson, a politician of the time, and to my own surprise won the First Prize of $100 worth of OUP reference books. I was not aware at ...

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Dr Brendon Gooneratne-by Hugh Karunanayake Source:Island (28 March 1938- 21 June 2021) Dr Brendon Gooneratne, acclaimed physician, entrepreneur, author, antiquarian, collector,environmentalist and all round sportsman, passed away in Badulla where he was receiving treatment after a fall. The news of Brendon’s demise was communicated by his daughter Devika just a day following his death. Towering in physique, and with a broad bodily frame, Brendon was physically outstanding in any crowd. To add to that, he had a dominating, outspoken, and fearless attitude to life, which partly accounts for the many successes that he achieved during a multifaceted and unique lifetime. He also had his detractors, but that comes along as part of the baggage that success is wont to bring! ...

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