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 ...

Read More →