Carolyn Beasley

Writer

email me at carolynmareebeasley@excite.com

I'm an award-winning writer based in Melbourne, Australia. I've had non-fiction published both in Australia and abroad. My short stories have won prizes in five national literary competitions. Writing qualifications include a Master of Arts in Writing, a degree in Journalism, and an Associate Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing. I'm currently completing a PhD in Writing from Swinburne University. Highlights of my employment history include working as a photographer; teaching Public Relations and English as a Second Language; and teaching Professional Writing in universities and prisons.

Published works:

My fiction and non-fiction has appeared in the following publications:

The New England Review, Polestar, Positive Words, If: Independent Filmmaker, TWOT, Pets and Vets, Single Life, Writers' News, Australian Writer, Stet, Writing Australia, Around Laverton Community News, Emerald Hills Times, Atraktion, Ausnews Internet News Service, Australian News Reports Internet News Service, and many more.

Awards:

My work has won places in the following competitions:

The Mount Isa Writers Association Literary Competition (Open Short Story section), Fellowship of Australian Writers' Far North Coast Regional Literary Competition (Short Story section), Fellowship of Australian Writers Hasting Regional Literary Competition (Short Story section), Sunshine Coast Writer's Group 7th Annual Short Story Competition, The Glen Eira Classic Cinema Screenwriting Awards.

Current Projects:

A novel titled 'The Fingerprint Thief'

This is the story of Sarah, a gifted forensic technician who can profile personality from a fingerprint. This controversial talent draws Sarah into the investigation of a strange Melbourne murder that involves a victim whose fingerprints have been removed. She teams up with a detective she once loved and follows the case into a world of ancient ritual, hidden relationships, Aboriginal land rights and corporate greed. Sarah’s journey takes place in a city where progress takes precedent over history, where rivers mysteriously flow backwards, and where forgotten citizens turn to the superstitions of the past. Against this backdrop, Sarah discovers she is facing an evil that defies the laws of nature.

 

PhD

A feminist examintion of the divergences and convergences of genre that exist between crime novels and literary crime fiction.

Short Story Collection

'The Memory of Marble' is a collection of ten short stories that examine the boundaries we create between passion and obsession. The people in the stories seek refuge from emotions by cocooning themselves in the worlds of books, pianos, art, and fingerprints. A dying man imagines he can smell the history of graveside monuments, a fresco restorer battles madness as his diseased skin appears on the paintings he loves, and a blind book collector’s world collapses when he discovers an insect incubating on a page. They inhabit arcane worlds that explode with sensation and sensuality. Many of the stories have won awards.

Education:

• Studying for a PhD (Writing) at Swinburne University, Victoria, Australia.
• Masters of Arts (Writing), Swinburne University, Victoria, Australia.
• Graduate Certificate in Education and Training, Victoria University of Technology, Victoria, Australia.
• Diploma in Professional Writing and Editing, RMIT University TAFE, Victoria, Australia.
• Subjects from the Advanced Certificate in Forensic Science, Swinburne University TAFE, Victoria, Australia.
• Bachelor of Arts Degree (Journalism/International Relations), Deakin University, Victoria Australia.
• Advanced Certificate in Media Studies, Holmesglen Institute of TAFE, Victoria, Australia.

Employment History:

• Teacher of post-graduate subjects in Professional Writing at Swinburne University, Victoria.
• Teacher of Creative Writing at Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, a women's prison
• Teacher of University Preparation and English as a Second Language at Victoria University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
• Lecturer in Public Relations and Teacher of English as a Second Language, Global Business Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
• Teacher of English as a Second Language in the High School Preparation Program at Melbourne Language Centre, Carlton, Victoria, Australia.
• Editor for Cee Bee Group Services, Victoria, Australia
• Journalist for Around Laverton Community Newspaper, Victoria, Australia.

Samples of My Work:

From the short story ‘Formaldehyde’

She knows why she has been lying in the street.
Her disease is like formaldehyde. It leaves foam on her lips and lulls her into sleep. Its only evidence is the soreness of her muscles and the tenderness on her tongue.
Emily slips the revolver back in her coat pocket and walks towards the noise of the main street. All the women she passes hang from the arm of a man.
Above her, there is the clunk and whirl of machinery. The lemonade squeezers are working late in their skeletal factory. The season for preserving lemons is nearly over. As soon as her lungs collapse around the smell she is delirious with memory.
In the flash of a second she remembers lying under lemon trees in her lover’s backyard, cooling her teeth on pulp and rind. She imagines men licking the citrus from their wives' fingers, tongues nibbling for secret pieces under the curl of the nail. Longing tightens her chest.
As she wanders back towards her dark rooms by the bridge, cockroaches crunch underfoot. They come to the canals at night to feed on the docked garbage barge. She watches them scurry from the light and sees their backs rise as they climb over something by the water’s edge. Following them, she moves towards the sucking kiss of the tide against the shore.
She finds a wet violin, heavy with swollen wood.
She wants to hug it against her chest, as mothers do to stop their babies crying.
Her hands lose themselves in its varnished strangeness and little curves.
The feeling of formaldehyde drifts from her forehead to her eyes to her shoulders like a feather floating past.
Only the scent of lemon brings her back.

From ‘The Fingerprint Thief’

Gradually my passion for dactylology grew. I moved beyond classifying patterns into analysing the content that made up the residue of a print. I secretly saved for and bought an old microscope and a new chemistry kit. These revealed that latents the locals left on their whisky glasses held traces of weatherboard paint and cooking flours. I learned to read occupation from the imprints. A farmer’s ridges were sanded down by the gripping of rusty ploughs. In the shearer’s hands, I could see the grooved edges of sheep hooves. Shearing was in their blood and the scent of wool’s lanoline on the webbing between their fingers. The wool spinners’ ridges were flat with weak definition. The wool oil makes their hands too soft for identification.
As my skills built, I began to read emotions in the impressions: an oedema of the ridges when circulation is suppressed by sorrow, the blurred lines left by the throb of an angry pulse, the bold lines made by a heart in love.

Links:

An article about the work we do in a prison
http://theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17108915%255E12332,00.html

My neat blog.
http://carolynmareebeasley.blogspot.com/

My messy blog
First drafts and unpolished words.
http://carolynmareebeasley.tripod.com

Reviews
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A2XDLLX6790ZHD/002-1368577-5787217?_encoding=UTF8
http://www.geocities.com/carolynmareebeasley1/carolynbeasley1.html

A Story
http://www.geocities.com/carolynmareebeasley/carolynbeasley.html

Laurent Boulanger
Laurent Boulanger is a fellow writer, an actor, and my co-worker at Swinburne University. He is the author of the recently-published young adult/ESL novel ‘Murder On 45th Street’.
http://laurentboulanger.tripod.com/index.html

Delia Falconer
Delia Falconer’s grand and complex novel, The Service of Clouds, was a profound inspiration to me as I took her novel classes at RMIT.
http://www.bryson.com.au/cfalconr.html

Professor Josie Arnold
Convenor of Swinburne’s Master of Art in Writing program, Josie is also a poet, novelist and much-awarded academic. Thanks, Josie, for your boundless enthusiasm and dedication to helping the writers under your wing.
Read Josie’s highly applauded analysis of cyberfeminism at: http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/cf/cfjosie.htm
Check out some of Josie’s critical essays at: http://www.ld.swin.edu.au/staff_dev/entered/html/writing.htm

Laurie Clancy
Laurie Clancy is a novelist, short story writer, critic and publisher. His kind guidance was greatly appreciated during my years at RMIT.
http://www.alphalink.com.au/~davout//

Fiona Capp
Fiona is a journalist, book reviewer for the Age newspaper, lecturer in Fiction at La Trobe University and author of the highly successful young adult novel Night Surfing. Fiona’s concise critiques of my short stories have been invaluable. Her latest work, That Oceanic Feeling, is a mixture of memoir and critical thinking about the relationship of oceans to our imagination.
http://www.allen-unwin.com.au/authors/apCapp.asp

Ania Walwicz
Ania teaches kick-ass short story classes at RMIT. She is renown for her innovative fiction and enchanting persona. It was in Ania’s classes that my first short stories were born.
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~postpaid/abouania.htm

http://www.gangway.net/2/gangway2.7.html