RACHEL LEARY
RACHEL LEARY
Writer, creative writing tutor, performer, arts facilitator
ABOUT ME
Rachel is an Australian writer whose first novel Bridget Crack (A&U 2017) won two premier’s literary prizes: the Tasmania Book Prize 2019 and the Tasmania Book Prize, People’s Choice Award 2019. It was one of three novels shortlisted in the Mud Literary Prize, 2018, for best Australian literary fiction debut, and also highly commended in the The Goodest Prize 2018, for the best book featuring a dog, in which the dog does not die. Rachel is a graduate of RMIT’s Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing and is a prior recipient of an Australian Society of Authors mentorship. In 2015 and 2016 Regional Arts Victoria and Country Arts WA funded and presented tours of her one woman show (written and performed), Everything Must Go which played at over seventy venues. Rachel has published short fiction and nonfiction in publications such as: Southerly, Island, Forty Degrees South and Allnighter. She was the winner of the 2015 Tasmanian Writers’ Prize, commended in the Age Short Story Competition 2011, runner up in the Boroondara Literary Awards 2007 and winner of the Visible Ink Short Story competition 2005. For the past three years she has been a creative writing tutor at the University of Tasmania. She currently lives in regional Victoria.
At the University of Tasmania Rachel attained a BSc with honours in Cultural Geography. Her undergraduate study in natural sciences and her post graduate research in Cultural Geography has informed her arts practice. She went on to training extensively in physical theatre, clown and improvisation. From 2015-2018 Rachel was contracted by the Arts Health Institute to deliver creative interventions for elders in aged care living with dementia.
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BRIDGET CRACK
Published by Allen & Unwin, August 2017
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Van Diemen’s Land, 1826. When Bridget Crack flees her master’s isolated property to walk back to Hobart Town she has no idea just how far off the road she will go, or how hard it will be to ever get back on it.
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Bridget stands on the deck of the ship looking around at the place she has been brought to. She has never seen anything like it. What kind of place is this? In Hobart Town, unable to settle to the life of a domestic servant she is sent from one place to another and then to the ‘Interior’ where the hard cases are sent. When her taciturn and unpredictable new master allows a convict servant to die, Bridget leaves seeking the security of Hobart Town. What she finds instead—what finds her—is Matt Sheedy, a man on the run. Bushrangers. Does she fall in with them? Or take up with them? Either way, their camp is a long way from the road. Surrounded by roaring rivers and towering columns of rock Bridget must negotiate a madman, and survive.
Set against a time of sweeping change in Van Diemen’s Land, a time when the violence between the aboriginals and the colonists is escalating Bridget Crack is a moving story of a woman’s journey through a beautiful and brutal landscape and of the man who goes out to bring her back. In the face of terrible darkness, everyone must find out what they cling to.
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PERFORMANCE & OTHER WORK
EVERYTHING MUST GO
Nancy Browne is having a garage sale. There will be treasure like you can’t imagine. Like you really can’t imagine.
Eccentric and reclusive Nancy has lived in the same house, the same valley all her life, but now the valley is changing — farms are being sold and city people are moving in. The wider world has encroached.
Written and performed by Rachel Leary, and directed by three-time Barry Award nominee Damian Callinan ‘Everything Must Go’ is a poignant and comedic portrayal of a misfit finding her way.
Hilarious, ridiculous and very touching, this is a fabulously unique Australian character.
Everything Must Go is a beautiful comedy creation. Nancy Browne is at once heart breaking and hilarious. She's very, very funny, but there is also a poignancy that makes the show deeply satisfying and human. (Frank Woodley)
I grew up on a farm and my mum has recently passed away and the character Nancy reminded me of my Mum and how she hoarded things and became attached and sentimental about stuff we thought as kids was junk. It was both touching and hilarious. (Audience member, The Cube, Wodonga, 2013
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It was 10/10. So well written and showed the range of emotion and certainly accomplished a local garage sale - the Olivia Newton John poster to the Cold Chisel album - well done! (Audience member, The Lighthouse Theatre, 2013)​
Rachel Leary is a brilliant performer... (She) is able to completely draw you into Nancy’s world. (Tianna Nadalin, Herald Sun)​
OTHER WORK
Rachel Leary has been performing professionally for over twenty five years. She has trained in physical comedy, clown, improvisation and character comedy and performed roving acts at festivals, community and corporate events nationally and internationally. She has twice been a RAW comedy Victorian state finalist.
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Arts Health Institute Play Up Program
