Anita Heiss

Writer

• Born: 1968
• Place of Birth: Sydney, Australia

Education: University of New South Wales; University of Western Sydney

Significance: Anita Heiss is a prolific writer of Aboriginal literature and the creator of the “Koori chick-lit” subgenre. Her works include nonfiction, novels, poetry, and social commentary.

Background

Anita Heiss was born in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, in 1968. Her father, Joe Heiss, was born in Austria and moved to Australia in the mid-1950s. Her mother, Elsie Heiss, was born on Erambie Mission, near Cowra. Heiss has identified as an Aboriginal person since her teens and is a member of the Wiradjuri nation of central New South Wales.

The second born of five children, she grew up in Matraville, a suburb of Sydney. She received her primary education at St Andrew's in Malabar and her secondary education at St Clare’s College in Waverley, graduating from the latter in 1986.

She earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1989 from the University of New South Wales. After completing a cadetship at the Australian International Development Assistance Bureau in Canberra, she returned to the University of New South Wales and earned an honors degree in history.

Following graduation, she backpacked around Europe before returning to Sydney to work as a coordinator of Aboriginal projects at Streetwize Comics (later known as Streetwize Communications) for two years.

Writing Career

Heiss founded Curringa Communication, a social research and media consultancy firm, in Sydney in 1994. She also did freelance writing and wrote her first book, a satirical social commentary titled Sacred Cows, which was published in 1996. She was inspired to write the book based on her experience researching her history thesis, which was on the Australian referendum of 1967. Dismayed that almost all sources on the topic were written by white authors, she wrote a humorous book to shatter the myths about Aboriginal peoples.

In 1995, Heiss did research in Canada on an overseas study award. The next year, she enrolled at the University of Western Sydney and began work on her doctoral degree in media and communications. She returned to Canada and traveled to the North Island of New Zealand to do research for her thesis. While working on her degree, she continued to write, lecture and conduct workshops. In 1998, she published her first poetry collection, Token Koori, a book of poems about contemporary Aboriginal peoples and biculturalism.

After earning her Ph.D. in 2001, Heiss taught an introductory course on Indigenous Australia at the University of Western Sydney while also working as a communications adviser for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board of the Australia Council. She published her first children’s novel, Who Am I? The Diary of Mary Talence, Sydney 1937, in 2001. The novel was inspired by the life of her maternal grandmother, who had been removed from her family and placed in a domestic training home for Aboriginal girls.

After one year, Heiss resigned from her teaching position but remained as an adjunct associate professor at the university’s Badanami Centre of Indigenous Education. In 2004, she became the writer in residence at Macquarie University. The next year, she served as the deputy director of the Warawara Department of Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University.

Heiss continued to write and research in her free time. In 2007, the year after she left Macquarie, she published three works: the poetry collection I’m Not Racist, But. . . : A Collection of Social Observations; the children’s novel Yirra and Her Deadly Dog, Demon; and the novel Not Meeting Mr Right.

In Not Meeting Mr Right, Heiss created a new genre that began to be described as “Koori chick lit.” Like other chick-lit novels, it was a lighthearted, witty novel that focused on relations between the sexes from the perspective of its female characters. Its difference, however, was that its characters were urban Aboriginal women. The novel became popular among the public and increased awareness of the lives of contemporary Aboriginal women beyond the academic world. Not Meeting Mr Right received the 2007 Deadly Award for outstanding contribution to literature.

Heiss’s first Koori chick-lit novel was followed by a sequel, Avoiding Mr Right, in 2008. That same year she won another Deadly Award for outstanding contribution to literature for Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature, an authoritative collection of Aboriginal literature co-edited with Peter Minter.

Heiss won two more Deadly Awards for outstanding contribution to literature for her 2010 novel Manhattan Dreaming and her 2011 novel Paris Dreaming. Before those publications, she became embroiled in a lawsuit against Andrew Bolt, a popular newspaper columnist. In April 2009, Bolt wrote an opinion piece titled “White Is the New Black,” in which he accused Heiss and others of choosing to identify themselves as Aboriginal persons for personal gain. Heiss joined others in a successful lawsuit that accused Bolt of violating the Racial Discrimination Act, which grants Australians the right to identify as Aboriginal persons. The experience had a profound effect on her and led her to write her 2012 work Am I Black Enough for You? It was a finalist in the Human Rights Awards for 2012. Two years later, she published the Koori chick-lit novel Tiddas. In 2022, she won the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Indigenous Writers' Prize for her historical novel Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray (The River of Dreams).

Impact

Heiss has defined her life’s mission as educating people about the culture and history of Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders. Using a variety of media, including lectures, performances, workshops, and literature, she has reached a wide audience and helped to increase awareness of the diversity and complexity of Aboriginal Australians and their history. In 2022, Heiss was awarded the Order of Australia for her contributions in promoting Indigenous literature.

Personal Life

Heiss lives in Sydney and enjoys traveling.

Bibliography

"Anita's Career." Anita Heiss. Curringa Communications, 2021, www.anitaheiss.com/anitas‗story. Accessed 11 June 2024.

Byram, Vickii. “Dr Anita Heiss Shares Her Creative Expertise with Hastings Students.”Port Macquarie News, 20 July 2015, www.portnews.com.au/story/3221177/author-inspires-future-writers/. Accessed 11 June 2024.

"Dr Anita Marianne Heiss." Australian Government, 13 June 2022, honours.pmc.gov.au/honours/awards/2010965. Accessed 11 June 2024.

Hardy, Karen. “For Anita Heiss, There’s Similarities in Diversity.” The Canberra Times, 23 Apr. 2018, www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6143745/for-anita-heiss-theres-similarities-in-diversity/. Accessed 11 June 2024.

Elliot, Tim. “Interview: Anita Heiss.” The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 Apr. 2012, www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/interview-anita-heiss-20120404-1wbek.html. Accessed 11 June 2024.