Queerstories

Robert delivers a heartwarming love letter to a French-English dictionary (purportedly). Robert Dessaix is known as a leading broadcaster, for many years the producer and presenter of the ABC’s Books and Writing program. He left his twenty year academic career as a lecturer in Russian language and literature at the University of New South Wales, and the Australian National University, to work in theatre and for the ABC. He is a novelist, essayist, critic and translator. Adopted as a baby, in 1994 he published A Mother’s Disgrace, an autobiographical account of his experience of adoption, and also edited Australian Gay and Lesbian Writing: an Anthology for OUP. Other books include Turgenev: The Quest for Faith (1980); Picador New Writing (1993, edited with Helen Daniel); A Practical Handbook of Russian Aspects (1994); Night Letters (1996) which was his first novel, and was shortlisted for a number of awards including the Miles Franklin; Secrets (1997, with Amanda Lohrey and Drusilla Modjeska); and