Cormick, Craig 1961–

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Cormick, Craig 1961–

PERSONAL:

Born 1961; son of Neil and Margaret Cormick; children: Hanna, Sanna, Jonas.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Biotechnology Australia, GPO Box 9839, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 2601, Australia. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Biotechnology Australia, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, manager of public awareness; also works as a teacher.

MEMBER:

Australian Society of Authors, Australian Journalists Association, Australian Capital Territory Writers Centre.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Canberra Critics Award for literature, 1998; Australian Capital Territory Book of the Year award, 1999, for Unwritten Histories.

WRITINGS:

Kormak's Saga, Merino Press (Page, Australian Capital Territory, Australia), 1991.

(Editor) Words of Grace: The Life of Grace Melbourne Baragwanath: An Oral History, Merino Press (Page, Australian Capital Territory, Australia), 1991.

The Condensed Kalevala (folk tales), Merino Press (Page, Australian Capital Territory, Australia), 1991.

Little Red Riding-Hood: The Untold Tales, Variations on a Theme, Merino Press (Page, Australian Capital Territory, Australia), 1993.

(Editor) Protesting the Testing: Canberra Writers Speak Out against Nuclear Testing in the Pacific, PEN and Left Book Club (Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia), 1995.

Pimplemania, Macmillan Educational, 1997.

(Coauthor) The Hawker Primary School Dark Book, Ginninderra Press (Charnwood, Australian Capital Territory, Australia), 1998.

Unwritten Histories (short stories), Aboriginal Studies Press (Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia), 1998.

The King of Patagonia (short stories), Mockingbird (Charnwood, Australian Capital Territory, Australia), 1999.

(Editor) John Had Really Had Enough (short stories), Merino Press (Page, Australian Capital Territory, Australia), 1999.

(Editor) Doing Time: Prison Poetry '99, Pen ACT (Manuka, Australian Capital Territory, Australia), 1999.

(Editor, with Sarah St. Vincent Welch) Time Pieces (short stories), Ginninderra Press (Charnwood, Australian Territory, Australia), 1999.

The Monster under the Bed (juvenile), illustrated by Hanna Cormick, Ginninderra Press (Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia), 1999.

Kurikka's Dreaming: The True Story of Matti Kurikka, Socialist, Utopian, and Dreamer, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2000.

The Queen of Aegea (short stories), Ginninderra Press (Charnwood, Australian Capital Territory, Australia), 2001.

Dig: The Forgotten History of Burke & Wills, Ginninderra Press (Charnwood, Australian Capital Territory, Australia), 2002.

The Princess of Cups (short stories), Mockingbird (Charnwood, Australian Capital Territory, Australia), 2003.

(Editor and contributor) Winners (short stories by Australian authors) Ginninderra Press (Charnwood, Australian Capital Territory, Australia), 2004.

A Funny Thing Happened at 27,000 Feet …: Tales from Times of Terror, Mockingbird (Charnwood, Australian Capital Territory, Australia), 2005.

Shorter works include "Good Neighbours," Merino Press (Page, Australian Capital Territory, Australia), 1996; "Terra Nullius: The Unknown Land," Merino Press, 1997; "The Magic Book," Ginninderra Press (Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia), 1998; and "Kalevala Revisited" (folk tales), Merino Press, 2000. Editor, BLAST (radical arts magazine).

SIDELIGHTS:

Craig Cormick is an Australian journalist, teacher, and author, who manages the public awareness program of the government-sponsored Biotechnology Australia. Cormick's award-winning collection of short stories, Unwritten Histories, was reviewed by Aboriginal author Anita Heiss in Australian Book Review. Heiss helped launch the book, which she said might be considered strange, since she has criticized many of the books written by non-Indigenous authors that have been published by Aboriginal Studies Press. Heiss said they are often written by historians, academics, and anthropologists with research grants, who lived in the communities for three weeks, months, or years with their tape recorders, notepads, and observations. Heiss commented that Cormick "has thrown a spanner in the works with Unwritten Histories, by producing a work that has value and benefits for educating and informing and, high on my list of pluses, entertaining."

Heiss further commented that Cormick is creative, subtle, and uses humor in portraying the role of Indigenous people since colonization, "a role that has been denied or misrepresented for so long." She called the characters in Cormick's stories "very palatable … some with personalities that make you laugh out loud. They are positioned at selected moments in time and across various geographic regions." Heiss concluded by saying that although she usually recommends that only books by Aboriginal authors be read in order to learn about their society, culture, and history, "it would be a disservice not to recommend this book to all."