‘We only deconstruct that which does not suit us.’
—David J. Tacey, Meanjin, Summer 1990

Tegan Bennett Daylight, author of The Stella Prize shortlisted Six Bedrooms, recalls being taught by Drusilla Modjeska about women and literature at the University of Technology Sydney. She couldn’t quite grasp what the feminine in writing actually was—she knew was that she read more women than men, so she wrote letters to Helen Garner, Shirley Hazzard, Iris Murdoch and Toni Morrison. ‘It still seems madly ambitious, as it was, but I got replies from all of them except Morrison.’