Discipline/Field: Literature

Based in: Naarm/Melbourne, Australia

About: Jennifer Down is an author, editor and translator. Her writing is concerned with the intersections of class, geography, gender, and memory. Her most recent novel, Bodies of Light, is a forensic portrait of a woman growing up in state ‘care’ from early childhood to middle age. It received the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award, Australia’s most prestigious literature prize. She is a passionate advocate of literacy and accessibility in the arts and is currently interested in the comedy scene as a vehicle for exploring questions like, who gets to make it in the arts and why? 

Project Title: Oubliette charts a group of sketch comedians from their mid-20s to their mid-40s, across three separate moments in time: the chaotic, feral beginning of their careers in the early aughts; the dissolution of their professional and personal ties with one another in 2014; and their present-day reunion. Every character in the novel is inexorably haunted: by death in the traditional sense, but also by the loss of potential, youth, lofty ideals, and identity. Oubliette explores how the Australian comedy and literary scenes have much in common. Both are small circles with limited resources (decades of dwindling arts funding) and limited audiences (small population; little prospect of international export). Both are heavily populated by the generationally wealthy. In both scenes, people of color regularly find themselves the sole load-bearer of ‘diverse representation’.

Relevant Links: jenniferdown.com; Instagram: @jenniferdown; X/Twitter: @jenniferdown; Substack: BAD DOG