Biography

inezbaranay

short version

Australian citizenship, immigrant background, transnational culture, cosmopolitan temperament. Born in Italy, grew up in Sydney. I have published 12+ books of fiction and non-fiction as well as many stories and essays. I’ve lived in many places and the older I get the less I look likely to settle down.
Occasional updates on the NewsBlog on this site, and at the Local Time Publishing page at Facebook.

longer version

I was born in Naples, Italy of Hungarian parents who emigrated to Australia when I was a baby. I was educated in the western suburbs of Sydney then moved to the inner city. I lived in Malaya with my parents as a teenager for two years, and began my adult travels with a trip to Bali in the late 1970s.

I began publishing short prose fiction in small-press and then main-stream anthologies in the early 1980s. My first novel Between Careers was published in 1989 although it had been completed years earlier. The short prose collection The Saddest Pleasure (1989) and the novel Pagan (1990) followed, and finishing The Edge of Bali (1992) marked the end of 40 years based in Sydney (including travels in South-East Asia, Europe, Morocco and India). During that time I also wrote material for several theatre pieces produced in Sydney, including Zen and Now.

I went to Papua New Guinea with Australian Volunteers Abroad in 1992 (the subject of Rascal Rain: a year in Papua New Guinea (1994)). I lived in Far North Queensland for the next few years, in Cairns and then Torres Strait Islands. In 1997 Sheila Power was published. During this time I also spent time in the USA, mostly New York City, with a stay in 1995 at Yaddo, the artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, and in India, where I have been several times to study yoga. Other trips to India have included a period as writer-in-residence at the University of Madras (2001) and a Literature Residency granted by Asialink (2002). India is the setting for my novel, Neem Dreams (2003) and was first published there. In 2006 I taught Creative Writing in Chennai. My  novel With The Tiger also had its first publication in India in 2008.

At the start of 1998 I moved to South-East Queensland. I continued to travel every year. In 2006 I returned to New York and Europe, and gave several lectures in universities in Spain.

Sun square moon: writings on yoga and writing was published in its most beautiful edition by Writers Workshop Kolkata in 2007.

In 2007 I moved to Europe to spend five months at Binger Film Lab in Amsterdam then to take up a residency at the BR Whiting Library in Rome, granted by the Australia Council, where I began work on a memoir.

And from there went on to several other writing residencies in Europe, USA and India, returning to Australia in August 2010 for a year. With The Tiger was published by Press On (2010)  followed by Always Hungry a year later. In November 2011 I came to Istanbul when the Turkish translation of With The Tiger was published and decided to live there. In early 2014 I began teaching at the university in Çanakkale, Turkey, on the shore of the Dardanelles.

I taught writing since 1989 in a range of contexts, including universities, community groups, prisons and mentorship schemes. In 2003 I was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy in Writing by Griffith University.

I try to record my latest location/s and literary events on the Newsblog on this site.

UPDATE May 2019. I’ve been back in Australia since the end of 2017. In October 2019 my new novel Turn Left At Venus is  published by Transit Lounge.
Occasional updates on my writing, publishing and speaking life can be found at the NewsBlog on this site, and at the Local Time Publishing page at Facebook.