Julia Blackburn delves into fascinating, often overlooked aspects of the human experience. Her literary style is marked by deep empathy and a penetrating insight into the psychology of her characters. The author focuses on themes of memory, identity, and the complex relationships between people and their environments. Her works invite readers to contemplate the invisible forces that shape our lives.
The Emperor's Last Stand is a book about St Helena, an island with a sad, strange history, and about the tangle of stories and myths, absurdities and simple facts that have accumulated around Napoleon and his sojourn here.
Shortlisted for the 2011 Costa Biography Award and the 2012 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize Julia Blackburn and her husband moved to a little house in the mountains of northern Italy in 1999.
42 lively, funny, moving and erotic poems written in the voice of Picasso's young mistress Marie Therese, with illustrations by Jeff Fisher.
The oral history of Billie Holiday is revealed through the voices of those who knew her intimately, including musicians, dancers, and critics. Their stories paint a complex portrait of a woman who defied the myths surrounding her, showcasing her desires and values. Julia Blackburn skillfully compiles these narratives, offering a unique perspective on the life of this iconic jazz singer, highlighting her contradictions and the depth of her character.
In 1913, when she was 54 years old, Daisy Bates went to live in the deserts of South Australia. In Daisy Bates in the Desert Julia Blackburn explores the ancient and desolate landscape where Ms Bates says she was most happy.
Ackerley Award This is the story of three people: Julia Blackburn, her father Thomas and her mother Rosalie. After her parents were divorced, Julia's mother took in lodgers, always men, on the understanding that each should become her lover. When one of the lodgers started an affair with Julia, Rosalie was devastated;
Julia Blackburn's brilliant and haunting book is a life of Billie Holiday told in the voices of those who knew her. Kuehl died in 1978 and her book never came out, but her recordings survived to provide the raw material for this extraordinary account of the life of America's First Lady of Jazz.
Shortly after her husband’s death, Julia Blackburn became fascinated with Doggerland, the vast once-populated stretch of land that connected Great Britain to Continental Europe thousands of years ago but is now under the North Sea. She felt driven to explore the lives of the people who lived there as revealed through artifacts and the fossil record. In Time Song, she brings us along on her journey, introducing us to the paleontologists, archaeologists, fishermen, and fellow Doggerland enthusiasts she meets along the way. What emerges is a lyrical exploration—part travelogue and part history—and a profound meditation on time and the immensity of the past.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT GOLDEN BEER BOOK PRIZE 2019 Julia Blackburn has always collected things that hold stories about the past, especially the very distant past: mammoth bones, little shells that happen to be two million years old, a flint shaped as a weapon long ago.
The narrative explores Julia Blackburn's journey to the Karoo region of South Africa, where she investigates the ancestral lands of the persecuted /Xam people. In the 19th century, facing cultural extinction, they contributed to the Bleek-Lloyd Archive, a collection of 60,000 pages capturing their language, dreams, and traumas. This archive serves as a vital record of their worldview, emphasizing their belief that "all things were once people," offering a profound insight into a nearly lost way of life.