帕特里夏·赖特森

帕特里夏·赖特森（英语：Patricia Wrightson，1921年6月19日—2010年3月15日）是澳大利亚儿童文学作家。她的27本书籍被翻译成16种语言，在世界范围内出版。

她是1986年国际安徒生作家奖得主。

生平

1921年6月19日出生于澳大利亚新南威尔士州利斯莫尔。在国立通信学校和昆士兰州斯坦索普的圣凯瑟琳学院接受教育。

第二次世界大战期间，她在悉尼的一家弹药厂工作。1943年结婚后在社区从事医务工作。从1964年起，她开始从事编辑工作。1970年至1975年，担任少年杂志编辑。1955年发表处女作，儿童小说《扭曲的蛇》，获得当年的澳大利亚儿童读物奖。接着她写了十多部小说和童话，多次获奖。

1973年出版的《纳冈和星星》是她的知名作品之一。这是首批基于澳大利亚原住民传说的奇幻作品。作为一个非土著人，她在书中借用的原住民神话传说受到了其他作家的质疑。

2010年3月15日在新南威尔士的一家医院去世。

主要奖项

1986年度由国际儿童图书评议会颁发的国际安徒生作家奖

1977年：大英帝国勋章官佐勋位

Patricia Wrightson OBE (19 June 1921 – 15 March 2010) was an Australian writer of several highly regarded and influential children's books. Employing a magic realism style, her books, including the award-winning The Nargun and the Stars (1973), were among the first Australian books for children to draw on Australian Aboriginal mythology. Her 27 books have been published in 16 languages.

For her "lasting contribution" as a children's writer, she received the biennial Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1986.

Personal life

Wrightson was born Patricia Furlonger on 19 June 1921 in Bangalow, near Lismore, New South Wales, the third of six children. Her father was a country solicitor. She was formerly educated through the State Correspondence School for Isolated Children and St Catherine's College, and also attended a private school in Stanthorpe, Queensland, for one year. Of her education, Wrightson later wrote, “I was really educated in literature, philosophy and wonder by my father; and in the social sciences by my mother. My most profitable year of schooling was the one in which I abandoned the syllabus altogether and spent the year, without permission or guidance, in discovering Shakespeare”.

During World War II Wrightson worked in a munitions factory in Sydney.

Wrightson married in 1943, and had two children, Peter and Jenny, before divorcing in 1953. She worked as secretary and administrator at Bonalbo District Hospital, from 1946 to 1960, and Sydney District Nursing Association, from 1960 to 1964.

Wrightson died of "natural causes" on 15 March 2010, a few days after entering a New South Wales hospital.

Literary career

Wrightson served as Assistant Editor and later editor of the School Magazine, in Sydney, from 1964 to 1970, a literary publication for children.

She wrote 27 books during her lifetime and entwined Australian Aboriginal mythology into her writing. After beginning with straightforward adventure stories, Wrightson's writing developed to reveal two key characteristics: her use of Aboriginal folklore, with its rich fantasy and mystery, and her understanding of the importance of the land. Author, editor and academic Mark MacLeod wrote that "Wrightson thought that it might be possible to reconcile Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian cultures and create a new kind of pan-Australian narrative, in which the human characters from both cultures were strongly aware of and influenced by the metaphysical world that Indigenous Australians had known for 60 000 years."

Controversy

Initially, Wrighton's use of Aboriginal myths was appreciated by Aboriginal leaders because of her evident respect and care for their traditions, however, as times changed, Wrightson's use of Aboriginal myths and legends in her fiction came to be questioned by some academics, including New Zealander Clare Bradford, who accused Wrightson of “appropriating and controlling strategies.” Wrightson’s editor Max Macleod stressed that Wrightson’s use of Aboriginal mythology was respectful and inclusive: "She was trying to create a kind of pan-Australia – a whole new Australian mythology which was part non-indigenous and part indigenous."

In 1978 the Aboriginal playwright Jack Davis praised Wrightson’s work to the International Board on Books for Young People. Davis "encouraged her to be even bolder in her writing and, far from giving up in fear, to go on." Brian Attebery, American writer and author of Strategies of Fantasy, wrote "No amount of care can make [Wrightson] into a tribal elder, nor can her use of Aboriginal folklore ever be fully ‘authentic’. However, she can become… a participant in the reshaping of tradition for a modern world in which authenticity is an inaccessible ideal."