Getting my hands dirty: research and writing

Biographical note: Shady Cosgrove is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Wollongong. Her novel What the Ground Can’t Hold (Picador 2013) tells the story of a group of people stranded in the Andes, all of whom have links to Argentina’s Dirty War. Her memoir She Played Elvis (Allen and Unwin, 2009) was shortlisted for the Australian Vogel Literary Prize, and her short stories and articles have appeared in Best Australian Stories, Antipodes, Southerly, Overland, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age. She has also written about the ethics of representation and teaching of creative writing. For further information and free downloads of her work, see