Drawing Sybylla

Book excerpt: On stage, a woman named Sybil Jones is making a speech. She is talking about the significance of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. Behind her sits a panel of writers, facing their audience, and one writer drawing Sybil's likeness in a contemplative daze. The Sybil in the writer's drawing starts to move, like the women behind Gilman's wallpaper. She shakes. She takes the writer by the hand and leads her down into the paper, into the dark recesses of her mind, and into Australia's past - into the real and imagined lives of Australia's women writers. Drawing Sybylla is a novel about the challenges women writers have faced in pursuing the writing life.