About Megan Jennaway
Megan Jennaway is a writer and anthropologist who has received acclaim for her short stories. She has travelled widely throughout Asia and Europe. Much of her writing is based upon the places she has visited and the societies in which she has worked, notably Bali, Timor Leste and India. In 2002, her ethnography of the lives of Balinese peasant women, ‘Sisters and Lovers: Women and Desire in Bali’, was published by Rowman & Littlefield. Two of her latest short stories were published in the 2018 anthology of travellers’ tales, ‘Crazy Shit in Asia’, published by New Holland. She lives in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia.
About One Eye on Utopia
As a child, Cam Kirby sees his father commit a terrible crime. This sets off a chain of disasters that impact the family for many decades. Reeling from it all, Cam resolves to spend his own life pursuing the utopia that his father failed to realise. But first he has to survive his mother’s death, the coming of his sadistic maternal grandmother and some terrible football injuries. An opportunity to study at Julian Ashton’s prestigious Academy of Art in downtown Sydney seems like a way out, until WWI and his painfully unrequited love for Evelyn Pope intervene. Working as a First Ambulance Field Officer on the Western Front turns Cam into a lifelong Pacifist. With his new bride, Evelyn, he returns to London to make his mark as a painter and campaign for peace alongside luminaries such as George Bernard Shaw an d Jessica Mitford. Always a utopian socialist, he joins the CPA when WWII breaks out due to its Pacifist stance. This sets off a new chain of disasters, including a stint in Long Bay Gaol, Evelyn’s suicide and Cam’s expulsion from the very party he has served for almost two decades. Defeated on all fronts, Cam retreats to Pittwater. Here he finds a way to atone for his father’s crime. When utopia finally comes to him, at the end of his long life, it takes a very unexpected form.
