“Fauna is a scary, provocative and beautiful novel that asks big questions about responsibility, humanity, science and motherhood. Donna Mazza’s clear-eyed and lyrical intelligence endows this story with power, fear and a sense of reckoning” – Writing WA
Welcome
“The role of the writer is to provoke the reader to think; it’s important to resist the temptation to tell too much. This is not something that merges smoothly with scientific method because it invites multiple interpretations, but this is what makes literary speculative fiction a potent force for our times: it resists dualism. It is not science and it is not entirely fiction.” – Donna Mazza.
About Donna
Donna Mazza is the award-winning author of Fauna (2020, Allen & Unwin) and The Albanian (2007, Fremantle Press) as well as short stories, poetry and non-fiction. She works as an academic at Edith Cowan University where she teaches and mentors emerging writers. She delivers workshops, appears at literary festivals and has been the recipient of prestigious fellowships at Varuna, the National Writers’ House in Katoomba and Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland.
Donna’s fiction poses provocative questions about our future and captures landscape with distinct Australian gothic imagery. The research for Fauna included deep study of contemporary research on Neanderthal fossils and a deep dive into the world of genetics. The novel draws evocative and lyrical images of the landscape of Western Australia, particularly the area around the Leschenault Peninsula which features in many of the photographs on this website.
Donna has done quite a lot of research on dead kangaroos in Australian fiction, but she really prefers the company of live animals and each day she feeds fourteen chickens, including two yodelling roosters who get her out of bed every morning.
Donna's Other Works Here
Donna In The Media Here
