Alumni Profile: Angela Savage
 Photo: Susan Gordon-Brown |
Degree: Arts (Honours) 1989 Current Position: Novelist and Sector Development Manager at the Victorian Council of Social Service Angela Savage is an award winning novelist who has worked extensively in Asia on women's health and family planning. In 2004 she got her big break, winning the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award in the category of unpublished manuscript by an emerging author. Now with her first published novel attracting glowing reviews, Angela is looking forward to a successful career as a crime writer. Here, she tells her story. I graduated from the University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in 1989, winning the Dwight Prize for Combined Honours in History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) and Criminology. As strange as it seems, both these subjects proved highly useful in forging my two careers as an aid worker and crime novelist. |
With an interest in medical anthropology, in 1992 I travelled to Laos on a scholarship to conduct six months research for a PhD on women and AIDS. Instead of writing my doctorate, I ended up managing HIV/AIDS projects for the Australian Red Cross in Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma, southern China and Thailand.
It was more than six years before I returned to Australia, a recovering workaholic with a large enough tax refund to take some time out of the workforce and pursue my dream of becoming a published author.
I turned to crime fiction after one of my short stories won third prize in the Sisters in Crime Scarlet Stiletto Awards in 1998. The more I pursued the genre, the more it made sense as means of exploring the themes that interested me. Living as an expatriate and working cross-culturally is a lot like being a detective. Both involve putting together the big picture from a small set of clues, trying to distinguish a reliable source from a capricious one, and searching for meanings lost in translation.
I spent several years writing and editing my book—working title Thai Died—even after returning to the paid workforce to run Family Planning Australia’s international program in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.
In 2004, my book won a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award in the category of unpublished manuscript by an emerging author. This lead to the publication in June 2006 of my first novel, Behind the Night Bazaar (Text Publishing), which was launched by my friend, award winning author and University of Melbourne alumnus Christos Tsiolkas.
The Age reviewer Jeff Glorfeld wrote of Behind the Night Bazaar: ‘In footy when a player scores a goal with his first kick it is newsworthy, something for the record books. Savage has done the publishing equivalent with her first book, decisively putting one through the big sticks. Better yet, for readers of crime fiction, her protagonist Jayne Keeney is built to last and this debut has all the makings of a long-running serial.’
I am currently attempting to work on the sequel while juggling my day job at the Victorian Council of Social Service and raising a young daughter with my partner Andrew Nette (incidentally, also a University of Melbourne alumnus).
