Kylie Tennant Kylie Tennant was the author of nine novels, plus short stories, plays, journalism, criticism and biography as well as much writing for children. She is noted for her social realist studies of urban and rural working-class life rom the 1930s, that began with Tiburon (1935), and included Foveaux (1939), named after a street in the slums of Surry Hills.

Her working life encompassed such jobs as barmaid, reviewer, church sister and publicist for the ABC. Seeking to be true to the society she observed, she took to the road with itinerant workers in the worst years of the Depression, and went so far as to spend a week in gaol for the sake of research.

Tennant was born in Manly, New South Wales, in 1912 and died in 1988. She was awarded the Order of Australia in 1980.

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