Her Brilliant Career looks through the prism of Miles Franklin’s explosive relationship with her mother, as the play brings to life Miles’ stellar rise

to fame as a young girl and why she was never able to repeat that success. We see her refusal to commit to marriage; her years in Chicago working alongside the Suffra- gettes, and why she had to stay away from Australia for close to 30 years yet remained a trenchant nationalist who joined a nationalist/pro-fascist group on her return. Haunted by poverty and failure, she established the Miles Franklin Award, which re- mains Australia’s highest literary prize.