Kay Perry

Curriculum Specialist, Education Consultant, Social Issues

Kay Perry is a teacher and examiner with decades of experience in the teaching of Literature and English at tertiary and senior secondary levels. She is the author of several study guides and is yet to respond to the advice to “put down that book and go outside”.

Where were you born?

I was born in Melbourne in a small local hospital which, so sadly for posterity, no longer exists.

What other jobs have you had?

Apart from a misguided but necessary stint as a telemarketer, I have always worked in the field of education and research.

What themes are recurring in your work?

I am attracted to the idea – expressed by Wittgenstein – that “the limits of my language are the limits of my world”. I believe that, as we increase the depth of our engagement with language, we increase our potential to expand the boundaries of the worlds which we inhabit.

Where have your works been published?

My works have been published by educational and institutional publishers such as NEAP and CAE. They have also appeared in journals and magazines such as Mattoid, Space, The Journal of the Jane Austen Society, Melbourne and The Rationalist.

What are you passionate about?

To quote Drew Faust, first female president of Harvard:

“Higher learning can offer individuals and societies a depth and breadth of vision absent from the inevitably myopic present. Human beings need meaning, understanding, and perspective as well as jobs. The question should not be whether we can afford to believe in such purposes in these times, but whether we can afford not to”. I am passionate about education considered in this light.

Publications currently in print

Numerous study guides to texts such as:

• Selected Short Stories of Henry Lawson
• Shakespeare’s Sonnets
• Tess of the D’Urbervilles
• If This is a Man
• Poetry of Sylvia Plath
• Hard Times  Year of Wonders
  
• Ransom; Henry IV, Part 1
• Wuthering Heights
• Measure for Measure

Text notes on authors such as:

• Kylie Tennant
• Rosalie Ham
• Barbara Baynton
• Kathryn Stockett
• Lily Brett
• Lionel Shriver
• Donna Tartt
• Kate Morton
• Sue Gee
• Amitav Ghosh
• John Ajvide Lindqvist
• Charles Dickens