VCAA Literature List 2023
Upcoming titles for the VCAA Literature List 2023
February 25, 2022
The VCAA has approved the Literature list for 2023. If your school is studying a title that does not appear on the updated list, consider a suitable alternative for your students next year. We have summarised some of these titles below and included links to accompanying study resources.
It is important to keep in mind the themes that you are looking to explore in these units to see if they suit the school and most importantly your students.
Based on a true crime in the 1840’s, Margaret Attwood Alias Grace has taken the facts, strange as they are and felt free to invent what is not known about 16 year old murderer Grace Marks. Delving into themes of guilt and innocence, insanity, gender, class and the emergence of psychological theory, this is an enthralling read that allows the reader to draw their own conclusions as to the guilt or innocence of the protagonist.
Winner of the 2020 Miles Franklin Award, The Yield uses three different voices to describe the Wiradjuri people's journey. Albert ‘Poppy’ Gondiwindi, his granddaughter August and the nineteenth-century missionary Reverend Ferdinand Greenleaf. Poppy is tyring to assemble the once outlawed Wiradjui language into a dictionary before his death. The Yield explores themes of loss and recovery and exploitation of both people and the environment.
A collection of short stories, Stories of Your Life and Others by American writer Ted Chiang, includes the science fiction novella with shades of Kurt Vonnegut “The Story of your life”. In a 2010 interview Chiang said that "Story of Your Life" addresses the subject of free will. The philosophical debates about whether or not we have free will are all abstract, but knowing the future makes the question very real. If you know what's going to happen, can you keep it from happening? Even when a story says that you can't, the emotional impact arises from the feeling that you should be able to.
The first short story collection by Australian author Elizabeth Tan, Smart Ovens for Lonely People, draws together a few of her previously published pieces (from the likes of Kill Your Darlings, Overland and Seizure) with a mix of new work. A cat-shaped oven tells a depressed woman she doesn’t have to be sorry anymore. A Yourtopia Bespoke Terraria employee becomes paranoid about the mounting coincidences in her life. Four girls gather to celebrate their fabulous underwear. Quirky, warm and beautifully written.
Written in 1857, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands is the autobiography of a Jamaican woman whose fame rivaled Florence Nightingale’s during the Crimean War. Seacole traveled widely before arriving in London, where her offer to volunteer as a nurse in the war was met with racism and refusal. Undaunted, she set out independently to the Crimea, where she acted as doctor and “mother” to wounded soldiers while running her business, the “British Hotel.” Told with energy, warmth, and humour, her remarkable life story and accounts of hardships at the battlefront offer significant insights into the history of race politics.
The World's Wife is a collection of poetry by Carol Ann Duffy, the themes of the poems focus on the complexities of gender relations, the roles of women and the often ill-treatment of women through fictional, biblical, mythical, and historical contexts. Duffy's collection focuses on the unheard perspective of female counterparts of famously known male figures; it "gives a voice to the wives of famous and infamous 'great men' of world literature and civilization".
Ellen van Neerven is an award-winning writer of Mununjali Yugambeh (South East Queensland) and Dutch heritage. Throat is a collection of poetry that explores themes of love, language and land. An unflinching interrogation into colonialism, the collection focuses on politics with humour and heart.
In a socially fragile future
what will you say about you
what will you say about me
what will we remember?
When choosing your texts, remember to follow the selection guidelines as outlined by the VCAA. If you want to explore your options, replace a title or are simply curious to see what titles will be listed in 2023, please see the entire list below.
VCAA LITERATURE LIST 2023
NOVELS
Atwood, Margaret, Alias Grace (New for 2023)
Austen, Jane, Northanger Abbey
Faulkner, William, As I Lay Dying
Ishiguro, Kazuo, The Remains of the Day
Lindsay, Joan, Picnic at Hanging Rock
Stoker, Bram, Dracula
Winch, Tara June, The Yield (New for 2023)
Wright, Alexis, Carpentaria
Zola, Emile, (Brian Nelson transl.), The Ladies’ Paradise
PLAYS
Bovell, Andrew, Speaking in Tongues
Chekov, Anton, Uncle Vanya
Euripides, Hippolytus
Kirkwood, Lucy, Chimerica (New for 2023)
Morrison, Toni, Desdemona
Murray-Smith, Joanna, Berlin (New for 2023)
Parks, Suzan-Lori, Father Comes Home from the Wars: Parts 1, 2 and 3
Shakespeare, William, Othello
Shakespeare, William, The Winter’s Tale
SHORT STORIES
Chiang, Ted, Stories of Your Life and Others (New for 2023
Munro, Alice, Dance of the Happy Shades, Vintage
Tan, Elizabeth, Smart Ovens for Lonely People (New for 2023)
OTHER LITERATURE
Baldwin, James, The Fire Next Time
Seacole, Mary, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (New for 2023)
Winton, Tim, The Boy Behind the Curtain
POETRY
Dickinson, Emily, The Complete Poems
Duffy, Carol Ann, The World’s Wife (New for 2023)
Slessor, Kenneth Selected Poems
van Neerven, Ellen, Throat (New for 2023)
White, Petra, A Hunger (revised edition)
Yeats, William Butler, Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney
The following titles have been removed from the VCAA Literature List for 2023:
Cadwallader, Robyn, The Anchoress
Winterson, Jeanette, The Passion
Delaney, Shelagh, A Taste of Honey
Reza, Yasmina, Art
Dovey, Ceridwen, Only the Animals
Beneba Clarke, Maxine, Foreign Soil
Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One’s Own
Plath, Sylvia, Ariel
Wagan Watson, Samuel, Smoke Encrypted Whispers
Available ATAR Notes Text Guides for the following VCAA Literature titles:
ATAR Notes Text Guide: Othello
Insight Text Guides available for the following titles:
Insight Text Guide: The Boy Behind the Curtain
Insight Text Guide: Othello
Insight Text Guide: The Yield
At this point in time the following information is provided to the best of our knowledge. This article will be updated as new information arises.
Get in touch!
If your school would like more information on these titles or would like any of the above mentioned titles invoiced or on approval please send an email to info@lilydalebooks.com.au.
To view what is on the VCAA English & EAL Text List for 2023, click here.
The information in this article is cited from the Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority.
Keywords
VCAA English List
VCAA English List 2023
VCAA Text List 2023
VCAA Literature Study Design
Literature
VCAA
VCAA Literature List
VCAA Literature Text List 2023
Victoria Curriculum Assessment Authority
VCAA Novels 2023
VCAA Short Stories
VCAA Plays
VCAA Poetry
VCAA Songs
VCAA Films
VCAA Text List
Study Design
English Study Design
