A seminal body of work emerged in the 1980s recognising reading as a site for gender and class identity work. However, understandings around working-class girls' reading identities are invisible in the current Australian education policy space where gender equalities with respect to curriculum subjects have disappeared. This paper draws on a…

This article is based on a qualitative study that explored the impact reading had on the lives of two female students who attained exemplary results in their final year of high school. The reading practices of these two high achieving students provided data rich information. Both students were academically successful in completing their Victorian…