There are so many different types of authors in this world – but the ones that really excite me are those who seem to operate on a different plane to the rest of us. The ones who notice things that we (or I) seem to miss – and then convey these things using extraordinary, inventive […]
Meet Jennifer Down, author of ‘Our Magic Hour’ Read More »
Imagine you’re at the start of your creative writing life. You have a short story. You have no idea if it’s any good. But you send it off anyway to a national, well-respected short story competition – the first one you’ve ever entered. You wait and wait. Then the results come in and you nearly
Meet E.C. Thorpe – Winner of the Stringybark Short Story Award 2015 Read More »
It happens to all of us. At some point in life, we all become familiar with grief in a way we’d always hoped to avoid. For me, that happened last year. The death of my father in law was shocking and not shocking. Not shocking because he was 91 years old. Shocking because the cancer
Capturing Grief: ‘Our Magic Hour,’ by Jennifer Down Read More »
There’s this natty little function on the Sydney Writer’s Festival website that allows you to search for events by genre. There’s fiction, of course (more than 60 events, mostly literary fiction) but also more ‘niche’ genres, such as crime (16 events), sport (6 events), even spirituality and religion (6 events). But have a guess at
At nearly 50,000 words into my current WIP, I hit a dead zone. Until that point, everything had been sailing along fairly smoothly. I would sit at the computer, the ideas would come, the word count would creep steadily upwards. Happy days! Until I hit some rough weather and started taking in water from all
Reading About Writing: ‘Monkeys with Typewriters’, by Scarlett Thomas Read More »
There are times (many) when I think of the ego involved in writing. What makes my voice, my thoughts, my ideas, worth recording, let alone publishing? What gives me the right to think I can and should write? Who cares what I have to say? Then a writer comes along who makes you realise that
The Ego of Writing: ‘My Name is Lucy Barton’, by Elizabeth Strout Read More »
You know how it feels when you’re a kid and it’s the night before Christmas, and you have that delicious sense of anticipation about what tomorrow will bring… Well, that’s exactly how I feel about the publication of Natasha Lester’s new novel A Kiss from Mr Fitzgerald. It’s just gorgeous. I know that so many
Meet the Author: Natasha Lester Read More »
I was 19 when I traveled overseas, alone, for the first time. The only book I packed was The Lonely Planet Guide to the USA. It was my bible, telling me where to go, how to get there and where to stay. In those days, the internet was something you could only use in a cafe, and
Labels help and labels hinder. When it comes to finding my daughter’s school hat (which she loses at least once a day) the fact that it clearly has her name on it is a huge bonus. When it comes to the genre term ‘historical fiction’, the label is a hindrance. A catch-all phrase, usually applied
Thoughts on ‘The Words in My Hand’ and why historical fiction is a stupid label Read More »
Two very different books. Two very different genres. Two very different writers. Two very different target audiences. But at the heart of both – sex. More specifically, sex within the context of a relationship, but also outside of that context. In The Dangerous Bride, we meet Lee Kofman in a Melbourne fetish club on the
On Sex: ‘The Dangerous Bride,’ by Lee Kofman and Kirsty Eagar’s ‘Summer Skin’ Read More »
