Jun 29 2009
I think I am reading this because it is going to be discussed in the First Tuesday Book Club, Jennifer Byrnes’ entertaining literary discussion program on ABC 1. But I am also reading Fowles’ book because I am fascinated by the premise. Like Sebastian Faulks’ Engleby, it features the voice of obsession: a lonely misfit stalker.
Jun 28 2009
There are some books, not many, that you want to carry on reading, long after the final page. It might be the setting or the theme that you love. Perhaps it’s the main character, someone you admire and long to travel further alongside. It might be the quality of the language. Usually, in a good book, all of these are present in some form, but when you reach the end, you’re glad. It’s been a great journey, but it’s time to move on.
What on earth could be the reasons to want to carry on reading The Kindly Ones, the grim and very long first-person fictional account of a senior German officer from the Second World War? Continue Reading »
Jun 27 2009
At the New South Wales Writers’ Centre in Rozelle, Sydney. Panels on all kinds of children’s writing from picture books to YA. More here.
Jun 08 2009
The Cutwater literary journal, edited by Dan Collins and Sam Twyfford-Moore, is launched on Saturday 11 July.
Jun 05 2009
There’s a line in my piece, “The Last Travel Story”, appearing in the literary journal Cutwater, published next month, that includes the phrase, “soon-to-be-extinct fish”.
So what, you say. Well, as is noted in Hari’s report below, only that we humans (collectively, not individually) are responsible for the likely imminent extinction of yet another species. Gone. Fished out and forked off. Finito bonito.
Anyway, “The Last Travel Story” is a bleak ditty, a sordid exercise in self-indulgence. And a credo of sorts. Pass me the vodka, it’s time to write that letter.
The process of trawlering is an oceanic weapon of mass destruction
Apr 10 2009
The proceedings of the 2008 AAWP conference, Creativity and Uncertainty, at which I presented a paper have been published online. You can find there my oeuvre “The Uncertain Voice: writing the young narrator“.
Apr 10 2009
At the NSW Writers’ Centre on Sunday, here are some images I took for the 3rd Contemporary Fiction Festival.
Apr 06 2009
Advance copies of the UTS Writers’ Anthology 2009 entitled On The Side may now be available from Gleebooks. To be launched at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, the anthology continues the UTS tradition of funkily wrapped fine writing at affordable prices. Enjoy yours On The Side!
Mar 13 2009
At the NSW Writers’ Centre in Rozelle on Sunday 5th April, the 3rd annual Contemporary Fiction Festival, your humble narrator is the coordinator, meaning I move chairs around and look worried until it’s all over.
Feb 01 2009
Recently saw the most excellent and award-winning film Slumdog Millionaire, enjoying its tight plotting and gorgeous Mumbai travelogue cinematography (albeit underbelly-Bombay).
The film is based on the 2005 novel Q and A by Vikas Swarup which went on to win several international awards.
Vikas Swarup