Favourite Books -2021
I read a lot of books, around 75 I think. I kept a tally for a while but lost track along the way. I tend to forget library books but made an extra special effort to remember this year. I’ve picked 20 of the best. Australian These are the ones [...]
The 2020 Booklist
Like a number of people I know, I stayed home a lot this year. And I read a lot. Re-read some old favourites and bought more books than I recall buying in any other year. Sometimes the world became less scary as I was transported into language, worlds and scenarios [...]
Sydney Writers Festival Podcast with Mirandi Riwoe
I was so happy to talk to Mirandi Stanton about her brilliant novel Stone Sky Gold Mountain, for this Sydney Writers Festival podcast. You can listen to Mirandi talk about outrage, identity, hauntings and holding space for authentic and ethical stories. Follow this link to the Sydney Writers Festival Podcast: [...]
My year in books
I read a lot of books this year, no different to any other year. But I did try to read differently, adding writers of colour and translated works to my usual reading list. I accepted review copies by writers I had never previously read. I read more short stories and essays, [...]
UWAP Writers – Michelle Michau-Crawford
In 2013, Michelle Michau-Crawford won the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Prize for her short story, Leaving Elvis, and in 2016, she was published by UWA Publishing, with her debut collection - Leaving Elvis And Other Stories . Michelle is the third writer I am profiling as a form of protest against the threatened [...]
UWAP Writers – Roanna Gonsalves
In my second post about the UWAP writers I am proud to share this publishing house with, I'm writing about The Permanent Resident and its author, the award winning Roanna Gonsalves. The short stories that make up this collection are playful and terse, abundant and contained, unexpected and universal. Roanna and I [...]
UWAP Writers – Amanda Curtin
Recently, the West Australian writing community was stunned by the shock announcement that the 85 year old publishing house was told to systematically shut down its operations and move to an open access, digital model, supposedly to 'modernise' it. Local, national and international writers expressed their outrage and rallied to support [...]
Loving Hardy
English novelist Thomas Hardy was an unlikely role model for a book-obsessed young girl growing up in India, but I credit Hardy, and the Romantic poets, with my initiation into writing. Something about Hardy’s grimness appealed enormously. I named the hero in my own novel after Hardy’s Gabriel, that laconic [...]
Gardens of Earthly Delights
On an exceptionally kind February afternoon in Perth yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking to Annamaria Weldon and Moreno Giovannoni about goddesses and fireflies. The late great Mary Oliver wrote this: 'creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration without interruption. It needs the whole sky to fly in.' Both [...]