The Persian Book Club
One of the unexpected joys of publishing a book is that I am sometimes invited by book clubs to speak about my novel. This can be slightly nerve racking because [...]
Literary Friendships #2
My second pair of guests are Sue Braghieri and Hannah van Didden. I first met them at a writing workshop a few years ago and we have been friends since. [...]
Literary Friendships #1
A little while ago I started thinking of literary friendships between women, and I turned naturally enough, to Professor Google. Despite trying the words in different combinations, the Professor thought [...]
Brown girls who shout
Whereas we write and speak as members of a small minority of marginal voices, our journalistic and academic critics belong to a wealthy system of interlocking informational and academic resources [...]
The Historian’s Daughter
My publishers have just told me that The Historian's Daughter is now featured on their website as a forthcoming title. This is tremendously exciting and is now starting to feel [...]
Neglecting the Blog
I have been doing a bit of that lately - neglecting the blog, I mean. I've been immersed in submissions for two journals I'm currently editing (both, as guest editor). [...]
Boy, Lost by Kristina Olsson- book review
‘Why did no one help?’ This was the question Kristina Olsson reflexively asked at the 2015 Perth Writers Festival, at a panel discussing her memoir, Boy, Lost. It was also [...]
Addition by Toni Jordan
What a joy it is to kick off my first review for the Australian Women Writers Challenge with Toni Jordan's debut novel, Addition, published in 2008. Addition is a gorgeous [...]
Fill the unforgiving minute
It’s been a while since I read Rudyard Kipling – more than forty years, I think. Yet the music of poetry ensures that I can, to this day, recite an [...]
What I’ve been reading
Well, theories of memory, mostly, along with narrative inquiry mixed with a dash of ethnographic self reflexive research. This 'essential' reading has been for the essay I'm writing as part [...]
Finding Jasper by Lynne Leonhardt
Lynne Leonhardt's debut novel takes us to a gentler and a more violent time in our history - a paradox that is managed in this novel with grace and clarity. [...]
India Diary – Part Three
The third leg of my journey took me to the nation’s capital, Delhi. We arrived here just before the spring festival of Holi and a friend invited us to her [...]