Although I am not appearing at SWF17, one of my short stories is. Get down to the Knox Street Bar (21 Shepherd St, Chippendale) on Tuesday 23 May 7pm for Little Fictions: On the Road. Be treated to fabulous contemporary Australian short stories read and performed by excellent Australian actors. A great night of storytelling.
I am excited to be included in this year’s NT Writers Festival in Alice Springs with the theme Iwerre-atherre / Crossings. You can catch me at the Reading Rooms at The Residency on Saturday 20 May 7:30pm, reading a selection of short fictions from my forthcoming collection of short stories. And on Sunday 21 May…
Yuri Herrera, Signs preceding the end of the world (2009/2015) If I could invite just one author, one living author, to this year’s Northern Territory Writers Festival in Alice Springs (18-21 May) it would be Yuri Herrera. His second short novel, Signs preceding the end of the world, is an outstanding multi-layered book whose themes…
Karel Capek, War with the Newts (1936) Looking for something new and different to read, I came across Slawomir Mrozek’s marvellous little collection, The elephant. That book is part of Penguin’s Central European Classics series, and the inside jacket marketing of the other books in the series led me to, among other authors, Capek. Thankfully,…
Stan Grant, Talking to my country (2016) The marketing line on the cover of this book could instead be a bold subtitle: ‘the book that every Australian should read’. Well, is it? I heard Stan Grant speak at this year’s Newcastle Writers Festival, unaware of his article in The Guardian that was inspired by the continued…
I have been selected unanimously as the inaugural Regional Emerging Writer in Residence for the Newcastle Writers Festival 2016. Commencing Tuesday 22 March, I will spend two weeks living and working in Newcastle’s renowned contemporary arts space, The Lock-Up, working on my debut novel, an outback gothic adventure with the working title This landscape of failure.…
For Christmas I read Geordie Williamson’s The burning library and a sea-side sinkhole opened up in my reading list. A sinkhole of neglect for many of Australia’s now-unknown literary gems. Yes, I had read Patrick White’s marvellous novels Voss, Tree of Man and The vivisector; Randolph Stow’s great Tourmaline; as well as works by Thomas Keneally,…
Albert Camus, The outsider (1942 / 1982 English translation) This short novel had a profound affect on me when I first read it as a teenager (more than 30 years ago). And still does after multiple re-readings. It begins with perfect indifference. Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know. To Meursault, it doesn’t matter when. She…
Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin (1957) Nabokov began creating the eponymous character of this novella (or collection of loosely-linked stories), the Russian exile Timofey Pavlovich Pnin, assistant professor at the fictional Waindell College, as an antidote to the claustrophobic Humbert Humbert of Lolita. Despite Pnin’s bumbling, miscommunication and heartbreak, he is an endearing character, one for whom…
Meg Mooney, Being Martha’s friend (Picaro Press, 2015) Land and people. Place and space. Searching and belonging. These themes resonate strongly throughout this collection (her third) of poetry that could come from nowhere else but out of the red sand of Central Australia. The poetics are subtle, the narrative spare but honest. Each poem cooks like…
Michael Giacometti 