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Australian literary podcaster Claudine Tinellis talks with Sydney based author Dianne Yarwood on her show, Talking Aussie Books. Much of the discussion is about Yarwood’s debut novel, The Wakes, which I also wrote about the other week.

Fear of litigation is prompting some Australian publishers to reject manuscripts for titles they think may be contentious, particularly books about controversial public figures.

Melbourne based writer and editor Hilary McPhee, says poorer quality books are the result, if public interest stories end up being suppressed:

“We have fewer and fewer publishers and we have poorer and poorer books as a result. There’s a lot of cautiousness and nervousness. And the larger the company, the more nervous they are.” Larger companies were publishing fewer but more lucrative authors. A few smaller companies such as Upswell were taking risks, “but the big ones don’t seem to me to be brave. It’s terribly bad for authors.”

There’s a few tech origin-story films around that the moment. The Playlist is about the founding of music streaming service Spotify, while BlackBerry backgrounds the invention of one of the first smartphones, being, obviously, the BlackBerry.

But here’s the one we’ve been waiting for… Tetris, trailer, the story behind the still popular video game’s creation, directed by Scottish filmmaker Jon S. Baird. Nikita Efremov portrays Alexey Pajitnov, the Soviet-born American computer engineer who devised Tetris in 1984, with Taron Egerton as Dutch entrepreneur Henk Rogers, who sought a distribution deal for the game.

It’s all high drama, these start-up stories. So much for plodding away quietly in a suburban garage, bringing the next big thing into being.

Jeannie Kidera, writing for Big Think:

The capacity for empathy — to first identify and then understand and share in someone else’s feelings — is largely held as a virtue these days. Yet, philosophically speaking, there is a bit of a knowledge problem that makes being naturally empathetic a struggle. Why? As poet John Keats put it, “Nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced.”

So how can someone else’s perspective and emotions ever become real enough for us to develop empathy? Reading fiction may provide an answer. Research suggests that fictional books may effectively be empathy-building tools, offering us the closest we can get to first-hand knowledge of someone else’s experience.

To read a chapter out of someone’s life story is to truly walk a mile in their shoes.

London based writer and reviewer Susie Mesure, writing for The Guardian:

Elizabeth Strout, the Booker-shortlisted author of Olive Kitteridge and the Lucy Barton books, is also taking books at a more tranquil pace. “I was never a fast reader [but] I think I read more slowly than I used to. This is partly to savour every word. The way a sentence sounds to my ear is so important to me in the whole reading experience, and I always want to get it all – like when you read poetry.”

On one hand, I am an impatient reader, on the other though… it can take a while to read a title.

The Sydney Writers Festival 2023 program was published this evening, and features a star studded line-up of Australian and international speakers. Among them are former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Sydney author Tracey Lien, Tasmasian writer Robbie Arnott, and Fiona McFarlane.

Overseas speakers include Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka, winner of the 2022 Booker Prize, and British author Bernardine Evaristo, who will be one of the opening night address speakers. Australian author Richard Flanagan meanwhile will deliver the closing night address.

The festival — which runs from Monday 22 May, to Sunday 28 May 2023 — will take place at a number of locations around Sydney, including Carriageworks, the State Library of NSW, Penrith City Library, Sydney Town Hall, and PHIVE, Parramatta, to name a handful.

The 2023 International Booker Prize longlist was unveiled yesterday, and features eleven novels published internationally, which have been translated into English.

The 2023 judges are looking for the best work of international fiction translated into English, selected from entries published in the UK or Ireland between May 1, 2022 and April 30, 2023. The books, authors and translators the prize celebrates offer readers a window onto the world and the opportunity to experience the lives of people from different cultures.

French author Maryse Condé, at age 89, becomes the oldest person to be named on the Booker International longlist, with her novel The Gospel According to the New World.

Works by a film director, four poets, two former security guards, and a writer who had declared himself “dead” (curious), are also included. The shortlist will be announced on Tuesday 18 April 2023.

Filippo Bernardini, also known as the Spine Collector, was arrested in early 2022, after stealing the manuscripts of numerous high profile authors. Bernardini managed to convince his victims — who included Sally Rooney and Margaret Atwood — to send the manuscripts of their latest novels to him, instead of their publisher.

Through recently filed court papers however, Bernardini has apologised for his actions, and says he merely wished to “cherish” the works of the authors he swindled, before their novels were published:

Former Simon & Schuster staffer Filippo Bernardini has said stole more than 1,000 unpublished manuscripts because he wanted to read books before they hit stores. In court papers published on Friday (March 10th), Bernardini apologised for his crime but claimed he did it so he could dive into the stories before they were available to the general public. “I never leaked these manuscripts. I wanted to keep them closely to my chest and be one of the fewest to cherish them before anyone else, before they ended up in bookshops,” he wrote.

If you felt like a fish out of water during your school days, spare a thought for seventeen year old Lucy. She’s just been enrolled at Drake’s College, a school nurturing the magical talent of young people, located in Perth, Western Australia. But there’s only one thing: Lucy’s not so sure she’s possessed of any magical talent.

That’s not the end of it though. Somehow Drake’s believes Lucy is the “chosen one”. They see her as a prodigy, one who will defeat the forces of evil. Again, Lucy has her doubts about that idea as well. On the other hand, she has a fearsome reputation for being sarcastic and cynical. Perhaps those attributes will suffice instead?

But Lucy has other things to think about, at this place she never knew existed until walking through the gates. One of them is her new friend, Jack, a teacher’s assistant at Drake’s, who seems to know far more than what’s printed on the curriculum. Then there’s all sorts of strange incidents occurring on the school’s grounds.

It strikes Lucy as slightly odd that these weird, often frightening happenings, seemed to start around the time she arrived at Drake’s. As if that’s not enough, Lucy discovers she has become pregnant. Taking on the forces of evil could be a walk in the park, compared to having explain her pregnancy to her mother.

This is the premise of The Not So Chosen One, published by Text Publishing, July 2022, debut young adult fantasy fiction by Kate Emery, a Perth based journalist and writer. This is a title that will delight anyone who’s previously lamented the absence of a Hogwarts like school of magic in Australia.

While the ending of The Not So Chosen One has polarised readers, some people believe a sequel may be the result. That could well happen, considering Emery’s debut has been named on the shortlist of the 2023 Aurealis Awards, in the Best Fantasy Novel category. The Aurealis Awards recognise the work of Australian science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers.

Presently about fourteen percent of Australians do not own a smartphone, while some seventeen percent do not use social media. So although a minority, they don’t exactly — no pun intended — stand in isolation. Twenty-something Sydneysider Reagan Carsen is a person who resides in both camps, in Dark Mode, published by Ultimo Press, March 2023, the debut novel of Sydney based Canadian Australian author, Ashley Kalagian Blunt.

When it comes to smartphones and social media though, Reagan seems like an unlikely holdout. But it’s not just smartphones and social media she shuns. Reagan has no online presence whatsoever. As the owner of the Voodoo Lily Garden Centre, a small business, a smartphone would surely be a must. As would a social media presence. After all, is not Instagram a pathway to fortune untold? And if there’s one thing Voodoo Lily needs right now, it’s a little good fortune.

But Reagan’s reluctance to embrace these technologies, stems from a fear of them. Reagan is deliberately keeping herself out the way of the all-seeing, and invasive, internet. Ever since being stalked as a teenager, Reagan has understandably gone all out to shield herself from the digital domain. But when Reagan stumbles upon the mutilated body of women while running one morning, she immediately fears the worst.

The murdered woman, lying in alley not far from where Reagan lives, looks almost exactly like her. Reagan sees this as a veiled threat, and a message that her old stalker has found her. In her trepidation, she refuses to even tell the police of her gruesome discovery, petrified she will expose herself. Instead she turns to a friend, Min, an investigator, and true crime writer, for help.

But this turns out only to be the beginning. There are more murders. To Reagan’s mind the victims all resemble her. But still she continues her quest for answers. Having avoided the internet for so long, Reagan now finds herself venturing into its darkest recesses. But that’s not all. Having struck up some new friendships, the usually guarded Reagan may have become a little too trusting, perhaps making herself vulnerable.

Although Dark Mode is her first novel, Kalagian Blunt is an accomplished writer. In 2018 she wrote My Name Is Revenge, a collection of short stories and essays. She followed this up in 2020 with her memoir How to Be Australian. Her work has also featured in Kill Your Darlings, The Sydney Morning Herald, and Overland. When not writing, Kalagian Blunt teaches creative writing, and also mentors emerging authors.