Kathy Lette: impale your enemies on the end of your pen

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Kathy Lette: impale your enemies on the end of your pen

20 June 2022

Australian born London based author Kathy Lette co-wrote her first book, Puberty Blues, a proto-feminist, coming of age novel in 1979, with Gabrielle Carey.

The book sent shockwaves through Australian society at the time, with, among other things, gritty depictions of adolescent sex. Puberty Blues was adapted to film by Australian filmmaker Bruce Beresford in 1981, and later in 2012, made into a TV series.

Lette has authored twelve books since Puberty Blues, and in a recent piece for the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote about the joys of putting pen to paper:

So, wannabe authors, if you have a story to tell, pick up your pen and get scribbling. It’s worth it for the poetic justice alone: impaling enemies on the end of your pen is so satisfying. Best of all, most people only get to have the last word on their epitaph. But writers get to have the final say with every novel: The End.

Upswell: the author publisher relationship is one of trust

18 June 2022

A statement from Terri-ann White of Upswell, publisher of Australian author John Hughes novel The Dogs, made in the wake of additional allegations of plagiarism by Guardian Australia:

I have published many writers who use collage and bricolage and other approaches to weaving in other voices and materials to their own work. All of them have acknowledged their sources within the book, usually in a listing of precisely where these borrowings come from. I should have pushed John Hughes harder on his lack of the standard mode of book acknowledgements where any credits to other writers (with permissions or otherwise), and the thanks to those nearest and dearest, are held. I regret that now, as you might expect.

I think the sympathy of most people lies with Upswell. As White points out, the relationship between writer and publisher is one of trust. A publisher cannot be expected to check every last sentence in a manuscript to ensure there are no duplications between it and another work. It is the author’s obligation to declare such borrowings, and is something just about all do.

On the other hand, it is also unrealistic to expect works to be completely devoid of references to other titles. For example, I could understand how a sentence — perhaps read in a book years ago — might linger in the mind of a writer to the point they come to think of it as theirs. And while I’m not sure many people would expect to see upwards of sixty instances of such borrowings in a single book, authors referencing each other’s work is, and always has been, intrinsic to writing.

John Hughes accused of more instances of plagiarism

16 June 2022

Allegations of further instances of plagiarism have been levelled against Australian author John Hughes, following a Guardian Australia investigation which identified almost sixty similarities between Hughes’ 2021 novel The Dogs, and a 1985 book, The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich.

Although Hughes apologised, describing his use of the phrases and passages from Alexievich’s title as inadvertent, another probe has found The Dogs — which has since been withdrawn from the longlist of this year’s Miles Franklin literary award — apparently contains sentences drawn from other notable literary works, including The Great Gatsby and Anna Karenina.

It has since been revealed that The Dogs also contains passages which are similar to books including The Great Gatsby, Anna Karenina and All Quiet on the Western Front. Guardian Australia has cross-referenced all the similarities between Hughes’ work and those classic texts and found some cases in which whole sentences were identical or where just one word had changed.

Some people might have been prepared to give Hughes the benefit of the doubt after he apologised for using Alexievich’s work, given the explanation he offered seemed some what plausible. Unfortunately it is difficult to look passed these latest allegations. I’d been looking forward to reading The Dogs, as I do any title on the Miles Franklin longlist.

The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner a memoir by Grace Tame

14 June 2022

The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner is a memoir by activist, advocate for survivors of sexual assault, and former Australian of the Year, Grace Tame, being published by Pan Macmillan Australia in September 2022.

From a young age, her life was defined by uncertainty – by trauma and strength, sadness and hope, terrible lows and wondrous highs. As a teenager she found the courage to speak up after experiencing awful and ongoing child sexual abuse. This fight to find her voice would not be her last. In 2021 Grace stepped squarely into the public eye as the Australian of the Year, and was the catalyst for a tidal wave of conversation and action. Australians from all walks of life were inspired and moved by her fire and passion. Here she was using her voice, and encouraging others to use theirs too.

Tame is also a talented artist, having illustrated the artwork for the cover of her book, “using a cheapo $1 ballpoint pen from Woolies,” and in the past has accepted commissions from John Cleese, and Martin Gore of Depeche Mode.

Be sure to read the small print of writing competitions

14 June 2022

Writing contests are a great way for an emerging writer to get their work in front of a wider audience, possibly take home a modest cash prize, and maybe even pick up a publishing deal.

But carefully reading the terms and conditions each time you submit your work to one is essential, as you may end up signing away far more than you realise, when ticking the “I have read and understood the terms and conditions of entry.”

For example, some competitions place restrictions on your ability to submit your entry to other competitions, some require the first option to publish the entries of the winners and runners-up, and some unscrupulous players may even require you to assign your copyright to them.

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Robert Lukins speaks with Corrie Perkin about Loveland

14 June 2022

Melbourne based Australian novelist Robert Lukins, speaks with Corrie Perkin on her Spotify podcast The Book Pod, about his recent book Loveland, a title, incidentally, I finished reading a few days ago.

When a man writes women in domestic noir and gets it so right he’s one to watch. Corrie chats to Melbourne writer Robert Lukins about his long and winding road to to getting Loveland published, and also how he managed to inhabit his, female characters with such clarity.

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2022 Australian Book Industry Awards Winners

10 June 2022

Love & Virtue by Diana Reid won Book of the Year, and Literary Fiction Book of the Year, in the 2022 Australian Book Industry Awards. In other categories, Before You Knew My Name, by Jacqueline Bublitz, won General Fiction Book of the Year, while the Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year went to Amani Haydar for The Mother Wound.

Books + Publishing have posted a full list of ABIA 2022 winners across all award categories.

John Hughes plagiarised Svetlana Alexievich without realising

9 June 2022

A Guardian Australia investigation has turned up numerous similarities — fifty-eight in fact — between The Dogs, the 2021 novel by Australian author John Hughes, and The Unwomanly Face of War, a 1985 non-fiction title, written by Belarusian journalist and Nobel laureate, Svetlana Alexievich.

After uncovering some similarities between the books, Guardian Australia applied document comparison software to both texts, which revealed 58 similarities and some identical sentences. Guardian Australia also found conceptual similarities between incidents described in the books, including the central scene from which The Dogs takes its title.

Yes, there’s a lot of published fiction in the world. Many authors, just about all I’d think, are influenced to some degree by the work of other writers. From time to time then, some comparisons may be drawn between two quite different titles, and one or two minor overlaps may also be observed. But fifty-eight instances? That’s quite a stretch.

In a statement to Guardian Australia Hughes offered an apology, saying he’d started writing The Dogs — which has also been included on this year’s Miles Franklin longlist — fifteen years ago. Part of this process involved talking to his Ukrainian grandparents, whose accounts of the Second World War where similar to some of the testimonies Alexievich gathered while writing her book.

He had first read The Unwomanly Face of War when it came out in English in 2017, he said, and had used it to teach creative writing students about voice, acknowledging Alexievich as the source. “I typed up the passages I wanted to use and have not returned to the book itself since,” he said. “At some point soon after I must have added them to the transcripts I’d made of interviews with my grandparents and over the years and … [had] come to think of them as my own.”

Update: a joint statement from Hughes and his publisher Upswell in response to the Guardian Australia article.

QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection

9 June 2022

QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection, published by the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), is not only a catalogue for the exhibition of the same name running until Sunday 21 August 2022 in Melbourne, but also a collection of LGBTQIA+ stories and histories, edited by Ted Gott, Angela Hesson, Myles Russell-Cook, Meg Slater, and Pip Wallis.

More than 60 essays from authors with comprehensive knowledge of the historical and contemporary subjects encompassed by the NGV’s QUEER project are presented along side stunning reproductions of more than 200 works from the NGV collection, either by queer artists or engaging with queer issues. The essays in QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection explore the history of LGBTQ+ activism; the creation of queer spaces and communities; queerness as an artistic strategy; the expression of love, desire and sensuality; queer aesthetics; and the concepts of camp and the fantastic.

2022 Text Prize shortlist for unpublished manuscripts

9 June 2022

Seven middle-grade and young adult writers have been named on the 2022 Text Prize shortlist for unpublished manuscripts.

Bellamy Jones and the Lost Treeheart, by Emily Beck
How to be Normal by, Ange Crawford
One Thing You Can Feel, by Robbie Taylor Hunt
Year of the Dog, by Kate McCabe
Finding Liminas: The Sudden Tree, by Bria McCarthy
The Collector of Gifts, by Jamie Ramjan
Let’s Never Speak of this Again, by Megan Williams

The winner of the 2022 Text Prize, along with the recipient of the Steph Bowe Mentorship for Young Writers, will be named in late June.

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Australian literature, literary awards

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