Miles Allinson and Emily Bitto talk with Michaela Kalowski
13 September 2022
Melbourne based Australian authors Emily Bitto and Miles Allinson discuss their recent novels, Wild Abandon and In Moonland respectively, with Michaela Kalowski, in an interview recorded at this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival.
Having penned two of the past year’s most acclaimed novels, Miles Allinson and Emily Bitto come together to discuss their stories of characters searching for identity and meaning within fractured realities. Miles talks about In Moonland, a family portrait of three generations that stretches from the wild idealism of the 70s to the fragile hopes for the future. Emily sheds light on Wild Abandon, her tale of a lonely outsider who travels from Australia to America’s heartland trying to find his place in a late-capitalist world.
RELATED CONTENT
Australian literature, books, Emily Bitto, Miles Allinson
Ocean heat absorption highest in waters around Antarctica
12 September 2022
While all the world’s oceans are absorbing some degree of heat, and somewhat moderating the rate of global warming, the Southern Ocean, being the waters that generally surround Antarctica, is soaking up the most excess warmth.
Ocean warming buffers the worst impacts of climate change, but it’s not without cost. Sea levels are rising because heat causes water to expand and ice to melt. Marine ecosystems are experiencing unprecedented heat stress, and the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events is changing. Yet, we still don’t know enough about exactly when, where and how ocean warming occurs.
Even if carbon dioxide emissions ceased overnight, it could thousands of years for heat trapped in the oceans to be released again.
RELATED CONTENT
Dystopian stories might sell, but do they change the world?
12 September 2022
Can dystopian stories bring about positive change, or do they dull readers into accepting the grim inevitable? Climate change will destroy the world. Governments will soon control our every thought. And so on. British novelist and critic Olivia Laing suggests stories that are more positive, may bring about — you know — positive outcomes.
We become accustomed to what we once found shocking. The bad future lives inside people’s heads, gathering its own momentum. It seems to me we’ve put too much faith in the inoculatory power of terrifying simulations, rather than realising that for certain viewers they might suggest appetising possibilities, while for others they confirm dread, magnifying the emotions that contribute to paralysis and foreclosing on any more liberating or enlivening alternatives.
This doesn’t mean the world needs more stories with conflict-free plots, rather outcomes that might inspire readers instead of disheartening them.
RELATED CONTENT
ManyBooks fifty-thousand free fiction titles to read
12 September 2022
ManyBooks is an online book resource offering free access to over fifty-thousand titles. That should keep you occupied for a while.
ManyBooks was established in 2004 with the vision to provide an extensive library of books in digital format for free on the Internet. Many of the early eBooks are from the Project Gutenberg archives, which means you will be able to find a lot of classics on the site.
RELATED CONTENT
Cutters End by Margaret Hickey wins 2022 Danger Prize
10 September 2022
Cutters End, by Victorian based author and playwright Margaret Hickey, was named winner of the 2022 Danger Prize for crime and justice writing with an Australian setting, at the Bad Sydney Crime Festival, yesterday evening.
Published by Penguin Books Australia in July 2022, Cutters End has a synopsis that’s sure to draw in fans of crime writing:
New Year’s Eve, 1989. Eighteen-year-old Ingrid Mathers is hitchhiking her way to Alice Springs. Bored, hungover and separated from her friend Joanne, she accepts a lift to the remote town of Cutters End.
July 2021. Detective Sergeant Mark Ariti is seconded to a recently reopened case, one in which he has a personal connection. Three decades ago, a burnt and broken body was discovered in scrub off the Stuart Highway, 300km south of Cutters End. Though ultimately ruled an accidental death, many people — including a high-profile celebrity — are convinced it was murder.
When Mark’s interviews with the witnesses in the old case files go nowhere, he has no choice but to make the long journey up the highway to Cutters End. And with the help of local Senior Constable Jagdeep Kaur, he soon learns that this death isn’t the only unsolved case that hangs over the town…
Incidentally, Cutters End was shortlisted in the Ned Kelly awards for crime writing, the winners of which I’ve also written about today.
RELATED CONTENT
Australian literature, literary awards, Margaret Hickey
The 2022 Ned Kelly Australian crime writing award winners
10 September 2022
The winners of the 2022 Ned Kelly awards for crime writing were announced a couple of weeks ago, with a total of one hundred and thirty-five entries vying for the top spot in four award categories.
The Chase by Candice Fox won Best Crime Fiction, Banquet: The Untold Story of Adelaide’s Family Murders by Debi Marshall won Best True Crime, while Banjawarn by Josh Kemp won Best Debut Crime Fiction.
Going offshore, Toronto, Canada, based author Nita Prose took out the award for Best International Crime Fiction published in Australia, with The Maid.
Named for notorious nineteenth century Australian bushranger and outlaw Ned Kelly, the awards have celebrated the best Australian crime writing since their inception in 1996.
RELATED CONTENT
Australian literature, literary awards, Ned Kelly
London Bridge is down, what happens when the Queen dies?
9 September 2022
“London Bridge is down” is said to be the official code phrase used by British authorities to convey news of the death of the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, in government circles. And now that the Queen has died, a plan called Operation London Bridge, outlining happenings in the hours and days that follow, will be executed.
The prime minister will be woken, if she is not already awake, and civil servants will say “London Bridge is down” on secure lines. From the Foreign Office’s Global Response Centre, at an undisclosed location in the capital, the news will go out to the 15 governments outside the UK where the Queen is also the head of state, and the 36 other nations of the Commonwealth for whom she has served as a symbolic figurehead – a face familiar in dreams and the untidy drawings of a billion schoolchildren – since the dawn of the atomic age.
But before Operation London Bridge plan can be put into effect, Operation Unicorn needs to play out. Operation Unicorn was devised in the event the Queen died in Scotland. As she usually spent three months a year at Balmoral Castle, about eighty kilometres west of Aberdeen, the possibility of her dying there needed to be taken into account.
It is expected her body will be transported from Balmoral to the nearby city of Aberdeen on Friday morning local time. It will then be loaded onto the Royal Train for a journey down Scotland’s east coast to the capital, Edinburgh. Mourners are expected to line the route and kilted soldiers will form guards of honour at stations along the way.
The Queen’s body will lie in state at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, before travelling by train to London. Once the train crosses the Scottish border into England, Operation London Bridge will commence.
RELATED CONTENT
Britain, politics, Queen Elizabeth
Introverts prefer foods that are not so spicy says Kurzgesagt
9 September 2022
Regardless of the subject matter the Kurzgesagt videos are never dull. Their latest takes on the question of why people are lonely, and offers some constructive solutions. One initiative are the newly launched Kurzgesagt Meetups… where likeminded Kurzgesagt followers across the world, who are aged eighteen or over, can arrange gatherings locally.
Extraversion and introversion also features in the discussion, where I learnt introverts are generally not fans of spicy food. I’d not thought about that before. You learn something new everyday.
RELATED CONTENT
introversion, personality, psychology, video
Alice Pung named chair of judges for the 2023 Stella Prize
9 September 2022
Melbourne based author and lawyer Alice Pung was named chair of judges for the 2023 Stella Prize last month. The prize, which recognises the work of women and non-binary writers, is one of Australia’s most prestigious literary awards.
I recently read Pung’s 2021 novel One Hundred Days, which was shortlisted in both the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award, and the 2022 Australian Book Industry Awards. The story centres on sixteen year Kuruna, and her fraught — to put it mildly — relationship with her overbearing mother, which becomes all the more strained after Kuruna falls pregnant. Not an easy read, if I’m honest.
On the subject of the 2023 Stella Prize, entries are presently being accepted until Wednesday 12 October 2022.
RELATED CONTENT
Alice Pung, Australian literature, books, literary awards
The Age Book of the Year prize 2022 winners announced
9 September 2022
In Moonland by Melbourne based Australian author Miles Allinson, which I’ve written about previously, has won the fiction prize in The Age Book of the Year prize 2022.
Meanwhile Leaping into Waterfalls by Sydney based writer and literary critic Bernadette Brennan — a biography of late Australian short story writer and novelist Gillian Mears — has taken out the award for non-fiction.
The winners of the prize, which was re-booted last year after a nine year hiatus, were announced on the opening night of the Melbourne Writers Festival.
The Dinny O’Hearn Poetry Prize was in the past awarded to works of — you guessed it — poetry, but this doesn’t appear to have been presented since 2012.
RELATED CONTENT
Australian literature, Bernadette Brennan, books, literary awards, Miles Allinson