Vale Ken West, Big Day Out co-founder
9 April 2022
Ken West, co-founder of Australian music festival, the Big Day Out, died on Thurday 7 April 2022, aged 64. West established the festival in 1992 with Vivian Lees. The first event was a one show only affair, held at the iconic Hordern Pavilion in inner Sydney, and included Nirvana on the lineup. The event went onto play in other Australian capital cities, and Auckland, New Zealand, becoming an annual summer fixture.
The last Big Day Out took place in 2014. Soon after, American concert promoter and events management company C3 Presents took full ownership of the event, and cancelled the scheduled 2015 shows. While they intended to bring the Big Day Out back at some point, so far there has been no word as to when this might happen.
Update: Yeah, actually I put the bloody thing on… former Triple J host, writer, and TV producer, Marieke Hardy recounts a meeting with Ken West after one of the Melbourne Big Day Out shows in the late-nineties.
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New Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series books on the way
9 April 2022
Big news for fans of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series of books: another three novels are on the way. Karin Smirnoff will continue the work of the late Swedish journalist and writer Stieg Larsson who created the original Millennium novel series, and the character of Lisbeth Salander, in 2002.
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The 2021 Aurealis Awards shortlist
9 April 2022
The Aurealis Awards have been celebrating the work of Australian science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers since 1995, and the shortlist for the 2021 awards was announced last week.
Titles have been nominated in fifteen categories: Best Graphic Novel / Illustrated Work, Best Young Adult Short Story, Best Horror Short Story, Best Horror Novella, Best Fantasy Short Story, Best Fantasy Novella, Best Science Fiction Short Story, Best Science Fiction Novella, Best Collection, Best Anthology, Best Young Adult Novel, Best Fantasy Novel, Best Horror Novel, Best Science Fiction Novel, Best Children’s Fiction, plus the Sara Douglass Book Series Award.
The winners will be named on Saturday evening, 28 May 2022, at the The Hellenic Club in Canberra.
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The 2022 International Booker Prize shortlist
8 April 2022
The 2022 International Booker Prize shortlist was announced yesterday, and includes the following six titles:
- Heaven, by Mieko Kawakami
- Elena Knows, by Claudia Piñeiro
- A New Name: Septology VI-VII, by Jon Fosse
- Tomb of Sand, by Geetanjali Shree
- The Books of Jacob, by Olga Tokarczuk
- Cursed Bunny, by Bora Chung
The first thing that grabbed me when looking at the shortlisted titles was the variation in their size. For instance Mieko Kawakami’s Heaven is about 192 pages in length, while The Books of Jacob, by Olga Tokarczuk, weighs in at some 990 pages.
That’s a little bit of reading for those who’d like to familiarise themselves with the six works, before the winner is named on Thursday 26 May 2022.
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#IndieApril and ways to support writers everywhere
7 April 2022
While there may not be a whole lot of Australian government support for authors in this part of the world, as book readers there are things we can do. Jake Uniacke posted a few #IndieApril suggestions on Twitter, but these are ideas that can be acted upon at anytime of the year.
- Review their work. Goodreads, Amazon, and Google are good places to start.
- Share their work. Spread the word on your social media channels, Twitter, Facebook, BookTok, and Bookstagram.
- Buy their books. Through the author’s website if possible, or an indie bookshop, any bookshop really.
- Interact with their content. Instagram stories, Twitter polls, and Q&A sessions, are a few suggestions.
Joe Walters, writing for Independent Book Review, also offers a number of suggestions.
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Government support for Australian writers declines
7 April 2022
The Australian federal budget was handed down last week, but there was little in it for writers. Funding for the arts sector is being reduced by almost twenty-percent, with the RISE Fund, which was established to support the sector during the pandemic, scheduled to be phased out.
Unlike the performing arts, which benefit from a dedicated funding stream inside the Australia Council, literature has enjoys very little federal support. In 2020-21, the Australia Council gave out just $4.7 million in grant funding to literature – 2.4% of the total funding pool last year. In contrast, the major performing arts organisations received $120 million.
The funding situation serves to draw attention to just how little writers earn. Sydney based author Charlotte Wood, speaking at a recent parliamentary hearing, set things out in pretty blunt terms:
Wood told a House of Representatives inquiry into Australia’s cultural sector that “writers themselves are in absolutely dire economic difficulty”. She cited figures that literary writers’ annual income from their books was just $4,000 a year.
Four thousand dollars a year? What is anyone meant to conclude from that? Writing is indeed poorly looked upon in Australia.
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Sydney Film Festival announces first 22 films for 2022
6 April 2022
The Sydney Film Festival has unveiled the first twenty-two movies that will be featured at this year’s event. Among their number is The Passengers of the Night (Les passagers de la nuit), directed by French filmmaker Mikhaël Hers, and starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, as a woman trying to get her life back on track.
Election night, 1981. Socialist François Mitterrand has been declared president and there are hopeful celebrations across Paris. But it is not a happy night for Elisabeth (Gainsbourg, Antichrist), whose marriage has come to an unexpected end. She must find the means to support herself and two teenaged children. When she lucks upon a job on her favourite talkback radio show, she meets Talulah (Noée Abita, Slalom, SFF 2021), a charismatic young woman who is struggling, and invites her home. Free-spirit Talulah has a lasting impact, inspiring confidence in each of the family members.
I couldn’t find a trailer, but did locate a clip of this scene from the film.
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Elon Musk pushes for Twitter free speech and edit button
6 April 2022
Space X, and Tesla CEO, Elon Musk recently bought a nine percent stock holding in social networking service Twitter, and has been given a seat on their board of directors. Concerns about free speech on the platform may have been behind the move:
On March 25, Musk posted a Twitter poll, writing, “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?”
Musk is also keen to for users to have the ability to edit tweets, a feature many people have been repeatedly asking for. Twitter say they are currently testing an edit button, which will soon be available for all members.
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Little Tornadoes, screenplay co-written by Christos Tsiolkas
6 April 2022
Australian novelist Christos Tsiolkas, author of Seven and a Half, teamed up with Melbourne based filmmaker Aaron Wilson to write the screenplay for Little Tornadoes, trailer, which premiered at last year’s Melbourne International Film Festival:
Introverted* Leo is a steelworker at his small town’s local plant. After his wife abandons him without explanation, leaving him to care for their two young children, he is bereft – barely able to cook a decent meal or keep the household running. So when a recently-arrived Italian colleague suggests that his sister, Maria, act as surrogate homemaker, Leo reluctantly accepts. But can one woman’s warm, nurturing presence fill the void left by another, and can Leo yield to the winds of change?
Little Tornadoes is set in 1971, and was filmed in Tocumwal, in New South Wales, where Wilson grew up. In a voiceover in the trailer, one of the characters utters the words “so long ago, it was a different country.” I’m not sure of the context of her words, but here the film somehow feels more like it was set in 1921 rather than 1971. Little Tornadoes arrives in Australian cinemas on Thursday 12 May 2022.
*Leo’s either an introvert, or he’s reserved. You cannot be introverted, just like you cannot be called blonded if you have blond hair, right? Pedantic I know…
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Aaron Wilson, Christos Tsiolkas, film, trailer
Where the Crawdads Sing tops Dymocks Top 101 books 2022 poll
5 April 2022
Where the Crawdads Sing, by American novelist Delia Owens, has emerged as the winner of the Dymocks Top 101 books 2022 poll. A film adaptation, directed by Olivia Newman, will show in Australian cinemas from Thursday 14 July 2022, by the looks of things.
Also among the top ten titles voted for in the Australian bookshop’s poll, are The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams, and The Happiest Man on Earth, by Eddie Jaku.
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