The National Pleasure Audit
4 February 2022
The National Pleasure Audit is presently open to Australians aged eighteen and over. Conducted by Dr Desirée Kozlowski, a researcher at Southern Cross University, the audit aims to find out what brings joy — by whatever means — to people. Participation is anonymous, so anything goes, though you can submit an email address if you wish to be sent the results of the audit.
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Words in Progress March 2022, hosted by Declan Fry
2 February 2022
Australian writer and poet Declan Fry hosts a panel discussion with Tara June Winch, Charmaine Papertalk Green, Claire G. Coleman, about their writing processes, on Sunday 20 March 2022, from 4:15PM until 5:15PM.
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ASA pre-budget submission hopes to boost investment in Australian literature
2 February 2022
It’s incredible to believe that Federal Government investment in Australian literature has declined by forty percent in the last ten years. It is something the Australian Society of Authors (ASA) hopes to redress in a pre-budget submission to the Australian Treasury. Direct grants to authors, and an increase in public lending rights scheme, are two key areas of interest to the ASA:
- Direct authors’ grants: the development of a Commonwealth Fellowships and Grants program which includes a focus on First Nations storytelling, designed to fuel the talent pipeline and build the creative economy of the future.
- A 20% increase to the Federal Government’s Lending Rights Budget to fund the expansion of the public lending rights (PLR) and educational lending rights (ELR) schemes to include digital formats (ebooks and audiobooks), which would modernise the schemes and reflect the reality of library holdings.
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Australian writing, ebooks, literature
Wordle bought by New York Times
2 February 2022
Word game Wordle, created by Josh Wardle, and hugely popular with — among others — the book-reading posse, plus one or two game developers looking for a piece of the word-game-gone-viral action, has been bought by the New York Times.
Created by a Reddit engineer and launched in October, Wordle gives players just six guesses to determine a five-letter word that changes every day. The soothing daily puzzle has become a hit since its launch, quickly attracting hundreds of thousands, then millions, of players. Social media posts about its game of the day have become ubiquitous, along with screenshots of the game’s distinctive grid.
Update: on the topic of Wordle “copies”, instructions for installing the official real version of the game, rather than an imitation.
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Cooper Not Out, by Justin Smith
1 February 2022
It’s a funny old game cricket, some days a player’s skill sees them soar to heights not seen before, other day’s fortune roundly turns on even the best. Then there’s Roy Cooper, a police sergeant who’s been a member of the rural Australian Penguin Hill Cricket Club for years. He’s never scored a century, nor for that matter, gone much passed double figures.
Nor has he ever taken a wicket, let alone a hat-trick, or a ten wicket haul. But as local schoolgirl Cassie Midwinter discovers, Roy has a claim to fame, one seemingly overlooked by the statistics mad doyens of the game: he has not once been dismissed while playing. After decades at the crease, Roy has never been bowled, stumped, caught, nor run-out.
It is a feat Cassie brings to the attention of a renowned cricket writer known as Don Garrett, who thinks the national men’s cricket team could benefit from Roy’s talents. Australia are being trounced by the West Indies in the 1984 summer test series, and Don sets about bringing Roy’s achievement to the notice of the team selectors, in Cooper Not Out (published by Penguin Books Australia, 18 January 2022), by Melbourne based writer and journalist Justin Smith.
Will the unthinkable happen? Will a life-long club player find himself pacing onto the pitch at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, in a bid to reverse the fortunes of the men’s test team? It might seem like a pipe dream, but as they say, it’s a funny old game. But Roy isn’t the only one with unnoticed accomplishments, and there’s much more to Don, the sports writer, than meets the eye.
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Copyright Agency-UTS New Writer’s Fellowship 2022
31 January 2022
Applications are open for the 2022 Copyright Agency-UTS New Writer’s Fellowship, an initiative co-hosted by the Copyright Agency, and the University of Technology, which aims to assist Australian writers working on their (sometimes difficult) second or third novel. The fellowship helps cover a writer’s living costs for a year, allowing them to focus on their manuscript.
Australian writers are now invited to apply for this residency for 2022. It is well known that completing a second or third book is often difficult. This unique opportunity provides a writer with the financial security to complete a new work, to take creative risks, and to connect with Australia’s leading creative writing program.
Previous recipients include Bri Lee, Fiona Wright, and Christopher Raja. Applications close on Monday 21 February 2022.
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Adelaide Writers’ Week 2022
31 January 2022
Adelaide Writers’ Week is on in the South Australian capital from Saturday 5 March, until Thursday 10 March 2022. Australian and international authors, including Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Lur Alghurabi, Anuk Arudpragasam, Hannah Bent, Trent Dalton, Michelle de Kretser, and Charlotte Wood, are among those participating in person, or online.
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Expounding the reality of climate change through science fiction
31 January 2022
American science-fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2020 novel The Ministry for the Future is set in a world once ravaged by climate change, but slowly on the mend. Yet the inhabitants of this world have not had to merely tolerate weather extremes, but also numerous other significant problems.
His most recent novel, “The Ministry for the Future,” published in October, 2020, during the second wave of the pandemic, centers on the work of a fictional U.N. agency charged with solving climate change. The book combines science, politics, and economics to present a credible best-case scenario for the next few decades. It’s simultaneously heartening and harrowing. By the end of the story, it’s 2053, and carbon levels in the atmosphere have begun to decline. Yet hundreds of millions of people have died or been displaced. Coastlines have been drowned and landscapes have burned. Economies have been disrupted, refugees have flooded the temperate latitudes, and ecoterrorists from stricken countries have launched campaigns of climate revenge.
Perhaps more stories like this — that are both gloomy yet hopeful — might prompt more people to take climate change more seriously?
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Kim Stanley Robinson, science fiction
Joni Mitchell and Neil Young leave Spotify
31 January 2022
Veteran singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell has joined Neil Young in asking Spotify to remove her catalogue from the music streaming service, in response to concerns the company is playing a part in spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines to combat the virus, through some of the podcasts they host, including The Joe Rogan Experience.
On Friday, the singer-songwriter posted a statement, titled “I Stand With Neil Young!”, to her website announcing the decision. “I’ve decided to remove all my music from Spotify. Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives,” Mitchell wrote. “I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue.”
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Joni Mitchell, music, Neil Young
Colm Tóibín appointed as Irish fiction laureate
28 January 2022
Irish novelist and writer Colm Tóibín has been named the new laureate for Irish fiction, a role intended to encourage readers to engage with high quality fiction.
The three-year role is intended to “acknowledge the contribution of fiction writers to Irish artistic and cultural life”, as well as to encourage new writers, and engagement with “high quality Irish fiction”.
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