Red Rocket, a film by Sean Baker
22 December 2021
Red Rocket (trailer), is the latest feature of American independent filmmaker Sean Baker. Mikey (Simon Rex) is a down on his luck former porn actor in search of a new lease of life, though his previous line of work makes looking for a new job a little tricky. Casting for Red Rocket was unconventional to say the least, with the director sometimes approaching people on the street, asking if they’d like to take part.
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Martha Wells wins best novel prize in 2021 Hugo Awards
22 December 2021
Network Effect, by American speculative fiction author Martha Wells, won the best novel in the Hugo Awards for 2021. Established in 1953, the Hugos celebrate the best science fiction and fantasy written works – across a number of categories – of the past twelve months.
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Martha Wells, novels, science fiction
Open Water, by Caleb Azumah Nelson
22 December 2021
Two people meet in a bar in London. Both are young, both are Black British, and both are artists. She is a dancer, he a photographer. The attraction is instant, and as the two spend ever more time together, their bond only grows. They also connect through shared experiences as people of colour in a place where they are in a minority. Although both were awarded scholarships to private British schools, both felt excluded, and unable to completely fit in.
Despite the passionate love they discover in each other, he hides a trauma, one he struggles to resolve. Partly, perhaps, because he still encounters the violence and fear he previously endured. Every day the two come face to face with racism and vilification on the streets of London. But his struggle, one he cannot articulate even to her, causes him to withdraw, to hide behind silence. She is devastated by the apparent rejection, left reeling and confused.
Open Water (published by Penguin Books Australia, February 2021) is the debut novel of London based British-Ghanaian author and photographer Caleb Azumah Nelson. Written in the second person, with prose that is sometimes described as poetic, Open Water is perhaps more of novella, weighing in at about one-hundred and sixty pages. But don’t make the mistake of thinking the word count detracts from the story’s impact.
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Nine Days, a film by Edson Oda
21 December 2021
In Nine Days (trailer), the first feature of Japanese Brazilian filmmaker Edson Oda, a group of people who take form as unborn souls, vie for the chance to live a life on Earth. Not only must the candidates prove their worthiness, they must wait for a vacancy to open up, in other words, the death of someone else. If they missed out on being selected, they face certain destruction.
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Melbourne Writers Festival summer reading guide
21 December 2021
Wild Abandon by Emily Bitto, Scary Monsters by Michelle de Kretser, Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead, and Seven and a Half by Christos Tsiolkas, are among inclusions on my to-be-read list, and the Melbourne Writers Festival summer reading guide.
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Adam Thompson sells his wine rack and other stories
20 December 2021
Good Weekend magazine asked nine Australian novelists to write about the year that has been. Tasmanian author Adam Thompson, whose debut book Born Into This, was published this year, wrote about selling his now disused wine-rack, a story that resonated with me, as I too no longer possess one.
It took two years to get rid of all the grog – and the lovely wine rack. I kept it close at hand to remind myself that it’s my choice not to drink, because I could, at any moment, if I wanted. I don’t need that reminder any more. And I’ll try to forget the anniversary, too. Let it all slip by, content in the knowledge that I’ve moved on.
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Adam Thompson, Australian literature
Minds Shine Bright writing competition 2022
20 December 2021
Entries are open for the Minds Shine Bright writing competition, until Monday 28 February, 2022. An initiative created by Melbourne based Australian writer and film maker Amanda Scotney, Minds Shine Bright seeks to encourage excellence in writing, particularly fiction. If you’re a writer of fiction, poetry, or script-writing, looking for some recognition, and a financial incentive, this may be the opportunity you’re looking for.
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Australian literature, fiction, writing
A good writer never blames their apps for a lack of productivity
18 December 2021
Can distraction-free devices change the way we write, asks Julian Lucas, writing for the New Yorker. A writing app, a word processor, one that cuts out the clutter, menu bars, formatting options, font choices, and all the impedimenta that might distract us: would we be more productive as writers if that were the case?
But focus mode on an everything device is a meditation room in a casino. What good is it to separate writing from editing, formatting, and cluttered interfaces if you can’t separate it from the Internet? Even a disconnected computer offers plenty of opportunities for distraction: old photographs, downloaded music, or, most treacherous of all, one’s own research. And so, just as savvy entrepreneurs have resuscitated the “dumb” phone as a premium single-tasking communication device, it was perhaps inevitable that someone would revive the stand-alone word processor.
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Beautiful Country, by Qian Julie Wang
18 December 2021
Mei Guo is what Qian Julie Wang’s parents called America, before the family left their native China to start new lives in what they believed to be the beautiful country. Once on the ground though, what they saw and experienced was anything but beautiful. Wang’s parents, who in China held down academic careers, found themselves working in below minimum wage jobs, earning barely enough money to keep a roof over their heads.
Beautiful Country (published by Penguin Books Australia, September 2021) is a no holds barred account of the childhood of New York litigator Qian Julie Wang, as an undocumented immigrant. Here Wang recounts contending with racism, poverty, and loneliness, among other things, while maintaining the façade the family’s papers were in order, she was of American birth, and they were residing legally in the beautiful country.
It may be a cliché to go and say the grass is not greener on the other side, at least not at first, but from this life on the run, Wang rose above every obstacle before her. She studied law while working four part time jobs, and now manages an organisation that advocates for education and civil rights. As a footnote, Wang composed her memoir on a smartphone during her commute to and from work, a detail the time-poor authors among us will find notable.
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The difference between introversion and social anxiety
17 December 2021
Kylie Maddox Pidgeon is a Sydney based psychologist, who is also an introvert. The world needs more psychologists who are introverts, because there are some psychologists who are extraverts but appear to have little real-world understanding of introverts. To put it mildly. One once told me I needed to be more outgoing, because I seemed to be too reserved. Thanks for that.
Kylie is a psychologist, academic and introvert. I met Kylie playing netball in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales and I wouldn’t have guessed she was an introvert. She loves socialising and sparks with energy during conversation, but she says if she overdoes it, she feels drained and can experience headaches.
My favourite analogy when explaining introversion is to suggest introverts have a constantly playing media device in their minds. There’s times we’re able to turn down the volume, say for the first hour or two of a social gathering, but as time passes the volume from our in-built media device begin increasing, as the ceaseless thoughts cascading through our minds begin competing for attention. At some point we need to get away, to somewhere quiet, to make sense of this almost subconscious brainstorming.
But instead of being recognised as an introvert, our sometimes reserved demeanour can be mistaken for social anxiety. Although something else entirely, there is a link between introversion and social anxiety, but as Maddox Pidgeon points out, there is a key difference. Social anxiety occurs when a person is worried about what others will think of them. That’s generally not the case for introverts. If they’ve had enough of being at a party and want to leave, they won’t be concerned at what anyone thinks.
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