Showing all posts about writing
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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fiction, Justin Smith, TBR list, writing
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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Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowships 2022
28 January 2022
The Wheeler Centre, in conjunction with The Readings Foundation, are offering twenty-one fellowships to emerging writers, and a playwright. Recipients, known as Hot Desk fellows, will receive a thousand dollar stipend, and the use of a workspace at the Melbourne based Wheeler Centre for ten weeks, to work on their writing projects.
Hot Desk fellows will also have the opportunity to meet, network and work with the Wheeler Centre’s resident organisations including Writers Victoria, Emerging Writers’ Festival, Australian Poetry, Express Media, Small Press Network and the Melbourne Writers Festival. In addition, Hot Desk Fellowships introduce emerging writers and their work to the public – we will feature all our writers and their projects on our website, as well as in a special Hot Desk Edition of The Next Big Thing series.
Applications for the fellowships are open now until Monday 28 February 2022.
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2022 Text Prize entries open
26 January 2022
Entries for the 2022 Text Prize, an award for the best unpublished manuscript by young adult and children’s writers, are open until Monday 21 February 2022.
Works of fiction and non-fiction from authors both published and unpublished can be submitted, with the winner receiving a publishing contract with Melbourne based publisher Text Publishing, and a ten-thousand dollar advance against royalties.
Applications are also open for the Steph Bowe Mentorship for Young Writers, a Text Publishing initiative to encourage the work of writers under the age of twenty-five. The mentorship honours the work of late Australian young adult author and blogger Steph Bowe, who died in 2020.
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literature, Steph Bowe, writing
What do Australian authors earn? Not a lot
24 January 2022
Writing can best be described as a labour of love, if the results of the most recent Australian Society of Authors (ASA) member survey is anything to go by. If you plan to be in it for the money, think again. If the minimum annual wage in Australia is about forty thousand dollars, most writers are making less than half of that.
- 81% earned less than $15,000 in the last financial year
- 58% of the total respondents earned between $0 and $1,999 from their creative practice
- 58% of full-time writers/illustrators reported earning less than $15,000
- 25% [of full-time writers/illustrators reported] earning between $0 and $1,999
Authors can apply to a number of agencies for funding, though there isn’t a whole of money available to begin with, and the process can be best described as competitive. The survey found over fifty percent of authors had not applied to bodies such as the Australia Council, or the Copyright Agency, since the beginning of January 2020.
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Burnt Out by Victoria Brookman
21 January 2022
Writing that difficult second novel, it might be what many authors consider to be a good problem. Their debut novel has been published, an epic achievement, and now they have the opportunity to write another book. What aspiring novelist wouldn’t want to be in such a situation?
Cali, an author residing in the NSW Blue Mountains may be such a person, in Burnt Out (published by HarperCollins Publishers, January 2022) the debut novel of Australian author Victoria Brookman. Cali’s struggling to write her second novel, in fact she was meant to have turned in the manuscript long ago. In reality she hasn’t even started work on it. But for the moment that’s the least of her worries.
Her home has been destroyed by a bush fire, likewise her possessions, and to top it off her husband has left her. But Cali sees an opportunity amid the turmoil. Speaking to a television news crew, she tells them her manuscript was also incinerated, and goes onto chide politicians and well-off Australians for their inaction in response to the devastating bush fires. Her words immediately strike a chord nationwide.
After seeing her on-air rant, a billionaire offers her a place to stay in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, so she can “re-write” the novel. But will Cali overcome her second book syndrome, or will she find herself overwhelmed by the lies she keep telling everyone, including herself?
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fiction, TBR list, Victoria Brookman, writing
To write your next novel, you must forget your last one
21 January 2022
Sara Freeman, writing for Granta Magazine, with some sage advice for authors embarking on the writing of their next novel, to write your next novel, you must forget your last one:
There’s a kind of necessary amnesia that sets in after you finish writing a novel. Like childbirth, you must forget; the future requires it of you. If you remembered, really remembered, then surely you wouldn’t do it again. Or perhaps it’s that the experience itself of writing a novel is a kind of sustained forgetting, a controlled fugue.
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Tips for getting published and finding a literary agent
19 January 2022
Sydney based literary agent Jacinta Di Mase talks with Dani Vee and Adrian Beck on the Publishing Insider podcast, and shares tips and advice to prospective authors for finding a literary agent, and getting work published.
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Sydney Muslim Writers’ Festival 2022
14 January 2022
The inaugural Sydney Muslim Writers’ Festival takes place over three days, with an opening night on Thursday 3 February 2022, a festival day on Saturday 12 February, and writing workshops on Sunday 13 February. Follow the Festival’s Instagram page for more information.
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