Showing all posts about writing
EnQueer Sydney Queer Writers’ Festival
5 November 2021
A late item of news to hand… the EnQueer Sydney Queer Writers’ Festival is on now until tomorrow, taking place in Sydney and online. Read more about the event here:
[EnQueer] aims to bring together people of all genders, sexualities, ethnicities, disabilities, faiths, cultures, and backgrounds at a literary forum which appreciates and acknowledges the power of diversity. Stories and experiences of people with diverse backgrounds truly reflect modern Australian values and the festival seeks to bring them to the fore.
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Deep Wheel Orcadia, by Harry Josephine Giles
5 November 2021
Deep Wheel Orcadia (published by Pan Macmillan, October 2021), written by Leith based Scottish writer and performer Harry Josephine Giles, is a science fiction story with a difference. For one, it is written in the Orkney language, and is said to be the first full-length book published in the dialect in fifty years. And then there’s the poetic verse with which the story is told.
The setting is a space station called Deep Wheel Orcadia. The station has seen better days, but it continues to function, as it trundles its way through space. To Deep Wheel comes Astrid. She’s an art student on her way home, having recently finished schooling on Mars. She’s also searching for inspiration, but is a space station, somewhere in the interstellar voids, the place to be looking?
But it is here Astrid meets Darling. Darling cannot find acceptance, and is looking for somewhere to hide. Perhaps Deep Wheel is the perfect place for her to be? Deep Wheel Orcadia, with its poems written in Orkney, and translated into English lower down the page, has the makings of an incredible story. I’m also intrigued by the enigmatic space station. I’d like to visit. Anyone know how I might get there?
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fiction, Harry Josephine Giles, TBR list, writing
Damon Galgut’s The Promise wins Booker Prize
4 November 2021
South African author Damon Galgut has been named the winner of this year’s Booker Prize, with his book The Promise. After the shortlist was announced in mid-September it was clear the judges had their work cut out in selecting a winner. Maya Jasanoff, chair of the judging panel, described how they made their choice:
We arrived at a decision after a lot of discussion and arrived at a consensus around a book that is a real master of form and pushes the form in new ways, that has an incredible originality and fluidity of voice, and a book that’s really dense with historical and metaphorical significance.
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Booker Prize, Damon Galgut, literature, writing
Love Stories, by Trent Dalton
4 November 2021
Don’t we all love a great love story? Especially when it’s ours? (I walked into a bar one night. That was lucky because I hardly ever walk into bars…) But walking is what Brisbane based Australian journalist and novelist Trent Dalton did as well. He walked the streets of Adelaide and Brisbane, looking for stories: stories of love.
He’d set up a portable table somewhere, place an old typewriter – left to him by the late mother of a friend – on it, and then stop passers-by to ask them to tell him a story. Maybe you saw him. Did he ask you to tell your story? Would you, if he’d asked? Of all the things you could ask a total stranger at random, I get the feeling it’s a question a lot of people would be happy to answer. Because who doesn’t like telling a story of love? The fruits of this labour, which sometimes saw Dalton at his mobile workstation for eight hours a day, is Love Stories (published by HarperCollins, 27 October 2021).
They say truth is stranger than fiction, and I could only imagine how wondrous, raw, inspiring, and even heartbreaking this collection of stories is. Dalton was recently a guest on Words and Nerds, a podcast show hosted by Dani Vee, where he talked about Love Stories, and what prompted him to write the book. It’s a heart-warming discussion well worth listening to.
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fiction, TBR list, Trent Dalton, writing
The word of the year for 2021 is VAX
3 November 2021
I don’t know how many times I’ve used the word in the last eighteen months, but I’m sure happy its use has been sanctioned by the Oxford English Dictionary.
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Rock Paper Scissors, by Alice Feeney
3 November 2021
Amelia and Adam have been married ten years. Each year, on their anniversary, they exchange gifts in accordance with the occasion. Paper, leather, sugar, what have you. But there’s one gift Amelia has made for each anniversary that she never gives to Adam. Every year she writes him a letter, describing her feelings about him, and their marriage. Without giving too much away, Adam is a workaholic, more devoted to his screenwriting job, than his marriage to Amelia.
On the occasion of their tenth anniversary, being tin, Amelia wins a holiday to a remote village in the Scottish Highlands, in a workplace raffle. By this point, both partners recognise the marriage is struggling, and both see the holiday away from the distractions of home and work as an opportunity to revive their flagging relationship. But something doesn’t quite feel right. Might it be their accommodation, a chapel of all places? Or might it be the power failure just as they arrive?
And why have their phones suddenly stopped working? On top of that, a snowstorm traps them in the old chapel. And then there’s the minor detail about the holiday itself. Winning it seems not to be as random as it looked… Rock Paper Scissors (published by Harper Collins Australia, August 2021) is the latest novel from English author Alice Feeney, and if you’re a fan of domestic thrillers, with what seems like a touch of things going bump in the night, this might be the book for you.
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Alice Feeney, fiction, TBR list, writing
The Other Side of Beautiful, by Kim Lock
2 November 2021
A traumatic workplace incident several years earlier has left Mercy Blain, a former doctor, housebound, in The Other Side of Beautiful (published by HQ Fiction/HarperCollins, July 2021), the fourth novel of South Australian based author Kim Lock. For two years she has not left the safety and security of her home. But when the house burns to the ground one night, Mercy has no choice but to step out into the world.
Her first port of call is her former husband’s place. But he is living with someone else, and Mercy is on the move once again. This time though she goes all out. She buys an old – an incredibly old – campervan, and leaving her hometown Adelaide, in South Australia, with Wasabi, her sausage dog, Mercy makes her way north to Darwin.
But then things begin to change. As Mercy continues towards Darwin, she begins to experience a catharsis of sorts, and she starts to see a way around the anxieties that have kept her shut away behind closed doors. All seems to be going well until she is required to return to Adelaide to resolve a legal matter, where even the mere thought of being back causes to her anxiety to come to the fore again.
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fiction, Kim Lock, TBR list, writing
It’s November 2021, that means it’s NaNoWriMo 2021
1 November 2021
It’s November and that means NaNoWriMo is upon us. NaNoWriMo? It’s an acronym for National Novel Writing Month, an annual writing event established by Chris Baty, a freelance writer, in 1999. And if you think you can knock out a mere fifty thousand (50,000) words by the end of the month, you too can take part. As of 2020, over half a million people worldwide were participating in various NaNoWriMo projects.
Originally held in July of 1999, the event later switched to November, a move intended to take people’s minds off the approaching winter, tricky for people south of the equator though gearing up for summer. But heck, summer arrives in December down-under, so why worry? An impressive collection of NaNoWriMo works have gone on to be published, so it’s something worth checking out if you’re an aspiring author.
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Boundless writers festival 2021
29 October 2021
Boundless, a Sydney based festival of Indigenous and culturally diverse writers, is on from today, Friday 29 October until Sunday 31 October. A number of panels and workshops will be presented online, including Should I? Ethical Questions for Screen Storytellers, which touches on the topic of who can tell, and profit, from publishing certain stories. Writers of fiction might also find themselves asking similar questions, in regards to how much they can draw on the lives and experiences of people they know, in their work.
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Loner, by Georgina Young
29 October 2021
It’s a difficult path to walk, the journey to becoming the person we want to be. There’s the frequent self-doubt, and the sometimes futile attempts to appease those around us, who expect our lives to take a direction more in suiting with their preferences. How many of us have been in, or are in, such a place? At least Lona, the twenty year old protagonist of Loner (published by Text Publishing, August 2020), written by Melbourne based Australian author Georgina Young, knows what she doesn’t want.
But then the arts student decides one day a life in the arts isn’t for her. Nor the dead-end jobs she calls work. Lona goes from having some direction, to having almost none. All that seems to fulfil her are books, a part-time gig as a DJ, and photography, an interest that requires her to sneak into her old art school to access the dark room to develop her pictures.
Loner is one of the titles shortlisted in this year’s Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, and in addition to her other woes, it seems to me Lona also has to grapple with being an introvert. Choosing to be in her own company, or perish forbid, enjoying being in her own company, is another source of self-doubt for Lona, since some of the people around her probably feel she is lacking as a result. It’s kind of difficult then. Trying to find out who you are, while others are expressing disapproval at what you are.
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