History is all around us. Wherever we walk, someone has walked before. After all, Homo sapiens have been on Earth for approximately 300,000 years, so that’s a lot of feet covering a lot of ground. And I love wondering who might have walked where I now walk, what they were…
One of the things I miss most about living in the UK is its visual history. Growing up there was a time-travelling adventure – never far from a castle, stately home, strange mound in the ground or stone circle. Here in Australia, I recently bushwalked all around Sydney’s southern Middle…
Everyone should write. There, I’ve said it. Writing is so liberating and cathartic. It allows you to explore your thoughts and feelings, as well as those of others. With it you can imagine the future, and delve into the trenches of the past. Writing can be an escape, it allows…
I always knew I’d one day write novels. But first came poetry and short stories. I wrote about my first ever published poems over here. My first ever short story success was with a story about a tortoise, which won me the school writing competition for prose in Year 11…
I always knew I’d one day write novels. But first came poetry and short stories. My first ever writing successes were with poetry. When I was about 10 years old, my teacher set our class the homework task of writing an original poem. Mine was about owls and hedgehogs. I…
What if you could go back in time and tell the younger-you to be more confident about the paths you were or weren’t choosing in life? The circumstances into which we’re born, and the choices we make to expand or escape those circumstances, inevitably lead us to who we are…
Earlier this week, I appeared at the Mosman Youth Awards in Literature at the amazing Mosman Library, where I spoke to an eager crowd of 150 writers and their supporters. As my 9th year judging the awards, I wanted to share one central piece of advice about writing, applicable to…
