Critical examination of bookish events, news and debate.
In January this year, I asked a bunch of writers what their writing goals were for 2013. Was their focus going to be novels, short stories, non-fiction… what? I was interested to see what everyone was planning to achieve, so conducted a poll on my Facebook page. Here are the results…
Last weekend, I took my two kids to a book fair. In the interests of book-loving parents everywhere, I thought I’d share with you what made this particular book fair so very wonderful! 1. Stock plenty of kids’ books! Kids love looking at and buying books! If you’ve got a…
I’m so proud of *my* writers – the members of the Northern Beaches Writers’ Group. I’m proud of them because they come from many different backgrounds and bring a wealth of experience to their stories. Some of them write crime, romance or speculative fiction, some write children’s, young-adult or teen…
As some of you may recall, earlier this year my writers’ group and I decided to raise some money for The Kids’ Cancer Project at Westmead Children’s Hospital – doing what we most love to do… write. We wrote, illustrated and printed a book for 11-16 year olds entitled Scribbles…
Last Saturday, at 6.30am, the sky looked like this: How do I know? Because I was getting ready to head into Manly for the KSP Write-a-Book-in-a-Day challenge – all to raise money for charity! Our team, made up of ten Northern Beaches Writers’ Group members – Leah Boonthanom, Fiona Howland-Rose,…
Last Thursday night, the NSW Writers’ Centre took their tutors out of their comfort zones and asked them to create a story, mashing together two very different genres. My challenge was to mash up…
A few days ago, I watched Bill Gates on Q&A (a high-brow Aussie talk show). On it, this very witty and down-to-earth man answered questions about wealth, charity, capitalism, the environment and technology. It was the questions about technology that of course got me sitting up in my seat. Here…
