Critical examination of bookish events, news and debate.
What type of women are you, and what are you not? Different women respond to the same female character in different ways. Of course they do, because not all women are the same. So how do you write a realistic female character that will appeal to most women? Women are…
Huh? What’s the third wave of the web…? I’ve been reading a lot lately about ‘the third wave of the web’, which we’re apparently only just entering. You might have noticed it perhaps, crashing over the publishing world like a tidal wave?! Unstoppable, it’s left behind it a trail of…
Get your calendar ready… Last month, I attended a literary cage fight hosted by Sophie Hamley at Shearer’s Bookshop in Leichhardt called “When Genres Attack!”. It was an inspiring evening of intellectual and insightful debate that prompted me to ask my readers whether genre should actually mean something to them…
For those who could not be there… Saturday, 21st May 2011 was the day set by many doomsday Christians as the beginning of Armageddon, or the Rapture – the taking up into heaven of God’s elect people. It was also the day set for the 2010 Aurealis Awards. As far…
In Today’s Genre-Sensitive Publishing World, Might George Orwell Be *gasp* Unreadable? Ever since ‘genre’ was invented (by Plato and Aristotle, no less, when they divided ancient Greek literature into drama, poetry or prose), theorists have philosophized about the concept of genre, evolving and expanding it such that, today, genre and…
WARNING: due to the astounding level of input from a gargantuan range of fantastic Australian authors, this blog has essay-length proportions. What does it mean to be a writer living in Australia in 2011? Does our glorious country inform what we write, or the way we write it? Does it…
