Me, Antman and our mongrel, Fleabag, like partyin outside. We both come from the bush. Me, I'm a NSW desert girl and Antman's mob are river people. Cos we aint got no river or desert here in the city, we like sittin in the park yarnin, having a charge, playin country music. We don't cause … Continue reading Me, Antman & Fleabag | Gayle Kennedy #AWWfiction
Opening Line: Here she is, standing in the schoolyard. She is six years old, dressed in a crisp green uniform. Other children are on the swings and seesaw, but she has taken herself off to stand alone under the eucalyptus at the edge of the playground. Nothing Ever Happens Here: A Memoir of Loss and … Continue reading Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here | Heather Rose #AWWmemoir
Epigraph: Questo di fu solenne: or da' trastulli prendi riposo. Giacomo Leopardi | La sera del dì di festa The Evening of the Holiday (1820) | Giacomo Leopardi (29 June 1798 – 14 June 1837) - full poem here. According to a variety of online poetry sites, Leopardi's idyll expresses his unhappiness thanks to an indifferent, distant woman plus a … Continue reading The Evening of the Holiday | Shirley Hazzard #AUSnovella
I confess I had not heard of the Olga Masters Short Story Award until yesterday, when I discovered that my friend Ruth Armstrong had won the 2022 prize! Her story, Sandcastles, will be published in Island Magazine in November and will appear on the Olga Masters website early next year. Miriam Webster was the runner-up … Continue reading Olga Masters Short Story Award 2022
Epigraphs (3): (1) I very rarely think either of my past or my future, but the moment that one contemplates writing an autobiography...one is forced to regard oneself as an entity carried along for a brief period in the stream of time, emerging at a particular moment from darkness and nothingness and shortly to disappear … Continue reading This Devastating Fever | Sophie Cunningham #AWWfiction
The Sun Walks Down | Fiona McFarlane (2022) The boy met a god by the hollow tree. ‘Go away,’ said the boy, and the god, formless, passes on in the direction of the red hill. I believe I have just read my favourite and best book of 2022. Although I am a little reluctant to … Continue reading The Sun Walks Down | Fiona McFarlane #AWWfiction
It is on the train from Russia to Ukraine that the moment I have been waiting for finally comes, and Billie refuses to use the toilet, point-blank. Maria Tumarkin is an Australian writer of memoirs and cultural histories. Her books and essays tend to include oodles of fascinating things about the nature of memory, change … Continue reading Otherland | Maria Tumarkin #UnderstandingUkraine
Some people HAVE to finish every single book they start. I'm looking at Mr Books here! I used to be like that, but that was before I started working in a bookshop. In fact, I can think of only two books I bailed on pre-bookshop. One was Gillian Mears' Grass Sister, which was given to … Continue reading #MiniReviews – the DNF edition
Jazz Money is a poet and artist of Wiradjuri heritage, currently based on sovereign Gadigal land. Her debut collection of poetry, how to make a basket, was described by the judges of the David Unaipon Award as 'luminous and beautifully sculpted, [a] seamless collection of poems that reflect on place and passion...[and] builds on the … Continue reading how to make a basket | Jazz Money #AWWpoetry
No Document is an elegy for a friendship and artistic partnership cut short by death. The memory of this collaboration becomes a model for how we might relate to others in sympathy, solidarity and rebellion. At once intimate and expansive, Anwen Crawford’s book-length essay explores loss in many forms: disappeared artworks, effaced histories, abandoned futures. Written … Continue reading No Document | Anwen Crawford #AWWnon-fiction
Last weekend I went to a staged reading performance at the State Library of NSW. The play, Her Brilliant Career, is about Miles Franklin and written by Alice Spigelman. According to the event spiel, The State Library was a home away from home for Miles where she often arranged to have tea with one of … Continue reading Her Brilliant Career | Alice Spigelman #Play
The Edith Readalong has been my priority of late. But before I got started with it, I was determined to finish a few of the half read books by my bed which included a trip to Nigeria, dabbling with some poetry and a peek inside a leper colony. Princeton, in the summer, smelled of nothing, … Continue reading June Mini Reviews
Mary Gaunt's first short story collection The Moving Finger (1895) contains seven stories. I read the two Christmas themed ones back in December last year. These were read with a seasonal lens in mind. The following five stories have been read using my 'female experience' lens as they will be part of a post that will end up … Continue reading The Moving Finger | Mary Gaunt #AWWshortstories
Mary Gaunt^ This post was originally conceived for the Australian Women Writers Challenge and posted on their site on the 18th May 2022. A big thank you to Bill for offering me the chance to be one of his incredible guest posters. I'm honoured to be part of such illustrious company and to be involved … Continue reading Mary Gaunt – an #AWWbiography
East Gippsland panorama | Image source Native-Born, according to Wikipedia, regularly appears in Australian anthologies. However I had never come across it until an article in The Conversation last year when Donna Mazza^ referenced it. Mazza declared that, Native-Born...is still startlingly relevant to contemporary ecofeminism by subtly linking the discovery and cremation of a dead … Continue reading Native-Born | Eve Langley #AWWpoem
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