What a mad, mad ride Laura Jean McKay takes you on in The Animals in That Country! During the past week McKay won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for fiction. That was enough for me to rat through my TBR piles looking for the ARC I knew I had tucked away somewhere. In this year … Continue reading The Animals in That Country | Laura Jean McKay #AWW
Thanks to the 2015 Stella Prize, I picked up Ellen Van Neervan's book, Heat and Light to discover the most extraordinary and eclectic collection of stories. I still think about them five years later. So I was thrilled when she published a book of poetry entitled Throat last year. It did not have an easy … Continue reading Throat | Ellen Van Neerven #Poetry
Last year, my friend at the Writer's Centre NSW, now called Writing NSW, was planning on hosting an Honouring event for Katharine Susannah Prichard. It's an annual event, of which I have managed to attend about half so far. I had just popped my name on the expressions of interest list early last year, when … Continue reading The Wild Oats Of Han | Katharine Susannah Prichard #AWW
Happy Birthday Ernestine! My Love Must Wait by Ernestine Hill was a bestseller when it was first published in 1941, which puts it neatly in the middle of Bill @The Australian Legend's Gen III of Australian Women Writers. I can see why this story about the adventurer and explorer, Matthew Flinders attracted a lot … Continue reading My Love Must Wait | Ernestine Hill #AWW
My first illness was that one most common to the children of the poor...a bad education and, like the bite of a goanna, it was incurable and ran for years. Ethel Jane (Eve) Langley was born in Forbes on the 1st September 1904. After her father, Arthur died in 1915, her mother, Myra moved her … Continue reading The Pea-Pickers | Eve Langley #AWW
I had the pleasure of hearing Ceridwen Dovey talk about her latest book, Life After Truth at a recent work event (the YouTube recording of the event can be found here). By the time she had finished speaking, I knew this would be my next read.I'm not sure why I've found it so hard to write … Continue reading Life After Truth | Ceridwen Dovey #AWW
2019 was the International Year of Indigenous Languages:It is through language that we communicate with the world, define our identity, express our history and culture, learn, defend our human rights and participate in all aspects of society, to name but a few.Through language, people preserve their community’s history, customs and traditions, memory, unique modes of … Continue reading Kindred | Kirli Saunders #Poetry
Writers on WritersIn the Writers on Writers series, leading authors reflect on an Australian writer who has inspired and influenced them. Provocative and crisp, these books start a fresh conversation between past and present, shed new light on the craft of writing, and introduce some intriguing and talented authors and their work.Published by Black Inc. … Continue reading Writers on Writers: Josephine Rowe on Beverley Farmer #AWW
Oh, the existential angst!Remember when you were 22 and you had no idea what you wanted to do or how you fitted into the big, wide world and it all seemed overwhelming, sometimes exciting, but mostly this big, huge, void of trying to be an adult, that you had no idea how to fill. This … Continue reading Loner | Georgina Young #AWW
It would be very easy to read this lovely novella about a woman called Elizabeth and her love of gardens, as an autobiography in disguise. At least, it was very easy for me to be led down this particular garden path for quite some time. At every turn, Elizabeth and Her German Garden felt biographical. … Continue reading Elizabeth and Her German Garden | Elizabeth Von Armin #NovinNov
I find reading Helen Garner a curious affair. There's a real push me/pull me effect, that intrigues me and wow's me, then repels me all in the same sentence. I'm intrigued and wowed by her writing, the turn of phrase that captures a moment brilliantly. There's a candour and earthiness that seems grounded in her … Continue reading The Spare Room | Helen Garner #AWW
Charlotte McConaghy has written an intense, emotional story about the effects of mass extinction in The Last Migration. I don't normally quote the back blurb of the book, but in this case it so aptly describes the book, I'm really not sure I can top it.The Last Migration is a wild, gripping and deeply moving … Continue reading The Last Migration | Charlotte McConaghy #AUSfiction
