About thirty seconds of googling will turn up innumerable think pieces that proclaim the end of the novel or lament the decline of the reading public. Yet print book sales are happily on the rise again and even non-readers can get their narrative fix in the form of recent film adaptations. Despite the distractions of…
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This is a review of a session held at the 2016 Sydney Writers’ Festival. * Annabel Crabb and Leigh Sales’ Sydney Writers’ Festival event Our Reading Year was a delightful charm offensive from beginning to end. The two stalwarts of Australian political media had the sold-out crowd barking with laughter within minutes, and their meandering…
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This is a review of a session held at the 2016 Sydney Writers’ Festival. * What is it that we find so fascinating about a reclusive novelist? There are plenty of writers who have attempted anonymity, with varying degrees of success: Harper Lee and Thomas Pynchon both spring to mind. These authors have chosen…
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That great storytelling can have huge effect upon a reader – that books can allow us the possibility of transportation, escape, discovery – is why so many people braved the uninviting weather to come to the National Young Writers Festival 2014 launch on a rainy Tuesday night. That, and for the chance to hear Zimbabwean…
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‘There’s still an elephant in the room,’ says Francesca Ohlert. We’re speaking on the phone about novels. And writers. And culture. And the fact that when we consider major Australian novelists (Tim Winton and Christos Tsiolkas, for example), men come to mind. You see, there is gender inequality in writing. The elephant in the room…
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The Bookshelf Diaries takes a peek into the reading life of writers, readers and book lovers. Today, Brisbane bookseller and writer Krissy Kneen draws back the veil on her bookshelf. What are you reading right now? I am currently on a writing retreat, first in Melbourne and then I will head to Tasmania to do…
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For the uninitiated, Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own is a seminal feminist text in the form of an extended essay, published in 1929. Although the narrative of the essay is fictional, it is based on real manuscripts of lectures presented by Woolf at the Cambridge women’s colleges. A Room of One’s Own is…
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The Emerging Writer’s Festival (EWF) is for writers. Midnight scribbler? For you. Aspiring novelist? For you. Screenwriter? Cartoonist? Got short stories published? For you. For you. For you. In its tenth year, the festival brings together newcomers as well as old hats in the media world (e.g. John Safran and Elmo Keep) to present a…
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Continuing on from my last column on whether or not writers should be paid for writing for the internet, this week I read an article about author Joe Simpson (Touching the Void), who decided to split from his publisher Random House over a dispute about ebook royalties. Random House were prepared to offer Simpson 25…
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A debate which has been brewing for a long time flared up again recently: should writers expect to be paid for writing for publication on the internet? Online publications Mamamia and The Hoopla recently published pieces on why they don’t pay writers (Mamamia) and why they do (The Hoopla). The Mamamia article in particular seems…
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The film adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s seminal book, On The Road has been a long time coming. Some 55 years since the semi-autobiographical novel was first published, audiences are now getting the chance to see the silver screen version. It comes courtesy of director, Walter Salles who is best known for bringing another coming-of-age, road…
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1. Aphra Behn Day Job: Author of almost 30 plays, novels, short stories and poems in the latter half of the 17th century. Night Job: Spy! Okay, that’s not entirely accurate, but I think it sounds way cooler when I say it that way. She was indeed recruited to be a political spy by Charles…
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