Elizabeth Harrower’s ‘new’ collection of short stories, A Few Days in the Country: And Other Stories, is enchanting. By which I do not mean that it contains magic, or the promises of happy endings. No; Harrower’s writing is pure, unadulterated realism. Her stories occupy the real world, and make an effort to reveal the lives…
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Writing a memoir is a monumental task. And I write that as someone who has never attempted to do so. Consolidating decades of one’s life into a work small enough to be held in one hand seems titanic, especially given the complexity of its primary source: memory. The subtle art of memoir has been beautifully…
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Sophie Hardcastle is an inspiring young author who has written a memoir called Running Like China about her struggles with mental health. Lip’s Bridget Conway had a chat with Sophie and found out about how she chose to push through the stigma to write the book in the hopes that it would inspire others to…
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I’m picky when it comes to crime novels. If there isn’t a delightful balance between character, believability and suspense, I’m apt to put the book down and forget about it. Thankfully, Good Money by J.M. Green balances all of these elements. Green is a debut author whose book was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s…
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I am constantly asked the question – where are you from? No matter what the situation, my reply is always shameful – I’m from the United States. Because of this shame I decided to leave my home of eighteen years and move halfway across the world to Australia, all by myself. Lots of people tell me that…
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A new study into Australian authors has found that it’s slim pickings when it comes to book earnings—especially for female authors. The Macquarie University study, headed by cultural economist Distinguished Professor David Throsby AO, surveyed over 1,000 Australian authors about their earnings and practices. On average, authors make $62,000 in total per year. Although nearly…
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I spoke with Catriona Pollard last month about her upcoming solo basketry exhibition Love.Honour.Cherish and discovered an incredibly successful businesswoman who was really doing it all. Besides recently being proud and confident enough to call herself an artist, Catriona is also the founder and CEO of CP Communications, a prominent PR agency located in Sydney,…
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This review contains some spoilers. Cass Moriarty’s The Promise Seed, which was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards in 2013, delves into the lives of two, at first, very estranged characters: an old man and a young boy. Both grew up in different eras and don’t seem to have anything in common, yet throughout the…
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Not Just Black and White: a conversation between a mother and a daughter is the inspiring and harrowing true story of mother and daughter duo Lesley and Tammy Williams. The novel follows the lives of these two Murri (Aboriginal) women in the form of written conversations between mother and daughter. This puts a light tone…
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When you open a book and it starts with the chronology of an entire country, it can be daunting. I’m not the type to remember dates or places, and when this was followed by a “list of characters in order of appearance” and a glossary, I freaked out a bit. I don’t know anything about…
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At Myth Busting Women and Literature, a collaborative event between Feminartsy and Ainslie and Gorman Arts Centres in Canberra, three local women writers addressed a number of myths that seem to perpetuate the discourse of women in literature. Each panellist tackled their individual topic with humour and intelligence, drawing out the particular nuances present in…
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This year’s Melbourne Writers Festival kicked off on 21 August with a whole day dedicated especially to discussing women in the media and female writers. One of the events was Women Writing Film, in which Filmme Fatales editor Brodie Lancaster and film critic Rebecca Harkins-Cross discussed the role of women in film, both in front…
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Earlier this year I was working at the Auckland Writer’s Festival where Helen Macdonald was promoting her critically acclaimed memoir H is for Hawk. So far it’s snapped up both the Costa Book of the Year and the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. But as I glimpsed her signing books, at the front of a…
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[This review contains spoilers] Judy Blume is a well-known American author famous for novels such as Are You There God? It’s me Margaret, and Superfudge. I consider Blume to be the voice of my American, teenage girl upbringing. She’s both an uplifting yet incredibly honest writer; truly an inspiration to read then and now. So…
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