Food has been a major part of my life for as long as I can remember. As a child growing up in a Middle Eastern home, not a day went by where delicious, comforting, and nourishing food was not enjoyed and celebrated. I have fond memories of waking up to the smell of warm cooked…
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‘Here, let me hold it – my arm is longer than yours.’ Three grinning faces crowd together at the bottom of the screen, the angle tilted just enough so that the majestic Eiffel Tower looms above their floating heads in the background. Kccch goes the simulated sound of the shutter opening and closing. Kccch. Kccch….
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Detective-Inspector Debra Hawkins is a steely, no-nonsense cop in Gabrielle Lord’s sixteenth crime novel. Debra is the head of new taskforce, RED-V, which targets domestic violence in middle-eastern communities. ‘Over the last few years,’ she informs her team, ‘We’ve discovered around one thousand incidents of forced marriages and attempted forced marriages here in Australia.’ As well…
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Women are conditioned to live in fear. All over the world. Don’t walk on those streets, don’t wear those clothes, don’t be too intimidating, complex, complicated, loud, because men don’t like that. We live in patriarchal societies in which we pander to male preference. In Nairobi, men on the streets got to do what every…
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Death comes to us all; only the fortunate are allowed to grieve. Half the World in Winter is Maggie Joel’s second novel, which centres around the domestic life of a middle-class family in Victorian London. The patriarch of the family is Lucas Jarmyn, the only son and heir of a railway entrepreneur. When we meet…
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The Bookshelf Diaries takes a peek into the reading life of writers, readers and book lovers. Today, Allison Tait talks, multi-reading, inspiration, and reading while writing. What are you reading right now? I am a serial multi-reader (if that’s a thing). I am currently reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (which is taking me far…
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This collection is the ultimate in feminist poetry. Its breadth is mind-boggling, its vision grand. ‘Lupa’ means wolf, so Lupa and Lamb is the hunter and the hunted, the dichotomy of woman as dangerous seductress she-devil, and innocent bleating victim. These tired archetypes cross cultures and centuries. she is the lamb in the sheepfold…
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Girlfriend magazine won the government’s Positive Body Image award for Media and Entertainment in 2012 for their efforts in portraying images of young women that are inspirational and truthful. In a world where young women are still constantly receiving an influx of negative images of bodies such as super skinny fashion models and skin perfected…
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Political journo and TV presenter Annabel Crabb’s has investigated women, men and domestic expectations in her new book, The Wife Drought. In an Adelaide event earlier this week, Crabb discussed the themes in her book in her characteristically witty manner. Here’s what I learnt. The reason why there aren’t many women in parliament is because…
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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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Within the chaos of Melbourne’s Federation Square, there sits a modest caravan. Beyond the rounded windows the square is full of people. You can hear the clip-clopping of befeathered clydesdales leading grinning tourists in gilded carriages. You can smell the petrol fumes of heavy traffic, and watch a cheeky busker crack a whip and…
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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 longlist for the 2014 Man Booker Prize was announced last week. It is difficult to speculate as to which individual title is most deserving of the £50,000 prize, given the majority have not been released yet. Based on previous form and those few which are already available, several frontrunners for the prize seem evident….
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Feminism. Proudly screwing up gender roles since the seventies. Generally, when we hear about the subversion of gendered tasks, most narratives are from women taking on masculine roles. There aren’t many accounts of men taking on roles that traditionally belong to women – but new memoir Reservoir Dad by Aussie blogger, Clint Greagan, who is a SAHD, tells all….
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