So Sad Today is a book of personal essays by Melissa Broder, detailing her struggles with addiction, anxiety, panic disorder, relationships and an overwhelming fear of death. The book originated from an anonymous Twitter account of the same name in 2012, tweeting about the human condition in catchy one-sentence bites that were in equal parts…
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“Good daughters hold their tongues, obey their elders and let their families determine their destiny. Rebellious daughters are just the opposite.” Rebellious Daughters is an anthology of essays by Australian female writers that explores rebellion, identity and the familial bond. Editors Maria Katsonis and Lee Kofman have curated a challenging and important collection of pieces….
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It’s one of those cold winter mornings where my bed feels like a blissful cocoon, warm and safe and impossible to abandon. I wake before dawn and the whole world is encased in this transcendent beauty, like I’m the only person whose mind has sacrificed the land of dreams for a glimpse of reality….
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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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In 2000, Helen Garner was working on the story of Joe Cinque, a young civil engineer who was murdered by his girlfriend. She felt stuck—she had compiled long interviews with Cinque’s parents but had been refused any access to the two women charged with his murder. ‘I had no idea how to write the book,’…
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The irony of the West’s close relationship with Saudi Arabia would be laughable, if it weren’t so troubling. When King Abdullah, of the ruling al-Saud family, died in January 2015, tributes gushed forth from world leaders. Prince Charles, David Cameron and Barack Obama, among others, flew to Riyadh to pay their respects to a man…
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As a lifelong book nerd, I like to think I consume a balanced diet of fiction novels. I grew up reading books by Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl. I went through periods of reading books set in India (Vikram Seth, Arundhati Roy), America as seen by immigrants (Amy Lee) and the American south (Harper Lee,…
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I called myself a feminist out loud for the first time only last year. Mostly I felt proud, but lurking underneath this pride was an undeniable layer of guilt. I Call Myself a Feminist—an anthology compiled by Victoria Pepe, Rachel Holmes, Amy Annette, Alice Stride and Martha Mosse—helped me answer two questions at the heart…
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If you’re looking for BOLD in a bookstore, you’ll definitely know when you’ve found it. Its striking cover is mostly red, splashed with the title across the lower half. On the back, it has some impressive cover quotes from Benjamin Law and former Greens leader Bob Brown. Flipping through the pages, you see the many photos collected by the…
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Since its first incarnation at Melbourne’s Trades Hall in 2010, Women of Letters has toured the world to sold-out audiences. Curated by Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire, its original purpose was to encourage women to read aloud letters set to a specific theme, directed at a live audience. It has evolved to include a Men of Letters variant and has several accompanying book anthologies, but the underlying principle remains the same: allowing a gathering of people to speak intimately without reservation. In From the Heart, the latest Women of Letters,…
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Rosie Waterland’s The Anti-Cool Girl is the Australian antidote to Lena Dunham’s controversial memoirs but with much more bite. Waterland, a writer for the Mamamia Women’s Network, is most commonly known for her hilarious recaps of The Bachelor. In the The Anti-Cool Girl Waterland smoothly takes us through her life, from birth to the present…
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Sophie Hardcastle’s memoir Running Like China is not just about shattering the stigmas of mental illness or about providing a safe place for those who may be going through similar issues. Running Like China is also about an artist who finds her true self through the good and the bad times, and who emerges victorious…
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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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