Motorcyclist Marco Simoncelli was killed in the Malaysian Grand Prix two weeks ago. I know because it was trending on Twitter. There was also a motorcycle accident that Friday night, two weeks ago. I know this because I sat in the middle of a four-lane road and held the fallen riderʼs hand. He was wearing […]

Ah, women. Give them the vote and the next thing you know they’ll be writing books and jumping up and down about equality. In pants! Recently, on a particularly cold Sydney night, four such women braved the elements, gathering in Shearer’s Bookshop, Leichardt, to discuss heroines and all the messy stuff that goes with them, […]

I have, in the last couple of years, had the opportunity to meet several of my heroes. No-one you might call a megastar, but then, who would want to meet a megastar? They are terrifyingly hot and often 20 million times the size of the sun. (Oh dear.) Unfortunately for me, I have never quite […]

I have often wondered whether a blog on childrenʼs literature was appropriate for the Overland blog. Then issue 202 appeared with cover feature on Shaun Tan and a column by Alison Croggon about the experience of childhood and the often-inaccurate interpretation of it … Many years ago I found myself hurtling down a snow-covered hill […]

I am not a sporting person. Some people are born with the ability to catch balls with their hands as if they have an in-built homing device. I, it would seem, was born with such a homing device in my head. If I enter a park and there is someone, somewhere within a two-kilometre radius […]

Recently, someone of substantial literary clout asked me a question I have been dreading for some time: ‘Can we expect to hear more from you on Twitter? It can be very useful for writers.’ Oh dear. I’d been sprung. I had to admit that I don’t really get what Twitter is for if one is […]

As I begin to write this blog I am sitting in the stairwell of my building because it is two degrees cooler than in my apartment. The touch-pad thingy on my laptop isn’t really working because of the sweat on my hands and I swear the walls are beginning to bend in the heat. Or […]

The Best Australian Stories 2010 Cate Kennedy (ed) Black Inc. There has been a lot of discussion over the last year about the future of Australian writing and reading: Will Twitter reduce our collective attention span to that of a demented Fox Terrier? Will the novel be murdered (again) by the blogosphere? Will the next […]

This blog will be in two parts. Part One: a rant about how bloody important literature (and thus Overland) is to life, the universe and everything. Part Two (at the request of Rjurik Davidson): a short Choose Your Own Adventure tale in which you, the protagonist, take the future of Australian literature in your own […]

A warning first up: if this blog dissolves into nonsensical rambling, please be so kind as to quietly move on to something more substantial. (Pretty much anything on the Overland site without my name attached to it.) Because, quite frankly, this could get quite silly. Last Wednesday night, the lovely Shearer’s bookshop in Leichhardt hosted […]

Back in May I attended a panel discussion at the Sydney Writers’ Festival entitled, ‘No Country for Young Women’ which sought to answer the question: ‘Can a young women thrive in our newly retro Mad Men world?’ The panel consisted of Kirstin Tranter, Emily Maguire and Karen Hitchcock and was chaired by Susan (Lionheart) Maushart. […]

Young Emerging Writers Night at the Sydney Jewish Writers’ Festival Much is being made at the moment about the number of students enrolling in creative writing courses across our fair land. In fact, it is fair to say that in the next decade Australia’s biggest challenge won’t be overpopulation; it will be a severe skills […]

Several years ago, when I was studying writing at university, a lecturer of mine expressed utter disdain when a student confessed to abandoning James Joyce’s Ulysses mid-way through. The lecturer, who was an author herself (well you’d want to hope so, wouldn’t you?), said that to give up on a book before the end was […]

It’s time to decide Australia. It’s time to stand up and grasp the rope of democracy – woven from the fabric of thousands of Anzac souls – and swing between apathy and outrage, determination and despair, boldness and boredom. It’s possible to swing between Julia and Tony as well, although the association of ‘Tony Abbott’ […]

When I was about ten years old there was a television ad that featured a woman in a fur coat and beret rushing through the streets of Paris to meet her lover for an instant coffee. She wore fabulous red lipstick and the soundtrack was Piaf. After one viewing Punky Brewster was knocked off her […]

‘Mummy, what’s this?’ ‘Oh, that’s a book.’ ‘What’s a book?’ ‘A book is what people once used to keep stories and information in,before they had iPads.’ ‘Oh. What’s this?’ ‘Stone the crows! That’s a literary journal! I haven’t seen one of those since I was a girl!’ At the recent Sydney Writers’ Festival, Simon & […]

Just as the Sydney Writers’ Festival has packed itself up for another year, the Sydney Film Festival has rolled into town to cater for the needs of those not satisfied by Dan Brown adaptations and cooking shows (thank you, Mr Carey). What a grand thing the festival is too, if for no other reason than […]

Perhaps it is because I don’t get out much, or perhaps I am just reckless, but by the time I returned home on Sunday after four glorious days brain-binging at the writer’s festival, all I could do was fling a signed copy of Josh Neufeld’s A.D: New Orleans After the Deluge at my beloved before […]

Someone once said that an artist’s job is to hold the attention of an audience for as long as they require it. It may have been Oscar Wilde, but this reviewer suspects it was actually a character in The West Wing. Perhaps it was a character in The West Wing quoting Oscar Wilde – either […]

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a fiction writer in possession of a good tale must be in want of an audience. In the absence of a publishing contract or an appreciative family member/housemate, such an audience can be difficult to reach. Equally so, if Sydney’s lovers of literature fancy a night out to […]

The proof is in the painting. It has been ‘revealed’ that this year’s winner of the Wynne Prize for Australian landscape painting is a fraud, a fake, a phoney, a copycat, and worst of all, unoriginal. Yep, it’s true. Proposal for a Landscaped Cosmos by Sam Leach is almost an exact replica of a work […]

This week the Sydney Morning Herald ran a feature on marketing strategies and then two days later there was a story on Tony Abbott’s Ironman endeavours. How are these related and what does it have to do with Degrassi? Read on, intrepid Overlanders. It’s a widely recognised fact that each generation is more media and […]

In case you weren’t aware, the ever charming, frypan-hating Richard Dawkins is in the country. (If you are unfamiliar with Dawkins, he’s the man God created to illustrate irony.) The Dawks has been appearing around the place getting his knickers in a twist about people who think there might be things science just can’t explain, […]