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Award Winning Australian Writing 2011

Award Winning Australian Writing 2011
Adolfo Aranjuez (ed)
Melbourne Books

I still remember when I won my first literary competition. It was 1998 and I was a second-year creative writing student. My tutor that year had urged us to start sending our work out, had counselled us that we would likely fail more than we would succeed but if we really wanted to be writers we must persist. I remember him holding up a sheaf of papers, a catalogue of his rejections, and feeling heartened. I don’t recall how many competitions I entered before I won my first, but I don’t think it was many. What I do recall is the thrill of that win. The validation I felt. Somebody thought my words mattered. To confirm this there was an award ceremony, a trophy, a modest cheque, publication in an anthology, and an article in the local paper. It was all rather dizzying. I didn’t realise at the time that most competitions offer little reward. A certificate to be filed away and a few hundred dollars to be banked, but rarely publication. Which is why this anthology is such a gem. ... read more

Written by Irma Gold on 8-12-2011, 7 user comments

A conversation with Anna Funder

Anna Funder 2Anna Funder is an internationally acclaimed bestselling Australian author whose debut Stasiland recounted the personal stories of people who worked for the East German secret police, and those whose lives were affected and even destroyed by their covert activities. The book won a swag of international prizes. The manuscript of her follow-up first novel, All That I Am, created a sensation at the 2010 Frankfurt Book Fair and will be published in sixteen countries; it premiered in Australia in September. The novel derives from real events in the lives of activists, intellectuals and artists in pre-WW2 Germany. All That I Am begins: ... read more

Written by Boris Kelly on 24-11-2011, No comments

Falling through the genre cracks and finding Wonderland

COV_CouriersNewBicycle.inddI know a writer who turns her books face out on the shop shelves wherever and whenever she can, and this week I admit I’ve done my personal equivalent of that: sneaking a copy of my freshly published second novel out of Science Fiction and into the Crime Fiction section of various local bookshops. If I had my druthers, I’d stash another copy under Australian Authors and one in Literary Fiction too, though usually, there aren’t that many copies to spread around – and it would make me too obvious in my nefarious activity. ... read more

Written by Kim Westwood on 18-11-2011, 5 user comments

Sophie Cunningham’s ‘Melbourne’

MelbourneMelbourne writer, editor and publisher, Sophie Cunningham, is the author of several novels: Geography and Bird, and currently working on a third. Editor and publisher of numerous books, both fiction and non-fiction, she has worked for such notables as McPhee Gribble, Penguin and Allen & Unwin as well as taking the helm as editor of Meanjin (2008-2010). She writes on such diverse topics as travel, cultural analysis, Buddhism and television (not to mention literature) but her latest adventure is Melbourne, commissioned by Newsouth as part of a series on Australia's capital cities. ... read more

Written by Clare Strahan on 18-08-2011, No comments

The Protectors: a journey through whitefella past

The Protectors: a journey through whitefella past
Stephen Gray
Allen & Unwin

The ProtectorsFor much of John Howard’s reign as Prime Minister debate on Australian history took a polarised view: the Black Armband History versus the White Revisionist’s History. The culmination of which was John Howard’s refusal to apologise to the Stolen Generation. With Kevin Rudd’s 2008 apology, and the bi-partisan support for it, it seemed that that debate had ended, that a compromise had been achieved. But has it? In his book The Protectors: a journey through whitefella past, Stephen Gray addresses this question by asking what are we apologising about? ... read more

Written by Scott Foyster on 30-06-2011, No comments

Fiction review: Bereft

Bereft_FNL_REV_cvr.inddBereft
Chris Womersley
Scribe

Occasionally a book so exceptional comes along that you want to greedily devour it in one sitting. Like a new lover you want to spend every moment together and become resentful when forced to part. You eat with it, curl up in bed with it, and pick it up the moment you wake. This rarely happens to me, but it did with Bereft.

Bereft is Chris Womersley’s second novel, and his first, The Low Road, won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction in 2008. If Bereft doesn’t pick up some prestigious awards I’ll be very surprised. ... read more

Written by Irma Gold on 8-12-2010, 1 user comment

Non-fiction review: Culture Crisis: Anthropology and Politics in Aboriginal Australia

' Culture Crisis: Anthropology and Politics in Aboriginal Australia'Culture Crisis: Anthropology and Politics in Aboriginal Australia
Jon Altman and Melinda Hinkson (eds)
UNSW Press

Labelling something to be ‘in crisis’ can be a fraught activity; when the motivation is to create a rethinking of the issue at hand, it often leads to bandaid solutions to quickly fix the crisis. In this collection of essays, Altman and Hinkson have chosen this approach – divided into four parts: the problem of recognition, the problem of violence, counting culture, imagining futures – to bring many of the discussions that have been taking place among Australian anthropologists to a wider audience. It’s a job well done. ... read more

Written by Scott Foyster on 11-11-2010, 1 user comment

In Jane Austen’s footsteps

Jane Austen's house If any of you read my post about audio books, you may remember I was lying in bed with a virus, enthralled by Ian McEwan’s reading of On Cheshil Beach. Since then, I have been overseas and, much to my surprise, found myself walking along the very same Cheshil Beach in Dorset where the novel’s young, newlywed Florence made her escape from the bridal bed. It was an exhausting trudge through deep shingle for eighteen miles (I only made it for a few of them), but exhilarating, not just because of the view and the weather, but because McEwan’s story has written the place into the literary landscape and universal consciousness. ... read more

Written by Carol Middleton on 8-11-2010, No comments

Non-fiction review – Life on the Edge: The Autobiography of Ralph de Boissière

Life on the Edge: The Autobiography of Ralph de Boissière
Lexicon Trinidad Limited

Crown JewelRalph de Boissière lived for a hundred years and wrote five novels but this autobiography may be the story that de Boissière was always meant to tell. Born in Trinidad in 1907 he migrated to Melbourne in 1948 and lived the rest of his life there working in a variety of mundane day jobs while writing and rewriting his novels. De Boissière did not achieve success as a novelist in either the West Indies or Australia although his two major novels, Crown Jewel and Rum and Coca Cola, were published widely in Eastern Europe. He wanted to describe a society and its people in his novels and he was impressed by the example of Tolstoy and Turgenev but as de Boissière filters his experiences to create his autobiography he does a better job of describing people functioning within their societies in all their unpleasantness, glory and contradiction than most novels ever manage. ... read more

Written by Rhona Hammond on 28-10-2010, 2 user comments

Non-fiction review: Here on Earth

'Here on Earth' Here on Earth
Tim Flannery
Text

Flannery’s new book Here On Earth reads like a cross between Bill Bryson and Jared Diamond, which is reassuring given it has the title of a Leelee Sobieski film. It also sort of makes sense; both of these authors have read and commented on the book, and Diamond is referenced throughout. Flannery has clearly read their work and is borrowing from their styles, which I enjoyed.

The book talks a lot about the Gaia Hypothesis and essentially argues for it throughout. For those unaware, the Gaia hypothesis states that the world as a whole tends to act as a singular organism and has many feedbacks and other mechanisms to maintain a given state. I personally am not a fan. I believe the world does a lot of things we don’t understand and certainly has all sorts of negative and positive feedback models going on, but I find both the name of the hypothesis and many of the people claiming to adhere to it irritating. It’s all a bit hippy-pie-in-the-sky from where I’m sitting, and I was surprised to find Flannery advocating it. ... read more

Written by Georgia Claire on 19-10-2010, 6 user comments

Beginnings – a literary event

Where does a writer begin writing their novel? Is the first sentence they put on the page the first sentence the reader will read? Where do novels come from? And what does first inspiration look like?

In Westgarth Books first emerging writers’ event, Steven Amsterdam, Chris Womersley, Matt Hooper and Maryrose Cuskelly will join Sydney Smith to discuss ‘Beginnings’.

Steven, Chris, Maryrose and Matt will read from their novels and you will be able to ask questions as well as talk about your own experiences in beginning a novel. Authors will also be available for book signings.

So come along and meet some of Australia’s most exciting new authors and network with other emerging writers while enjoying cheese and wine and the charm and character of Westgarth Book. ... read more

Written by Trish Bolton on 11-10-2010, 1 user comment

10 SHORT STORIES YOU MUST READ IN 2010

10 SHORT STORIESSome time ago I reviewed last year’s free anthology offered by the Books Alive campaign with any purchase from its 50 Books You Can’t Put Down list. Let’s just say if I was Roger Ebert I’d have given it two thumbs down. This year the Australian Government-funded campaign has been re-branded Get Reading! and there’s another anthology giveaway, so I was interested to see how it compared. ... read more

Written by Irma Gold on 30-09-2010, 4 user comments

Fiction review – Equator

'Equator' coverEquator
Wayne Ashton
Freemantle Press

By the time I got it together to choose a book from Overland’s list to review, I was saying: Send me over whatever you’ve got. Novels, I’ll read novels. When two arrived and I read the first two pages of each, I reluctantly chose the tome, a doorstopper as Phillip Adams would say, a 680-page weapon – if you can lift it and get enough swing to wallop someone over the head with it. But ther

Written by SJ Finn on 24-09-2010, No comments

Fiction review – What is left over, after

'What is left over, after'Natasha Lester has three children and lives in Western Australia. This is good news for me, otherwise I would want to be her. Her first novel won the 2008 TAG Hungerford award, she’s written for Overland, indigo and Wet Ink, and she just won a Publisher Fellowship from Allen & Unwin.

Her first novel, What is left over, after, benefits from having the kind of title that made me want to read it without knowing anything about it. It sounds like the title of a Romantic-era poem, something from one of Coleridge’s contemporaries swiped for a contemporary take. I love it. The book is also pretty good. ... read more

Written by Georgia Claire on 14-09-2010, 7 user comments

MWF Writing Women – a review

2.30 at Fed Square and there’s a queue fifty people strong cluttering up the paving-stones, waiting to go in to ACMI for the Melbourne Writers Festival. The doors are shut. Chaos reigns. ‘Is this the museum?’ asks a lost tourist. The MWF volunteers are doing a sterling job, blithely ignoring any queue-disgruntlement and pointing the lost tourist in the right direction.

‘May I smoke?’ asks an older man ahead of me. He looks like a writer, to me – dishevelled and blinking in the sunlight. ‘I think you should,’ replies his polite companion. Not what I would’ve said.

At last, the doors are open and the queue begins to move. ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting, but it’s our first day,’ says a MWF volunteer. As this is the twenty-fourth Melbourne Writers Festival, I find this a remarkable explanation but what the heck, here we go, the well-oiled machine rolls on. ... read more

Written by Clare Strahan on 3-09-2010, 2 user comments