Blog

A gobsmacker of a book

The Cook
Wayne Macauley
Text Publishing

The Cook is a gobsmacker of a book.

Written by the much-lauded Australian writer Wayne Macauley, The Cook’s themes of capitalism-gone-mad, excessive consumption, untrammelled growth and rampant exploitation of humans, animals and natural resources is timely.

Macauley explores a number of issues recently highlighted by the Occupy Movement, animal welfare groups and the GFC through his main protagonist Zac, one of a number of young offenders sent to Cook School to learn a trade and become decent, upstanding and productive citizens. ... read more

Written by Trish Bolton on 14-12-2011, 7 user comments

‘That’s what I love about the short form’

Irma GoldAuthor of several children’s books and currently at work on a debut novel, the stories of writer and editor Irma Gold have been published in such notables as Meanjin, Island and Going Down Swinging and she is, of course, a blogger here at Overland. Her debut collection of short fiction, Two Steps Forward is the final piece to the most excellent puzzle that is the Long Story Shorts series published by Affirm Press. Today, Gold chats with us about her process and what she’s up to now. ... read more

Written by Clare Strahan on 29-11-2011, 4 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

Gender and China Mieville’s ‘Embassytown’

KT author pic highresFiction writer, poet, essayist and literary critic, Kirsten Tranter, grew up in Sydney’s literary atmosphere and studied at the University of Sydney, but it was at New York’s Rutgers University that she completed her PhD in English on Renaissance poetry. Tranter’s first novel, The Legacy, was listed for the Miles Franklin in 2010. Her second novel, A Common Loss, is due to appear in January 2012. Today she chats with us about her essay ‘Refiguring fiction: Gender and China Miéville’s Embassytown’, featured in Overland 204. ... read more

Written by Clare Strahan on 23-08-2011, 2 user comments

Our hunger for translated literature

Geometries_Cover‘We live in a world,’ Chip Rolley declares on the welcome page of the Sydney Writers’ Festival, ‘that is ultimately understood only through language.’ Let’s bracket the objections of mystics (for whom language is an obstruction, not a key) and sceptics (who would question our assumption that we can understand the world to any meaningful degree, let along ultimately). We need not go the whole Derridean hog and claim that ‘there is nothing outside the text’ to recognise the central role of language in how we construct the world, both metaphorically (how we conceive of it) and literally (how we shape it). ... read more

Written by Joshua Mostafa on 20-04-2011, 27 user comments

International writings: Elizabeth Kadetsky on Naked City

Elizabeth Kadetsky continues our series of regular cross-posts from international writers or journals with similar political or aesthetic sensibilities to Overland.

elizabethkadetskyElizabeth Kadetsky's short stories have been chosen for a Puschart Prize, Best New American Voices and Best American Short Stories notable stories of 2009, and her personal essays have appeared in the New York Times, Santa Monica Review, Antioch Review and elsewhere. She has been a fellow at MacDowell Colony, Ucross Foundation, Djerassi Resident Artists Program and the St. James Centre for Creativity in Malta. A 25-year practitioner of Iyengar and Ashtanga yoga, she lived in India as a Fulbright scholar and wrote a memoir about her studies with the yogi BKS Iyengar, First There Is a Mountain, published in 2004 by Little, Brown. She is visiting assistant professor of creative writing in the MFA program at Penn State.

... read more

Written by Editorial team on 25-03-2011, 1 user comment

Hari Kunzru: Address to the European Writers Parliament

This is the first of what will become regular cross-posts from international writers or journals with similar political or aesthetic sensibilities to Overland.

Over the last few years, the Overland blog has built a small but flourishing community of writers debating politics and culture from a largely Australian perspective. The new cross-posts aim to build on those discussions, and forge some links with likeminded people overseas.

hari_kunzruHari Kunzru is the author of the novels The Impressionist (2002), Transmission (2004) and My Revolutions (2007), as well as a short story collection, Noise (2006). His work has been translated into twenty-one languages and won him prizes including the Somerset Maugham award, the Betty Trask prize of the Society of Authors and a British Book Award. In 2003 Granta named him one of its twenty best young British novelists. Lire magazine named him one of its 50 ‘écrivains pour demain’. He is Deputy President of English PEN, a patron of the Refugee Council and a member of the editorial board of Mute magazine. His short stories and journalism have appeared in diverse publications including The New York Times, Guardian, New Yorker, Washington Post, Times of India, Wired and New Statesman. His fourth novel, Gods Without Men, will be published in August 2011. He lives in New York City. ... read more

Written by Editorial team on 11-03-2011, 7 user comments

Fiction review: This Too Shall Pass

Finn-smallIn exciting news, last night, Melbourne writer SJ Finn and Sleepers Publishing launched Finn’s second novel, This Too Shall Pass.

A writer with a diverse oeuvre, Finn is a well-known poet and her first novel, Fine Salt, was published in 2002. Finn’s short stories have been produced for radio and published in such notables as Going Down Swinging and Sleepers Almanac and in 2010 her short story ‘Angus’s Playground’ was a runner-up in the Australian Book Review short story competition. Last, but certainly not least, Finn writes commentary and review here at Overland. ... read more

Written by Clare Strahan on 4-03-2011, 3 user comments

Fiction review: So this is life

So this is lifeSo this is life
Anne Manne
Melbourne University Press

When I came to the last page of Anne Manne’s memoir So This is Life, I wept. By that time I was her closest friend and had cried and laughed my way through seventeen stories of her early life. Manne has the fundamental quality of a good writer – the ability to connect with the reader.

Better known as an essayist, Manne is a consummate storyteller. The memoir is subtitled ‘scenes from a country childhood’ and each standalone chapter works like a short story to describe a pivotal episode, many of them moments of epiphany in the young girl’s life. As the book progresses, it becomes a series of shorter vignettes, told with panache and delicious humour. ... read more

Written by Carol Middleton on 3-03-2011, 3 user comments

Did you read … Meanjin?

The latest Meanjin, Volume 70, the first edition for 2011, is also the Meanjin-swansong of its editor Sophie Cunningham who took the helm in 2008 and resigned unexpectedly in 2010. Sophie’s editorial wraps-up her time with the journal and welcomes the newly appointed Sally Heath.

This edition of Meanjin begins with the rather droll ‘Mulgrave, je t’aime’ by Oslo Davis, a cartoon that should bring a smile to the lips of many Melbournites and friends-of-Melbournites. Goodness only knows what would happen to the ‘faux hipsters’ if they made it out as far as Warburton … ... read more

Written by Clare Strahan on 28-02-2011, 5 user comments

i is the revolution

your transaction has been processed by paypal
this purchase will appear on your credit card bill as
item: revolution
number of items: 1
cost: $AUD priceless

the revolution thanks you for choosing itself

the revolution is downloading onto your ipad
& being transferred onto your iphone
it is an irevolution
the revolution is i
i is the revolution

the revolution is available in e-book form
the revolution/s full text is available for 99c on amazon
the revolution comes in 4 short podcasts
that can be worn as a USB bracelet
the revolution hz been turned on
you must follow the revolution
it will be abbreviated to fit its own twitter feed:
the revolution will drop all vo

Written by Maxine Clarke on 14-02-2011, 10 user comments

Non-fiction review: The Best Australian Essays 2010

BestEssays2010The Best Australian Essays 2010
Robert Drewe (ed)
Black Inc.

The first task of an editor of a volume of essays is to arrive at a working definition of the form. Accepting that an essay is a ‘shortish piece of non fiction on a focused subject, often written from a personal point of view’, Robert Drewe then proceeds to declare his editorial objective:

I wanted to showcase those subjects which thoughtful and talented Australian writers were absorbed by in this particular year; indeed (I thought), wouldn't it be good to show what this country, and its culture, was about in 2010.

... read more

Written by Boris Kelly on 27-01-2011, 6 user comments

Love your work, Childs: a review

Holly Childs' workI have come across some writing that made me think ‘I have never come across anything like this before,’ and then I thought about thinking that and the closest comparison I could come to was Richard Brautigan. But it’s not that, either. Because it’s written by a woman, is Antipodean and totally twenty-first century.

I am a sheltered sort of person in the great scheme of avant-garde literature and do not doubt that there is a great swathe of writers experimenting with language and the digital age, with stream of consciousness and pithy, well-crafted satire and with self-publishing in the professionally designed-yet-home-created zine. It is, however, this work particularly that I have, blessedly, been introduced to and, at present, is my only reference point. ... read more

Written by Clare Strahan on 24-01-2011, 3 user comments

Fiction review: Reading Madame Bovary

readingmadamebovaryReading Madame Bovary
Amanda Lohrey
Black Inc.

I was keen to read these stories by Amanda Lohrey after admiring her novella Vertigo (2008). Better known for her novels and essays, Lohrey has put together nine stories, five of them previously unpublished, for the collection Reading Madame Bovary.

Lohrey has a remarkable ability to be lyrical and profound while keeping both feet in the here and now of Australian life. For a ‘literary’ writer, she is refreshingly comfortable with the mundane minutiae of modern life (to-do lists and washing up) and, from there, teases out the themes and issues that lie beneath the surface of contemporary consciousness. ... read more

Written by Carol Middleton on 21-01-2011, 2 user comments