Not awarding the Vogel’s this year is downright cruel. Mediocre books get published all the time, and some of them even win multiple awards: who cares if you give the Vogel’s to a manuscript that isn’t a work of utter genius?

The other day I was trying to write a short story. While procrastinating, I googled ‘How to write a short story?’ The search yielded 1.75 million results, the first being ‘How to write an amazing short story’. This article’s number-one tip was to ‘know what a short story is’, and the author even provided a helpful definition: a short story is just like a story, but short. It shouldn’t be a novel, the article advised, and it should have limited characters. (I assume numerically, but perhaps psychologically. Then I tried to think of a story that had unlimited characters. Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate came close, but not quite. I concluded that on this basis, all stories are short stories.) ‘Keep it to 3000 words’ was another suggestion.

Koh’s impending wedding to celebrity dentist Taylor Amberson was the talk of this year’s Emerging Writers’ Festival in Melbourne. Despite being one of Australia’s most-lauded up-and-coming authors, Koh announced at the festival that she was giving up writing to become a lady who lunches.

Why don't we commemorate Gallipoli by taking a clear, cold-eyed look at what war is and what war does? Instead of featuring members of the Australian cricket team, why doesn't every Camp Gallipoli event include speakers who have lived through recent wars and can talk about their experiences?

‘You are not going to make it to Australia,’ the Minister had told the Clients. ‘Not even in your dreams.’