The presence of Australian troops is only beneficial for the bunch of warlords and criminals ruling Afghanistan. The Afghan people face dire conditions as the US and their allies have massacred innocent women, children and men – and are continuing so. Since 2001, tens of thousands civilians have been killed by the blind bombardments of […]

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 […]

RANDAL: I’m not going to miss what is probably going to be the social event of the season. DANTE: You hate people. RANDAL: But I love gatherings. Isn’t it ironic? – Clerks I enjoyed a sweet taste of alternative artistic expression on two recent occasions which made me feel better about the way things are […]

The Emerging Writer’s Festival, held in Melbourne in the last two weeks of May, was just what emerging writers needed to kick off the winter months: inspiration, motivation and the coming together of a writerly community. Still I have to admit I’m a bit bemused by the concept of ‘emerging writer’, perhaps because I’ve been […]

This was my first experience of the Emerging Writers’ Festival, and it was interesting to compare it to larger writers’ festivals I am more familiar with. Over nine days, events were spread out over the city at venues such as the Wheeler Centre and BMW Edge, but the weekend program was housed at the Melbourne […]

From the doubts of conception through to the power of labour, and onto the magic and miseries of babies and children and mature awareness as daughters – 5 women wordsmiths share their perspectives to create a multi-voiced portrait of mothering in modern Australia. Performing on the night: Koraly Dimitriadis, Vicki Thornton, Amy Bodossian, Tiggy Johnson […]

If you didn’t make it to the Emerging Writers’ Festival last weekend, I’m afraid to say you missed out. The festival, which is aimed exclusively at writers, attracts a different audience to the major festivals which also court readers. Nowhere was this more evident than in the ‘Never Surrender’ session when author Sean Condon asked, […]

As the red sun dipped into the azure ocean, the last words from Wordstorm 2010 were carried away by the cool sea breeze as it blew into the Botanical Gardens. Wordstorm, The NT Writers’ Festival, was put to bed and it will be two years before it returns to Darwin, as next year it will […]

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 […]