Waltzing with Jack Dancer: a slow dance with cancer Poems by Geoff Goodfellow Story by Grace Goodfellow Wakefield Press This review is dedicated to Guido Schivella, who lost to cancer in 2008, and to Charisse Mitchell, who will beat cancer in 2011. Cancer is indiscriminate, picking its battles with seeming randomness. There are hypothesised causes: […]

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 […]

Beginning with issue 202, Alison Croggon is writing a regular column for Overland, one dedicated to books – our ideas of them and our relationships to them. Here’s the first. Enjoy. ‘Some people will tell you that none of these things happened. They’ll say they were just a dream that the three of us shared. […]

‘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 […]

From Moree to Mabo: The Mary Gaudron Story Pamela Burton UWAP From Moree to Mabo is the compelling and readable biography of a remarkable lawyer. Although some of the detailed analysis of the key cases and political turmoils of Mary Gaudron’s time as Solicitor General of NSW can be overwhelming, it is hard to put […]

Not a fan of media theorist Marshall ‘the medium is the message’ McLuhan? Okay, I don’t go in for the technological determinism either, but you can’t deny that the man was uncannily prescient when it came to predicting how our culture would develop – a ‘global village’, electric technology ‘reshaping and restructuring patterns of social […]

The next Meanland event, The evolution of the bookshop, is just on the horizon: With Amazon.com, ebooks and print-on-demand, are we seeing the end of the traditional bookstore? In the first Meanland event for 2011, a panel of retailers, e-traders and industry insiders discuss how book selling is changing and what that evolution means for […]

I’m a woman; here are some things I’m thinking about today: 1. Mary Poppins and that feminist sub-plot:   2. The war being waged on women and their reproductive rights (which, in many countries, like the vote, were won long ago): • In ‘Lucky girl’, Bridget Potter recounts what she went through to get an […]

In 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 […]

So 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 […]

HarperCollins is committed to the library channel. We believe this change balances the value libraries get from our titles with the need to protect our authors and ensure a presence in public libraries and the communities they serve for years to come. Remember the library card inside the front cover (sometimes the back) that used […]

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 […]

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, […]

Imagine my shock, horror and dismay when I went online to get my Overland fix and got absolutely, wtf, nothing. That’s if you don’t count a message, repeating ad infinitum, that my connection had timed out. Quick to self-blame for technology stuff-ups, I gave myself over to a number of scenarios: had I clicked something […]

It’s 22 January, and the first gathering of the Still Waters Black Womens Storytelling Network. The group founder, Zimbabwean writer Fadzai Jaravaza, pauses, takes a breath, looks around at the group of beautiful brown women gathered for tea in a small room at the Institute for Postcolonial Studies in North Melbourne and asks ‘Any questions?’ […]

Without a doubt, the greatest thing about ebooks is their convenience. If it’s 2am and you must read Anna Krien’s Into the Woods because an unexpected need to understand Tasmania’s environmental politics arises, in this day and age, you should be able to buy that book (in much the same way as you could find […]