Mike Nock Trio Plus: music to ease anyone’s pain

January 3, 2012

I must be missing New York’s cold January weather. How else to explain the two ice packs I’ve clutched to either end of me this past week in a hot and humid Australian climate? Visiting a dear friend in Brisbane, I fell over my own foot while hanging out some washing. The resulting bruise looked [...]

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On being widowed: Sarah Watt and William McInnes

November 27, 2011

Tonight I learned that Australian filmmaker Sarah Watt died earlier this month. Sometimes I’m a little slow on the uptake – it was more than three weeks ago. She leaves behind a body of award-winning work, a loving husband, and two teenage children. This moving article in The Age features a photograph I will reproduce below [...]

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Cross-dressing writers in Theresa Rebeck’s “Seminar”

November 21, 2011

I’m excited that my first guest post on the terrific Brevity blog is now online. It’s a riff on a satirical attack on memoir-writing in the new play Seminar by Theresa Rebeck, which I recently saw in preview. The remarkable Alan Rickman (who I have adored ever since Truly Madly Deeply) plays Leonard, a formidable [...]

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The New York memoir

November 15, 2011

The Economist‘s books blog reviews James Wolcott’s memoir of 1970s New York as the latest in a long line of first-person accounts of living in the city. There are certain precautions memoirists can take to inoculate themselves against the genre’s hazards. … Memoirists are safe so long as they appear to be eulogising someone or [...]

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Top secrets of writing a memoir

November 13, 2011

Did you know that literary magazine Tin House receives 2,000 stories every month? Or that New York literary agents receive 10-12 queries per day? These are a few of the reality-check gems I picked up by watching the videotaped National Book Critics Circle panel “Secrets of Memoir” held recently at the NYU Bookstore. The panel moderator, [...]

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A “tiny master” of an essay on writing personal essays

November 3, 2011

I am constantly worried that I spend too much time reading online. It can’t be right to switch on the computer first (or second) thing in the morning, or to check email last thing before bed. Conducting a life lived in the two opposing time zones of  Sydney and New York is partly the cause, [...]

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Australia: the flavour of the next few months for literary magazines

October 31, 2011

Here’s a quick roundup of an odd assortment of opportunities for writers, all on the subject of Australia: Griffith REVIEW is seeking submissions for Edition 36: What Is Australia For? What Is Australia For? will sketch out visionary ideas for the future, uncover neglected stories from the past, and provide an exciting forum for new [...]

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Losing the plot: How do you write fiction or nonfiction without a plot?

October 25, 2011

The Guardian recently launched a series of short pieces by writers as diverse as Geoff Dyer and Kate Grenville on how to write fiction. The series, dubbed A Guardian Masterclass, includes Rachel Cusk on point of view, DPC Pierre on dialogue and Kate Mosse on plot. Interestingly, the series is available as an eBook for [...]

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Is writing memoir a transgressive act?

October 9, 2011

I’ve just come across Lindsay Miller’s impassioned essay on the cultural and political power of women’s memoirs in this recent essay in The Atlantic. I have to say I’m impressed at her dedication to reading the sub-genre of memoirs by Iranian women. I enjoyed and learned much from Persepolis, which was on Miller’s bedside table, [...]

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Stories and digressions: Geoff Dyer with Rebecca Mead at The New Yorker Festival

October 2, 2011

When you have a literary crush on a writer, going to see him or her at a live event is a fraught undertaking. There’s always the chance that my reader’s fantasy, gleaned over hours of intimate and silent time spent in the author’s company, will be tarnished by the physical reality of the author in person. [...]

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