Featured News
If you love food …
I’m doing hardcopy edits on Famous! at the moment, and one of the insightful comments from my wonderful Penguin editors was about how Sophie, the main character, would imagine being famous, and whether it would involve nice food. Of course! Someone once said that...
Painful last words
Since I was 23 and experienced the delights of being catapulted off a runaway, galloping horse and onto a number of very uncomfortable logs in the high country of Victoria, I have had a reasonably and reluctantly close acquaintance with bodily pain. Four years after...
Publishing news and panelling blues
I have a new, six-month gig in the dayjob, and it’s pretty frantic, so I was delighted and surprised to get an email from my Penguin editors Katrina and Katie saying that my upcoming Chomp, Famous!, is almost ready for its final edit, and that Michelle Katsouranis is...
A small thing
If you’re a writer and you want to do something to assist the Victorian bushfire victims, the ASA has kindly provided a link to Tali Lavi’s email, so you can send her signed books to distribute around the affected towns. It doesn’t feel like a great deal, but I...
Sharing the love
I’ve been a fan of Russell Hoban ever since I read his sublime Turtle Diary when I was 17. He combines wit, elegance of phrase and deep insight into the human condition with cracking storytelling. (I also love the way he moves between children’s and adult works...
Perth Writers’ Festival
I’ll be chairing two sessions for the Perth Writers’ Festival this month, one on censorship in young adult writing with Sally Rippin, Libby Gleeson and AJ Betts, and one on fable with Rana Dasgupta (who has a very cool website), Sonya Hartnett and Arnold Zable. Check...
Happiness quotient
Lili Wilkinson quoted someone who said that libraries** are happiness engines, in that they provide: 1. Satisfying work to do 2. The experience of being good at something 3. Time spent with people we like 4. The chance to be part of something bigger than...
To a fine 2009
Once upon a time, I used to religiously reflect on the year that was, and compose lists of resolutions for the year to come. Like a good Protestant, I saw my life and the world around me as a project that always needed working on in order to feel that things were...
Reunion: a personal reflection
Yesterday I went to a small reunion of those who survived Kelmscott Senior High School in the mid 1980s, thanks to facebook (and A!). My memories of the place, which were largely unflattering, found their (fictionalised) way into my first novel, Obsession. Since the...
Would you keep reading this book?
I don’t normally let out anything close to a first draft, but as I’m about to start my summer holidays/serious writing schedule, any views on the following are most welcome: Scene: Bold Park, car park, 2am. No lights, barely a moon. Location: The back of a...