IN BRIEF:This book wins the title for most beautiful cover of the year, and what’s on the pages more than matches it. This is a gentle, flowing, river of a thing with currents of poetic writing on the surface, and an undertow of an intriguing story.
‘There is a great love affair with the word’ – Jane Curry, Ventura Publishing What a terrific, and truthful sentiment with which to kick off the latest addition to Sydney’s literary festival scene – the inaugural Writers in the Park, held yesterday in a rather soggy Centennial Park. There is a love affair with the word. Of that I had…
This is a little story of mine that was awarded third place in the Trudy Graham-Julie Lewis Literary Award for Prose, run by the Peter Cowan Writers Centre in WA.
It was inspired by a dramatic event I witnessed in Sydney’s Centennial Park. But the characters are entirely fictional.
So – why have I called this one ‘the seesaw edition’? Well, basically because I’m going to start on a bit of grim (reading) note, but end firmly on a high (writing) note.
Here goes..
Short Reads: Oh my goodness! This week, I found this quite extraordinary article from Jo Case, pondering whether her memoir ‘Boomer and Me‘ killed her marriage. Recently, I wrote a small memoir piece about a 40th birthday weekend away, which I showed to my husband to read. Let’s just say that he was left wondering if he had attended the…
Every so often a writer comes along who reminds you of the immense possibilities of language. Myfanwy Jones is that kind of writer. The way she works with imagery. The way she structures her sentences. The way she creates characters who are real but slightly magical. It’s just so… energising. You can read in more detail my thoughts about Myfanwy’s…
Short Reads: This was definitely the week in which I found myself disappearing less and less into the rabbit hole which is in the internet, and delving more and more into the excess of excellent material mounting up on my kindle. Look, I know there are people out there who think Amazon are the anti-christ, and there may be an…
IN BRIEF:Myfanwy Jones is an exciting writer, and she puts those skills on full display in ‘Leap’ – a story of loss and learning to love again.
Pick of the web: Unless you have been living under a rock (or not in Australia) you would no doubt have read/heard/listened to commentary on the Adam Goodes booing affair. For my mind, most of it has been a load of wasted hot air, from mostly white people who’ve never experienced a day of discrimination in their lives. But one…
Welcome to what I think is going to become a regular part of Book Birdy, and that is, a weekly check-in where I share my best short and long reads of the week, and do a little self-analysis about what I’ve been writing (apart from this blog).
I hope you enjoy it..