Transylvania, Romania, May 2017 Something must happen to me in the plane. I cannot emerge from long-haul travel unchanged. I disappear into myself, in that darkness, through those lost days and nights and emerge quieter, simpler and more watchful. MyRead more…
Our lives are full of shoulds. For women, these shoulds act as the hands that form and shape a lump of clay. Like clay being formed into something suddenly respected as art, we are pressed into behaviours that see usRead more…
Krissy Kneen is the award winning author of the memoir Affection, the novels Steeplechase, Triptych, The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine, and the Thomas Shapcott Award winning poetry collection Eating My Grandmother. Her latest book is An Uncertain Grace – we chat toRead more…
English literary critic Cyril Connelly once wrote “There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall”, giving credence to the theory that having young children negatively affects an artists’ ability to create art. ThisRead more…
Australian law is built on its allowance of discretion. Often, this discretion is seen as a darling of the left – critiqued by the right as unfairly promoting instances of ‘judicial activism’ (as seen in Wik V Queensland, for example,Read more…
Izzy Roberts-Orr is kind of awe-inspiring. She is a writer, theatre maker, podcaster and also the Artistic Director and Co-CEO of the Emerging Writers’ Festival (EWF) EWF also run the Digital Writers’ Festival which is on RIGHT NOW and accessibleRead more…
Biology has been historically used as a justification for problematic and oppressive arguments. Science was used by the Nazis to justify the extermination of ‘inferior’ races. Ever since the dawn of the era of Enlightenment and subsequent increased secularisation ofRead more…
I don’t like Taylor Swift. Her music isn’t relevant to this assessment. I don’t like her. The person. Or, allowing that she is an extremely clever performer adept at constructing a version of herself for public consumption, I don’t likeRead more…
Following the recent violence committed by white supremacists in Charlottesville, nominally over the removal/non-removal of “historical” confederate statutes, a similar debate has been imported to Australia. In August, a prominent statute of Captain Cook in Hyde Park, Sydney, was inscribed/vandalisedRead more…
Below is an extract from Things That Helped, Jessica Friedmann, Scribe Publications 2017. Jessica is delivering a special workshop ‘Writing Life, Writing Self’, on Sun 8 Oct, 2-5pm, Canberra, presented by the Feminist Writers Festival. More info is here. __ The wind on the hillRead more…