I settle into my new Wintec saddle and guide my pony to a halt. We’ve already trotted in circles and figure eights for enough time in the little yard for Trixie to cough, snort, wheeze and fart her displeasure. TrixieRead more…
Unearthing lesbian desire
The first kiss between Sue and Maud in Sarah Waters’ best-selling novel Fingersmith is visually suggestive and subtly erotic. ‘I kissed her again. Then I touched her. I touched her face. I began at the meeting of our mouths […] I hadRead more…
What’s in a (pen) name?: writers and the fate of the female pseudonym
‘What’s in a name?’ asked William Shakespeare. Apparently, a lot. From the use of initials to the chosen gender of the author’s name, research has shown that an author’s name has a significant impact on sales percentages. A Time articleRead more…
No Man’s Land Reading Project: The Secret River
[This is the 21st instalment in Ashley Thomson’s No Man’s Land Reading Project.] I wonder how many nations’ readers are familiar with the sensation of picking up a work of literary fiction and recognising in it the voices of five orRead more…
This is Not a Book Review: women, the middlebrow and the Sydney Review of Books
Not so long ago, academic Beth Driscoll published an essay in the Sydney Review of Books (SRB). This is an online publication which deliberately blurs the distinction between the review and the essay, scholarly writing and literary journalism. This essay,Read more…
Radical Acts
Recently, I was wandering the aisles of a local department store when a moment of activism by a woman shopper stopped me in my tracks. It was in the book section. I’d only just read that the books in chainRead more…
No Man’s Land Reading Project – The Poisonwood Bible
[This is the eighteenth instalment in Ashley Thomson’s No Man’s Land Reading Project.] I will probably realise this generalisation to be false not long after making it, but for now it’s helping me begin a review of a book which isRead more…
Balancing the Books: Changing the gender balance in English school texts
30 percent. According to the Stella Prize Schools Program, that’s the percentage of New South Wales HSC texts written by female authors. Victoria doesn’t fare much better with female writers making up less than 40 percent of their English textRead more…
No Man’s Land Reading Project – Lovers’ Knots
[This is the sixteenth instalment in Ashley Thomson’s No Man’s Land Reading Project.] The sub-heading of this book is “A hundred-year novel”. This is no lie: the sum of the many disparate and delicately related stories in this novel do spanRead more…
Myth-busting women and literature : Lucy Neave
This is a transcript of the talk given by Lucy Neave at the Feminartsy & Ainslie and Gorman Arts Centre event, Myth-busting Women and Literature, in August 2015. The myth I’m busting is: ‘Women writers are too preoccupied with frivolousRead more…