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…
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…
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 – The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic
[This is the seventeenth instalment in Ashley Thomson’s No Man’s Land Reading Project.] Reviews of Kendrick’s debut album, contemplations of Lana Del Ray, treatises on the state of Coachella, dispassionate and analytical tear downs of Tyler, the Creator. Those areRead more…