Kill Your Darlings: Issue Four (Aus) Ed: Rebecca Starford January 2011 reviewed by Lisa Down Call me a philistine, but I wasn’t previously familiar with the Australian quarterly Kill Your Darlings. It means I don’t have a standard by which I can judge this edition but I walked away satisfied that it had provided the [...]
By Angela Meyer
|
Posted in Other People's Words, Reviews + Analyses
|
Also tagged Australian literary journals, Australian literature, Ben Gook, Bethanie Blanchard, Bret Easton Ellis, Caroline Hamilton, Elizabeth Gilbert, Emily Maguire, essays, guest reviews, Hannah Kent, Jake Wilson, Jonathan Franzen, Kate Douglas, Kill Your Darlings, Kill Your Darlings Issue Four, KYD, Lisa Down, literary journals, Louise Swinn, Luke Ryan, Michael Sala, Olivia Guntarik, Peggy Frew, Rebecca Starford, reviews, Sally Vickers, short stories, The Ghost Wrier
|
1001 Australian Nights Dave Graney 9780980790436, Affirm Press (Aus) by Gerard Elson Read part one here. Have you tried your hand at prose fiction? Would you ever be interested? I’d prefer to write fiction than something like 1001 Australian Nights. I’m having the heebs a bit with this book coming out and people reading it! [...]
By Angela Meyer
|
Posted in Interviews + Profiles, Other People's Words
|
Also tagged 1001 Australian Nights, ABC, Affirm Press, Aussie rock, Australian books, Australian music, Australian music scene, Australian rock memoirs, authenticity, Beezlebub, Dave Graney, Gerard Elson, interviews, Kuchar brothers, Leviathan, London, Lovecraft, Melbourne, Melbourne Music Scene, memoir, music business, performaing, performance, Robert Crumb, rock 'n' roll, rock memoirs, rock music, St Kilda, the devil, tour diaries
|
1001 Australian Nights Dave Graney 9780980790436, Affirm Press (Aus) by Gerard Elson Dave Graney likes his coffee weak and his public spaces swarming. So we meet at Starbucks. It’s not exactly rock ‘n’ roll, but then that’s Graney: never one to play the scummy, hard-worn rock pariah (thank god). He arrives early and I’m embarrassed [...]
By Angela Meyer
|
Posted in Interviews + Profiles, Other People's Words
|
Also tagged 1001 Australian Nights, Affirm Press, Aussie rock, Australian books, Australian rock memoirs, authenticity, Beezlebub, Dave Graney, Gerard Elson, interviews, Kuchar brothers, Leviathan, London, Lovecraft, Melbourne, Melbourne Music Scene, music business, performaing, performance, Robert Crumb, rock 'n' roll, rock memoirs, rock music, St Kilda, the devil, tour diaries
|
December 21, 2010 – 12:40 pm
Fremantle Press, 2010 (Aus, US, UK) 9781921361869 Remember that Renaissance sculpture you admired, briefly, in a Roman or Florentine church, cool and hard and chiselled and, perhaps a little too dramatically posed? Reading John Mateer’s collection of poems The West, gives an analogous sensation. The sculptors worked in marble that kept its material nature, the hardness [...]
By Angela Meyer
|
Posted in Other People's Words, Reviews + Analyses
|
Also tagged Bowie, dactyl, Fremantle Press, Greg Westenberg, guest reviews, John Mateer, poetics, poetry, poets, precision, Renaissance sculpture, The West
|
August 30, 2010 – 9:30 pm
This review first appeared in the August issue of Bookseller+Publisher, and is cross-posted over at Bookseller+Publisher‘s Fancy Goods blog. Bereft Chris Womersley Scribe, September 2010 (Australia) 9781921640605 Chris Womersley’s Bereft, his second novel after 2008’s award-winning The Low Road, is a rich, gripping tale of love, loss, conflict and salvation. The prologue states that in 1912, during a [...]
Gil Scott Heron is on Parole Maxine Beneba Clarke Picaro Press Reviewed by Greg Westenberg The rhythm: insistent, consistent, beat-heavy in places but with enough sunlight in the words to take us out of the club, into a community’s irregular syncopation; the rhythm, that I couldn’t always get (white boys, everybody knows it, can’t dance). [...]
The Big Issue no. 359: Toasty Tales fiction special Available now from street vendors, launched Wednesday 21 July at Readings Carlton Reviewed by Sam Cooney For me, The Big Issue is like a tub of Neapolitan ice-cream. It’s reliable. It’s unpretentious and doesn’t pretend to be anything except exactly what it is. You buy it every [...]
By Angela Meyer
|
Posted in Other People's Words, Reviews + Analyses
|
Also tagged Australian fiction, Christos Tsiolkas, Emmett Stinson, guest reviews, Jo Case, Karen Hitchcock, Linda Jaivin, Melissa Cranenburgh, Michael Faber, Oslo Davis, Patrick Allington, Romy Ash, Sam Cooney, Samuel Rutter, Shaun Gladwell, short fiction, short stories, Stormie Mills, the big issue, the big issue fiction special, toasty tales, Toni Jordan, winter
|
Love Machine Clinton Caward Hamish Hamilton (Penguin) February 2010, Australia 9781926428024 Reviewed by Sam Cooney. I first encountered Clinton Caward’s writing last year in the lit journal Cutwater; his two short stories punched me in the gut with their corrosive and compelling strength, and the accompanying author interview struck some chords. (Indeed, I said so [...]
By Angela Meyer
|
Posted in Other People's Words, Reviews + Analyses
|
Also tagged Australian authors, Australian literature, Clinton Caward, Cutwater, debut novels, guest review, Kings Cross, loneliness, Love Machine, love story, Meanjin, porn, raunch culture, Sam Cooney, Samuel Cooney, seedy, sex, sex shops, Sydney, transgressive, underground, wanking booths
|
Gravel Peter Goldsworthy Hamish Hamilton March 2010 (Australia) 9781926428192 Gravel is Peter Goldsworthy’s new collection of short stories – amusing and moving - covering a range of predominantly white middle-class characters in conflict with their own egos. But there are also stories exploring erotic awakening (something Goldsworthy did well in Everything I Knew) and others where [...]
By Angela Meyer
|
Posted in Interviews + Profiles
|
Also tagged amusing fiction, art, Australian authors, Australian literature, Cate Kennedy, emotional trajectories, eroticism, Everything I Knew, Get a Life, Gravel, Hamish Hamilton, interviews, mirror mirror, on writing, organs, Paddy O'Reilly, Patrick Cullen, Penguin, Peter Goldsworthy, physical reactions to writing, Q&A, Shooting the Dog, short stories, short story form, Steven Amsterdam, The Fourth Tenor, The List of All Answers, Tom Cho, writing process
|
A postcard from Beth Sometimes
Beth Sometimes is the author/creator of From Sometimes Love Beth, where Sometimes wrote a postcard to somebody or someone (or something) every day for a year. She sent me this postcard, which gives you some insight into her work! Sometimes will be appearing at the Emerging Writers’ Festival, which starts this weekend in Melbourne (how exciting!)