December, 2011

  In a status update on its Facebook page last week, literary journal Kill Your Darlings announced a move to multi-platform publishing. In the new year, the journal will be available as an ebook through Booki.sh, online via subscription, and in its original print form – as editor Rebecca Starford told Liticism, ‘We have no plans [...]

  If you follow certain bookish sites, you may have seen the ominous warning ‘Authors Beware’ quite a lot in the last few days. Dymocks Books, Australia’s largest bookselling chain, last week launched its widely anticipated self-publishing arm, D Publishing. Described in the promotional material as ‘author driven,’ the service allows authors to upload draft [...]

In our current technological age, the lure of nostalgia seems more potent that ever. Just as laptops have meant that many writers now long for the romance of the typewriter, so too, in the age of email, has the art of letter writing become a beautifully nostalgic endeavour. Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire sought to [...]

How does one write about grief? The ‘vortex’ is what Didion called it in The Year of Magical Thinking – a feeling that consumes utterly, that swallows you whole. The chance stumbling upon an object or place or day that reminds you of those lost, so powerfully, you feel you may suffocate. It is the [...]

Though the Keating era was somewhat before my time, there’s been many an afternoon I’ve spent happily watching Keating rants on youtube (such is the excitement of life as a PhD student). In the utter linguistic banality of our current political period, it’s sometimes heartening to watch lively political debate, and in clip after clip Keating consistently delivers – [...]