Guest Post by Elizabeth Bryer I have been waiting for this book for four years. Not that I knew that it would come into existence; I just hoped, quietly confident, that it would. Rachel Robertson’s ‘Reaching One Thousand’, joint winner of the 2008 ABR Calibre Essay Prize and later published in Black Inc.’s Best Australian [...]
READ MOREJune, 2012
Writing Another Jakarta: An Interview with Ruby J. Murray
Guest Post by Rebecca Harkins-Cross Ruby J. Murray’s debut novel Running Dogs explores how mythologies, both political and personal, may influence the trajectory of our lives. Protagonist Diana is an Australian aid worker living in Jakarta (an experience that Murray herself had in 2009-10), who occupies a liminal space as neither tourist nor insider in [...]
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‘To whittle down all that I am and give it a value’: Anna Funder and the Miles Franklin decision
At the end of All That I Am the protagonist Ruth muses: ‘It is the hardest thing, to work out one’s weight and heft in the world, to whittle down all that I am and give it a value.’ This now seems remarkably apt for a work given a dazzling array of literary value. Anna [...]
READ MORELiticism’s Miles Franklin Countdown: Favel Parrett’s Past The Shallows
*Spoiler alert: this is not intended as a straight review and I do refer to key plot points in this analysis. It’s strange the way works read in succession can speak to each other, the way the mind finds connections in works never written to be compared. In Tony Birch’s Blood the protagonists see a matinee [...]
READ MORELiticism’s Miles Franklin Countdown: Tony Birch’s Blood
*Spoiler alert: this is not intended as a straight review and I do refer to key plot points in this analysis. In one of the most vividly memorable moments of the novel, our young protagonists Jesse and Rachel wander like giants among miniature versions of the Eiffel Tower, the Great Pyramids, Dutch windmills, and the Leaning [...]
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Why don’t you know what you’ll get paid?
The first piece of writing I was ever paid for was an essay I wrote for the fourth issue of Kill Your Darlings journal. I remember vividly the moment I received the email that the work was accepted, and when they told me what I would be paid. I cherished that money because it was, [...]
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