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The People Behind You Belong Here, Volume 1
No author is an island. With that in mind, I'm featuring the people who've been part of my life, both during the writing of You Belong Here and in my formative years...
Jobs Writers Do When They're Not Writing: Statistics Wrangler
It's 9.23, and Andrew Edgar Wiseman the Third (not his real name) is freaking out.
He's had seven cups of coffee, on account of the regular coffee drinking competitions we undertake to break up the boredom of working at a place where even the lifts sleep half the day. As a statistics wrangler, our job, ironically, is not to wrangle statistics (they leave that to people with degrees in that area) but rather, to ring up people who haven't given us their statistics, and say, 'When do you think you can give us your statistics?' before they hang up on us, and we say, 'Ah, well...'
Jobs Writers Do When They're Not Writing: Working in a Liquor Store
I have a friend called Heinrich (not his real name).
He is one of the best guys I know. I know this because he was my boss at a liquor store when I crashed the liquor store’s delivery van. Twice. In the space of about three months. Give or take two months...
Jobs Writers Do When They're Not Writing: Mulching an Airport
It is a truth universally acknowledged that an airport not yet mulched is in need of a good mulching. It is a lesser known truth that some poor bastard has to spread said mulch along the highways and byways that lead into the airport...
Flashback: The Family Guide to Writing and Parenting
Once, I was a full-time writer.
My day began at six, with coffee and a slice or two of fruit toast. I’d ruminate on character arcs and plot developments as though they were the very stuff of life. If time permitted, I would air-drum my way through any number of songs by early, Gabriel-era Genesis. Or, if I was desperate, something off Invisible Touch, writing all the way...
Flashback: Writing From the Cheap Seats
In fourteen years of writing, I’ve established something of a reputation.
Don't get me wrong. I don't get window seats at restaurants or all that many free books, aside from the considered review copies, as sent by a handful of Melbourne-based publishers. I made more money participating in a Twitter novella than I did for any short story I've published, and I'm often told that my writing is ‘a bit gritty...'
Upcoming Short Story Workshops and Competitions
2015 is proving to be fairly eventful in terms of my workload outside of writing. In the second half of the year I'm judging the SALA Short Story Prize (entries now open), The KSP Short Fiction Awards 2015 (also open), and the 2015 Margaret River Short Story Competition.
FEBRUARY WRITING WORKSHOPS AND MASTERCLASSES
I'm running short story workshops and masterclasses for The Perth Writers Festival and The Katharine Susannah Prichard Foundation in February, 2015, as listed below. Both workshops deliver skills that can be immediately applied to your work, and in many cases, result in more dynamic, natural fiction that's willing to take educated risks in the pursuit of literary excellence...
Five Things You Might Not Know About Annabel Smith
All the things you've wanted to know but never had the chance to ask about Australian author Annabel Smith, as told by the equally talented Brooke Davis, author of runaway hit Lost and Found...
Girl by Jamaica Kincaid - by Eva Lomski
The Story
For decades, Kincaid’s 'Girl', the first piece in her collection, At the Bottom of the River, has posed a conundrum. Is it a short story or a prose poem? Even the blurbs on the collection tiptoe around definitions: ‘these stories have all of poetry’s virtues,’ (Anne Tyler, The New Republic); ‘word paintings,’ (Jacqueline Austin, Voice Literary Supplement). But let’s be reminded that 'Girl' was first published as fiction in The New Yorker in 1978. Sure, there’s the length, unconventional structure and that hypnotic repetition, but, unsurprisingly, I’m with The New Yorker on this one, claiming Girl’s brilliance for story...