Are Our Reading Habits Sexist?

If you study the numbers you might notice that the publishing industry is dominated by male writers. The cold hard statistics are right here. And they’re a little bit alarming. The VIDA: Women in Literary Arts have been crunching the numbers for three years, and each year has shown that publications regarding male writers are … Continue reading →

Happy Birthday Mansfield!

I love Katherine Mansfield’s short stories. I think they’re some of the best I’ve ever read. So when I saw on the Google homepage that it would be her 125th birthday, I just had to make a post. The amount of careful crafting and detailed character construction that goes into her stories is amazing. If … Continue reading →

literary theory and criticism

As a writer, it’s all very interesting to be able to brag about Baudrillard, Cixous, Bhabha, Spivak, or any other fancy-panter out there. But is it actually helpful to your writing to know about literary theories and criticisms? I’ve been exposed to lots of new and confusing ideas at uni, most of it going in … Continue reading →

(Not) Just Kydding

I recently wrote my major essay for a class on early modern drama on the Thomas Kyd play The Spanish Tragedy. I noticed then that it had additions in the back, scenes that had been added years later, and I read them. But to be honest, I didn’t like them at all. And now it … Continue reading →

Happy Birthday Kafka

Google is telling me that it’s Franz Kafka’s birthday. I first read The Metamorphosis in high school and I’ll be honest, I put it down in lieu of something else one day, and forgot about it. I went back to it eventually, read it through, and loved it. Later the same year a stage production of … Continue reading →

The 39 Steps – review

Late last night I finished The Story Mechanics adaptation of The 39 Steps. I’ve written previous posts on the nature of interactive novels and what it may mean for the publishing industry, and having now finished my first ever interactive story, I can honestly say: everything is going to be alright. I hadn’t read John … Continue reading →

Aus Lit Review: June Comp

For the last few months the Australian Literature Review have been holding short story competitions, and this month is the last comp! June’s theme is ‘Mystery/Detective’, and is being described by the Australian Literature Review as having a strong mystery element with clear stakes for the characters, and this mystery could be pursued by an everyday character or a … Continue reading →

Hologram

Been published in a few lit journals but not sure how to make that great leap into book publishing? Hologram is a new project being run by Express Media (those guys who handle Voiceworks, oh how we love Voiceworks!) whose aim is to do just that: bring your manuscript into the world in a proper … Continue reading →

Storyteching: UPDATE

A few weeks ago I blogged about interactive novels in my post ‘Storyteching’ and got a bit of a mixed bag of responses, which is always nice to see. I mentioned an article in the post, that reviewed a new interactive adaptation of John Buchan’s novel The Thirty-Nine Steps. I wasn’t able to fully comment on … Continue reading →

Niffenegger Wisdom

I love reading about great writers, especially when they give you advice. Usually it’s advice about writing, which is good because I’m a writer. But every now and then you come across a few gems about life, which is even better because despite being writers we’re all human. This article by The Guardian is a … Continue reading →