writer | editor | artist
So, some amazingly wondrous news. I’ve been invited to join the jury for the 2016 James Tiptree, Jr. Award. I would like to ask you to help me and my fellow jurors find the BEST works for the award this year. You can do this by clicking on the link below and submitting any recommendations you…
This is a tiny, tiny extract from my current work-in-progress. A novel whose draft title is The Book of Ruth. It is the story of a family growing up in a small riverside town in northern New South Wales after the Second World War. Beth, lying belly down on the pier, her hair and hands hanging down,…
You know that I like bunnies, right? In fact, I quite like all the woodland creatures, but rabbits, or hares, or bunnies have always appealed to me. Perhaps this can be explained semi-magically: they’re said by some to be one of the animals strongly associated with my sun-sign (Virgo). Maybe it’s because, even though I…
Today’s guest post is by Elizabeth Kasmer. I met Liz a few years ago, when she first started working on the manuscript of a beautiful Young Adult manuscript called ‘Aurora’. I’m still waiting (impatiently!) for her to finish the novel and find a publisher, but in the meantime I’m delighted to have the pleasure of reading…
Guess what! The latest issue of the Review of Australian Fiction features a brand new story by Jessica White, and another by me. Jessica is a country girl from New South Wales who, at just four years of age, lost most of her hearing due to meningitis. Being a determined little girl, she refused to be daunted byt his –…
Some afternoons I would sit on the back deck and do nothing for so long that the light would fall out of the world. There is a moment, unfixable, between day and night, when you still believe you can see the wrens darting about. But then the light is truly gone, and you aren’t sure whether…
Little Miss Muffet Sat on a tuffet Eating her curds and whey; Along came a spider, Who sat down beside her, And frightened Miss Muffet away. The first printed version of ‘Little Miss Muffet’ appeared in a book of nursery rhymes published in 1805, though one old rumour has it that the Elizabethan naturalist and physician, Doctor…
Guess what? Rupetta got a favourable mention in The Washington Post. In a fabulous article by Alyssa Rosenberg called ‘20 ways to fix Hollywood’s woman problems‘ (no, the answer is not that Rupetta will DESTROY THE JOINT). This is super double awesome because two years ago today I was in York, in a superbly strange ‘haunted’ pub,…
Over the weeks leading up to my mother’s death, I went out into the orchard each night and trained myself to see in the dark. This was at her insistence. A training I at first refused. Initially, the only things I could see were shadows. I navigated by scent and memory. This is the lemon tree; here the orange;…
This post is about the perils of being naughty, and of new mothers. And baking. It begins with a strange tale, drifts off into a discussion of sourdough starters (or ‘mothers’) and then documents our adventures with creating a new mother. Lucy Clifford and The New Mother Lucy Clifford (1846-1929) wrote a delightfully dark story called…