writer | editor | artist
There are an enormous number of general empirical propositions that count as certain for us. One such is that if someone’s arm is cut off it will not grow again (L Wittgenstein, On Certainty) There were nine of them to begin with. Children, that is. Ten, if you count poor Dora, dead before she began. There were…
Finally! A new fairy tale from one of my talented students at USQ. This one is an original tale by Stephen Denham. Stephen is a film-maker/singer-songwriter currently in the final year of a Creative Arts degree at USQ. Doctors determined that writing was in his blood from a very early age which, unfortunately, led to a…
This is the second in a series of blog posts looking at gender and literary awards. In particular, these posts look at the gender of the authors of award-winning books, and the gender of the main or viewpoint character/s of those books. I’ve found this research quite exciting and interesting, because it reveals another face of…
Continuing with the festival of awesomeness … another extract from a piece by one of my fabulous students at USQ, Kerina Dearling. Kerina has been reading and writing poetry and fairy tales this semester in CWR2001. Kerina is a young writer who has been developing her skills over the last three years at USQ. Her passion…
And one more. This is a draft abstract for a paper I hope to deliver at the annual conference of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP), in Melbourne this November. The conference title is: Writing the Ghost Train: Rewriting, Remaking, Rediscovering. Abstract: Uchronic, or queer in no time: wilful subjects in historical fiction Works…
The following is the abstract for a paper I’m hoping to deliver at the upcoming inaugural conference of the Australasian Death Studies Network: Death, Dying, and the Undead: Contemporary Approaches and Practice. The conference (which I’ll be attending either way!) will be held at UCQ’s Noosa Campus on October 25 this year. Paper Title: Death…
In the winter, the wind and his wife began to dwindle. They put a candle in the window, to light the path to their door. No one came near but the owls, who watched the old couple bend, and fetch, and fade. They were barely a whisper, barely a wisp. They had made a last…
My students are awesome! Have I told you that lately? No? Hmmm … I think you are not listening to me. Let me explain. I have these students, and they are FABULOUS. Just read this story by Bronwyn Palmer, and you will see. Bronwyn is currently studying counselling part-time at USQ and hopes to have…
The Underwater Fancy-Dress Parade is a children’s picture book, written by Davina Bell and illustrated by Allison Colpoys. It was published by Scribe earlier this year. Davina Bell was, for six years, part of the editorial team in Penguin’s Young Readers department, and is the author of the four Alice stories (part of the ‘Our Australian…
I’ve been dreaming of covers for Dying in the First Person. The images in my head are of water, and of Samuel and Morgan (the twins around whom the novel swirls) as reflections of each other. So, of course, the images that come to me most often are Caravaggio’s Narcissus: Or this equally evocative image (again of Narcissus),…