reeling and writhing

in which library items' circulation rises, thanks to a book bloggers challenge

Not only that, the bloggers wrote over 1000 reviews of books by Australian women writers. Yes, we're talking about the Australian Women Writers' challenge, people.

Elizabeth Lhuede has been running this reviewing challenge since early this year Recently, at the Huffington Post, she summarised the reasons for staging a blog-led intervention to raise the profile of Australian women writers in their own country:

Last year when I went hunting for books by Australian women at my local library in the World Heritage area of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, I couldn't find any. The librarians weren't much help. They said, "Look for the kangaroo on the spine."

I asked friends. Like me, they'd heard of Geraldine Brooks (who lives in the US), Kate Grenville (who won the Orange Prize), and multi-award-winning author Helen Garner. Familiar, too, were names like Shirley Hazzard, Janette Turner Hospital and Kathy Lette (all non-Australian residents). But what about women living and writing in Australia - women of my own (younger) generation? Their books weren't being reviewed in Australian literary magazines.

She goes on to discuss the foundation this year of the Stella Prize for Australian women's writing, which will be awarded for the first time in 2013.

Around the time that her entry at the Huffington Post blog was posted, she also discovered that the librarians at Nowra library had noticed a rise in the circulation of books by Australian women since they had promoted the Australian Women Writers' Challenge at their library. 

That is the kind of story I just love to hear. Bloggers and librarians making a difference for a group of writers who deserve more attention. Very, very cool stuff, and every one of you must take a bow.

And on top of that, there's a massive database of reviews at the Australian Women Writers' Challenge website, and a new challenge planned for 2013.  So all interested bloggers and librarians should go and have a look around, and consider joining up.

And here's two posts from the site I've saved for later: 

Overland fiction editor and writer Jennifer Mills, on classics 

WTF is women's fiction? by author Paddy Reilly

More on why Margaret Atwood has srs wattage

"But Margaret," you can hear them whispering. "You're a literary icon at the height of your powers; it says so on your book covers. Why are you sneaking out with an online story-sharing site heavy on romance, vampires and werewolves? You should be endorsing Literature, capital L. Get back up on that pedestal! Strike a serious pose! Turn to stone!"

Maybe my dates with Wattpad are a bit undignified. But at my age you can afford to be undignified. You're free to explore, and to guinea-pig yourself, and to stretch the boundaries.

On www.wattpad.com – using your computer, tablet or phone – you can post your own writing. No one need know how old you are, what your social background is, or where you live. Your readers can be anywhere. And if you're worried about adverse reactions from your teachers, your grandmother, or others who might not like you writing about slavering zombies or your relatives, you can use a pseudonym. You can be FlamingLeprechaun and represent yourself with a picture of a bat or a spoon: the internet lends itself to surrealism. Then you can post stories about Pod People or affairs with smouldering hunks undead for 2,000 years, which beats "My Summer Holiday" every time. Not only that, you'll have readers who leave encouraging comments on your message board, thus boosting your morale.

Ah she is a fine and crazy diamond.  Book covers never lie!! Go you good thing. 

Read more at The Guardian.

who listens to paper radio

A radio of paper. A fine new thing of audio podcasts on a monthly basis, of new writing.

After mountainous hours of pixel shifting and finger tapping – and countless more wrestling sound waves – we are extremely relieved and excited to announce that Paper Radio has now arrived. For those of you visiting for the first time we should explain that Paper Radio is a sonic interpretation of the unique culture of Australasia – in the shape of a podcast.

The first episode from the FM (fiction) channel, Chris Somerville’s The Drowning Man, is the story of an aloof teacher whose life is defined and dominated by the irascible temperament of water. In our next edition, a documentary for the AM (non-fiction) channel, Georgia Moodie rewinds to the 1920s and tails the experiences of the first African American jazz musicians to tour Australia.

The near future holds audio productions from Rachel O’Neill, Benjamin Law and Thomasin Sleigh.

Paper Radio has been created by a team headed by Jessie Borrelle and Jon Tjhia, working out of Melbourne.

I'm subscribed.

links that rule, find, bring and bind - hallo, litmags.com.au

A media release from the Australia Council announces the birth of a 'link to rule them all' - litmags.com.au is up and running today.

Creative and insightful through to poignant and discursive, Literary Magazines Australia brings together the best new writing on offer in Australia from ten of the country’s most respected literary magazines.

 These ten magazines serve up engaging, entertaining and provocative work by new and established writers. Peter Carey, Frank Moorhouse, Marion Halligan and John Birmingham have all been featured alongside the country’s newest writing talent.

 Now under the banner of Literary Magazines Australia (LMA), you can find them together at www.litmags.com.au – which will be launched tomorrow to provide easy access to a vital range of fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, essays, factual writing, literary criticism, reviews, opinions, letters or any combination of these.

 “Magazines are thermometers of a society's vitality, culture, interests and concerns,” says Dennis Haskell, Chair of the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts. “But looking around any Australian newsagency, you might think the temperature is pretty low; many of the biggest selling magazines contain no more than trite gossip and glossy pictures.”

 “Australia's literary magazines provide an antidote to all that; they are a meeting place in print or pixels of imaginative explorations of our lives and our languages. They provide an opportunity for experiment that the economics of book publishing might not allow. They can stir your conscience while you stir your tea.”

The links page is topped by a list of publishing and writing links and tailed by a disappointingly short list of other literary magazines.

Which does leave one wondering if an opportunity is opening up here, given that a brilliant site like SPUNC shows how much more can be done by republishing excerpts and providing news from participating publications.

While I don't go in for podcasts or video much (barring this kind of thing, of course), I could see some space for that kind of material on Literary Magazines Australia. I would certainly subscribe to a site that supplied the kind of mixed newsfeed that Zoe Dattner has so expertly arranged for SPUNC - 'twould be cause for some appreciative tea-slurping, for sure. (Could we bring all the reviews together there? Aaaah, pipe dreams, Bilbo.) But it's a start, a step in a better direction.

god bless publishers, each and every one

I have seen something on ReadWriteWeb about FastPencil before. This will strike fear into the hearts of some publishers, though not all.

FastPencil certainly has a catchy name - the writer covering this also mentions a company called SmashWords, which he reports is mainly making its mark in the area of distribution of DRM-free e-books. Note, too, that ReadWriteWeb content has been syndicated by the New York Times' technology section since September this year - it is a very good news feed to follow if you are interested in web trends in publishing, along with other tech news.

read some Granta for free

That venerable UK literary organ, Granta, did a site rebuild recently and has announced via the monthly email newsletter that the online content on Granta.com has been refreshed.

New on Granta.com in May 2009:

'Rhyme and Reason' by Adam Gopnik: In conversation with the award-winning poet and essayist Katha Pollitt.

'Letter from Gaza' by Hisham Matar: The tragic life of Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani.

'Dragon Island' by Laura Fellowes: The most recent in our New Voices series.

'The Last Modernist' by Chris Petit: A consideration of the life and work of J.G. Ballard.

'A Vacation from Myself' by John Beckman: ‘What I gained, and lost, from antidepressants.’

'The Public Poet' by Lavinia Greenlaw: An appreciation of Carol Ann Duffy, Britain’s first female poet laureate.

'Getting Lost' by Heidi Julavits: One wintry weekend in the Berkshires.

It will be noted by the observant that online content is available via RSS in seven categories. I  may have seen this when I first visited this sexy looking new site about a month ago: for some reason it looked overwhelming and I plumped for the email newsletter.

So I guess if I really don't want to know about events I can't possibly attend, I could just subscribe to the half dozen other feeds on the online content page.

Or the email newsletter, which gave me the list above in a neat little bloggable text package. Hey, it's my choice.
Do note that it is also possible to subscribe to New Voices, which is definitely an exciting choice. Enjoy.

(belated) happy birthday to the Complete Review

Ten candles for the Complete Review.
Ten years old. My word.  Michael Orthofer muses on a decade, and resolves to sign his name to more reviews in future.

The Complete Review (founded in 1999) and its attendant blog, The Literary Saloon (around 2002), continue to set a very high benchmark for all literature blogs with an international readership. It's hard to believe one person is behind most of it - he does have a team of multilingual readers and reviewers, I know, but claims responsibility for the architecture and (gasp) the enduring URLS therein.
Then there's the eclectic news service - where else would I find a report like this straight from an Indian source on railway book stalls? (regrettably Outlook India has killed their own link within that story.)

Bravo, Michael and team, long may you run.

more of Lessing

Well, the Golden Notebook project is up and running.

I thought at first I had sixteen pages to read and catch up on, but upon examining the comments list at the bottom of the page it became obvious that some of the six seven selected authors are reading faster than others.

I hope they can wait a bit for the rest of us.

the whale has, thankfully, done a lazarus

What a golden project this will be.

Eddie Campbell has news of the Cisco Kid's shirt pattern, and of his origins as well - O.Henry, no less. Now that I did not know.

One of the original literature blogs (though it was more of a news site than a blog to my recollection) is back, now firmly attached to its founders' thriving press. (Via Three Percent.)

And from that venerable organ, I have been able to find Garrison Keillor on fire here at Salon, upset by Governor Palin:

She is a chatty sportscaster who lacks the guile to conceal her vacuity, and she was Mr. McCain's first major decision as nominee. This troubles independent voters, and now she is a major drag on his candidacy. She will get a nice book deal from Regnery and a new career making personal appearances for 40 grand a pop, and she'll become a trivia question, "What politician claimed foreign-policy expertise based on being able to see Russia from her house?" And the rest of us will have to pull ourselves out of the swamp of Republican economics.

Dennis at Mobylives has also located some very up to date commentary on Google's effortless sidle into digital publishing.

if this is not art...

From the National Young Writers Festival newsletter (and the website, on this page), there's been a callout for participation in the Interactive Narrative Workshop, to take place very soon in Newcastle and virtual spaces:

Electrofringe and the National Young Writers’ Festival are presenting an interactive narrative workshop at the 2008 TiNA festival. The session will be held in the Process Space on Friday 3rd October from 4-6pm, and is free and open to all. It will be the first meet up session to kick-start the process. Writers will be teamed up with interactive specialists and form groups for future collaboration. Following the initial workshop, the project will further organise frequent meet-ups in Sydney and Melbourne where collaborators can show their work and exchange ideas.

The project’s online home will be the ABC’s new POOL platform (www.pool.org.au), which will permanently form the goto and exchange place for people to post ideas and work in progress, and discuss projects as they unfold.

It looks as though online participation is a goer if you can't get to Newcastle for the workshop (read further here). So email Elmar Trefz at elmar@suebo.com with the following details:

    * Name
    * Contact details
    * Artform(s) (fiction / playwriting / video / web development / flash development / interactive media / artist / etc)
    * Any projects or ideas you’re working on, concepts, scripts, proposals, areas of interest or obsession.

if you are a young writer this interests.

get your book into this soup

Thanks to the Speakeasy blog at Australian Writers' Marketplace Online for their tip off about the initiative being shown by a young agent and aspiring writer from L.Perkins in the States, Jenny Rappaport, who is inviting authors to submit 'book blocks' for publication on her blog.

See here for more information. Rappaport introduces her project thus:

This is an open invitation for any author who has a book coming out to write up a short piece about one of the building blocks of their upcoming book. It can be about the characters, the plot, the theme, the actual writing structure, the idea behind the novel (or non-fiction work), the worldbuilding, etc.

In 500 words or so, explain to the reader how you used that "book block" in your new book, and why it makes your book special. Your aim should be to both promote your book (the free publicity aspect) and to try to teach aspiring writers how to grow in their own writing (the passing it forward part of this). I get about 500 readers a day, many of them aspiring writers, who are also avid readers.

Rappaport hopes eventually to post 'book blocks' up to twice a week, aiming to get new books more widely discussed. It's an enterprise worth keeping an eye on.

megalogenius watch

At the Speakeasy at AWM Online, there is a lot happening as their bloggers take on the Byron Bay writers' festival once more.

I am very happy to report this report on the place of blogs and new media, chiefly because George Megalogenis was there, and his comments have been faithfully recorded by Jane.

I have subscribed to Mr. M.'s blog because he is one of the most articulate economists I have ever heard speak - so clear that even my resident 17 year old , watching ABC's Lateline on the teev a couple of years back, could take in  his lengthy yet precise and informative sentences, and get the drift. A genius with one letter missing, he had this to say at Byron about social media and the last Federal election:

Megalogenis...considers today’s media very fragmented; back in the day when everyone read the same five or six newspapers, to a large extent everyone got the same message. Now, with blogging and internet resources and the thousands of different media that assault us all daily, everyone receives different messages, or different parts of the same message.

He also commented on the fact that newspapers are still a source for news, but they aren’t the same gateway they used to be. Blogs talk directly to their audience, unlike the opinion columnists of 10-20 years ago. And with the Kevin 07 internet campaign, the Labor party bypassed the papers and spoke directly to the electorate on a massive scale, in a way that hadn’t really been done before.

AWM blogger Jane also noted a difference of opinion between audience member Mungo McCallum and Megalogenis and other panellists about the potential in political online forums for echo chamber effects. An informative report, and there is plenty more on the festival from the AWM team, so if you couldn't get to Byron, have a look.

manuscripts on the way at LiteraryMinded

Recently I have added Angela Meyer's blog, LiteraryMinded, to my roll down there on the right, but have not yet subscribed to her feed. That's due to change right now - Lisa Dempster from Locus has alerted me to Angela's series of posts there, The Best Unpublished Books, parts One, Two and Three, on books which she knows are in progress but which for all kinds of reasons have yet to find the right publisher.

This kind of news feature is something blogs are eminently suited to, and it's great to see someone as well informed as Angela delivering her tips on who's out there, and what they're working on.

Lisa posted recently on articles about book reviewing and a whole bundle of other interesting publishing news, with an emphasis on independent presses and fresh publishing ideas.

While a Google Reader of 120 odd feeds is the nicest customised news reading you could possibly have, especially if you have mates' news and thoughts scattered throughout,  I struggle sometimes to remember what I've read, and got a big shock at a family function a few weeks ago when I added ten years and a new identity onto a young relative, simply because she had changed her hair (very becoming, but the alteration was significant, and the rellies numerous and fast-growing): so some of the filtering service I offer here from time to time with these links posts will inevitably become recommendation and referral only.

There are quite a few people out there doing this web-monitoring thing much better than I am currently, 'specially with my computer doing the Dying Swan like it is at present.

So I'm offering my strong recommendation for Angela's LiteraryMinded and for Locus, where Lisa Dempster and Emily Clarke of Vignette and Aduki presses write regularly on Oz publishing and writing, and read far more widely than I can on my lonesome here.

Check these blogs out: if you are a writer with published work you would like reviewed, think about whether Angela is someone you might send it to (see the bottom right hand corner of the homepage for details); and check out the eclectic and growing blogroll at Locus while you are there.

say a prayer for the dying

Peter Rose's ABR review of Helen Garner's first novel for fifteen years, The Spare Room, is online and (as a less refined person might say) SMMMMOKING.

This is probably the toughest review Garner's story about caring for a dying friend has had so far, opening as it does with the tart observation that this novella could easily have been written as nonfiction.

Hel’s pride is easily stung. As long as she has practical tasks – beds to strip and change, ‘straightforward tasks of love and order’ – she is composed, but soon she is worn out, anxious, resentful. There is no acknowledgment of her literary obligations or of her solitary nature. Hel seems most alive when she is on her own. The best writing in the book depicts sentience in solitude. A violent thrill runs down her arms and ‘seethes’ in her fingertips. Night noises lull her: ‘Something tiptoed across the leaf mulch outside my open window and paused there, breathing: to groom itself.’

Hel is almost professionally observant. Like Isabel Archer, she is ‘constantly staring and wondering’. Nothing escapes her: the neurosurgeon’s fat, penile Mont Blanc pen; the sort of men who can crack their spine and ‘make it crackle all the way down’...

When Nicola’s niece and her boyfriend pay a visit, the young woman is appalled by Nicola’s presumptuousness and her lengthy stay. Hel wants to sob with gratitude: ‘They were young, they were sane, and they were in my corner.’ While Nicola sleeps, the three of them laugh at her demands and swap stories about the inconvenience of it all. Not all readers – not all carers – will relish this Hobbesian pugilism.'

These are tough words for an uncompromising book which I am yet to read (doing that tidy thing that some of us do of getting my review reading out of the way first and saving TSR for 'afters'). Intriguingly, Rose seems to be looking for some respite himself from Garner's somewhat relentless evocation of anger as the enervating emotion it can so easily become, noting that this does not dissipate or evolve towards the novel's end.

Which makes for a powerful review from one of our best critical readers, and increases the pull of the unread book even more at my end.

(And yes, I'm also leaving it on the kids' shopping list for you-know-what day. Why do the bookshops parade all those pastel coloured books around for the day of buying big for female progenitors? Sussann's has BLACK japonaise-patterned flannel pyjamas this year. Get with the program, folks, get The Lost Dog out there for starters.)

Finally I must congratulate ABR for having such a sterling piece of criticism online for us linking folk. Luminous and numerous gold stars for you.

Scheherazade in Sydney

This project came to its culmination in a symposium at the Performance Space in Sydney recently, and was the subject of a review on Arts Hub by Talya Rubin:

'The impetus for the work came out of the sudden death of Barbara Campbell’s husband. The opening screen of her website reads: “In a faraway land a gentle man dies. His bride is bereft. She travels across continents looking for a reason to keep living. Every night at sunset she is greeted by a stranger who gives her a story to heal her heart and continue with her journey. She does so for 1001 nights.” As a way of coping with grief, Campbell undertook a period of enforced public mourning and used as her tools the daily paper, focusing on stories about the conflict in the Middle East.'

Rubin's review is available to Arts Hub subscribers here. Campbell is a member of the  Electronic Literature Organisation, and the text archive of the stories, which are otherwise only available at the time of performance online, is here. At GrandTextAuto she was taken to task for her rather severe approach to presentation, but nonetheless the frame concept and performance aspect of the project, as well as its duration over nearly three years, is remarkable.

on your ABC, and UTS

I wonder if this kind of thing approaches what the ABC has in mind for its new Compendium project, which I read about here in the Austlit newsletter of June-July '07. (That's right, I'm backdated.)

Rosa B is a bilingual online arts and design journal published in multimedia format - so there are filmed interviews along with articles and essays. It is very beautiful to look at, and a good place to practise your French if you are so inclined. (Over at if:book there is a profile of something else like this, called Issue - and yes, I read about Rosa B there first.) Issue has built more interactivity with the audience into its site by enabling comments, though I think the layout is a bit busy. There is not as much interactivity in the Rosa B site, which is perhaps where it diverges from a new Australian project in the works.

The Australian Literature Compendium, for which the ABC and UTS have received a $150,000 grant, will include an e-journal, podcasts and documentary features on one site, along with teaching resources.

Banyule chicken calls election

Oh my word. As the man says, please don't sue him.
Link via Christy Dena, who also provides a link to the list of the films included by its creator, Alonzo Mosely. I AM peeved I didn't pick the Blues Brothers the first time around.

There's a great review here from ReadWriteWeb of a movie recommendations site, giving you the lowdown on how to check the recommendations ghost in the machine.
And also from RWW, it seems that social networking has been part of the BBC's enterprise solutions for at least eight years.

John Freeman has a good post at Critical Mass this week introducing Sign and Sight, Europe's answer to the Complete Review, and has also been talking to people from Eurozine, a collaborative site for more than 60 cultural journals, while he's been at the Frankfurt Book Fair (all his posts from Frankfurt are worth a look).

Ho hum. Tomorrow I write (or at least start) a post without a single link in it. Treely ruly. I don't have a Caladrius bird in my yard, unfortunately, but I'll think of something.

things you will not find on Wikipedia (or elsewhere for that matter)

Recent additions to the Literary Encyclopedia include this entry on F.S. Flint, the Imagist poet, by Michael Copp from Cambridge University.
I thought I knew quite a bit about Aldington, Pound, Hilda Doolittle and Ford Madox Ford, but know absolutely zip about Flint, who was the second eldest of twelve children, left school at 13 and did not discover his exceptional language skills until he learned French and Latin at night school at the age of 19:

'Flint was a complex and contradictory character. The writer Richard Church, a colleague in the Ministry of Labour, underlined one side of Flint’s character when he described him as someone who was a “furnace of nervous passion”, an “unrestrainable companion”, and an “inflammatory creature”. Church witnessed at first hand the effects of Flint’s childhood of extreme poverty, and said he could see “that Flint’s wounds were still bleeding. This extravagant self-pity was the result. So were the recoil, the loud and aggressive histrionics. . . . Flint never found serenity. . . . He never lost his resentment at the miseries of his childhood”. John Gould Fletcher, a fellow-Imagist poet, saw Flint’s character as much more passive and submissive: “His dominating characteristic was a pathetic sincerity. . . . Regarding himself as a badly educated man, ashamed of his own cockney antecedents, he could easily be talked down by Ezra [Pound], or by anyone who appeared to be better educated, and who was capable of making flat, dogmatic assertions”.'

I like the layout of the Encyclopedia, and it only costs $15 a year to subscribe, as it is  aimed at students. It's populated by entries from scholars from all over the world, the editors for entries on Australian writing being Chris Wallace Crabbe, Amanda Nettlebeck, Peter Pierce and Paul Sharrad.

While some Australian writers are not yet represented, upcoming articles and profiles include Deleuze, Terry Eagleton and Lewis Carroll, among 809 entries in progress. (Miles Franklin's entry is being written by The Editors, possibly reflecting the regular dribble of search queries across the 'Net for her work and her prize.)

from the google reader

How Henry James would have hated hypertext, says Matt Christie. But 'he might have liked Hegel'. (now where did that bit go I wonder?)

Stephen Mitchelmore links to an interview over at the Harper Collins poetry weblog, Cruelest Month, with Gabriel Josipovici about his new novel and his lack of affection for historical novels: 'I don't believe in them or think they are a viable road for the modern writer to go down.'

I told everyone at the Library Uncon that Stephen Mitchelmore was good - I don't know if this is, but it certainly has curiosity value and I thank him for the link.

And Simon Sellars has noticed that Baudrillard died - but did anyone else in Oz blogging?

This probably is hard to swallow, but apparently AWP was top of the pops on Technorati t'other day. Link via Laurel Snyder, poet (and occasional prose-writer) of Jewishy-Irishy.

Lastly:
Tsk, not even in a handbag.

the queen of Oz crime hits the forums

Gabrielle Lord will be available for Q&A on crime writing in all its forms, the evolution of the genre, the essential value of research and her new book, Shattered. (Note my link there to a funky new Australian crime fiction website, y'all.)
 

Where? Admission is by subscription (starting at $19.95 per annum) at the Live Forums at the Australian Writers' Marketplace Online.

When? Tomorrow evening, 7 pm Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) - for other Oz times, click here. These forums are popular and well worth the investment. If you're an Australian writer reading this who has ever bought AWM in the paper format, at least check out this highly searchable website, which has been warmly welcomed by subscribers.

Upcoming April guests for the AWM Live Forums include Liz Bysrki (Gang of Four, Bellydancing for Beginners) on writing for and about women, and biographer and novelist Susan Johnson.

we live to hack and hack to live

Is this a first? Mark Sarvas has been allowed to publish the whole first chapter of this book , Then We Came To The End, by Joshua Ferris, on his blog, courtesy of Little, Brown publisher Reagan Arthur.

In other book press news, the Lifehacker book( published out of Gina Trapani's wellknown and loved blog) got to the punters before the author got her own copy.

Icky acky --- not sure about this. Writers in a CAGE? Where's a nice Martello tower (or the bunkers just out of Sydney featured in biker film Stone all those years ago) when you need one, huh? (Google hits there, David.) Link from Bronwyn at WRB.

And Carrie Frye is back from a few months off, reading Stephen King and musing over men in hard suits. A welcome renaissance.

My husband has spotted a snotty old copy of Gravity's Rainbow on the coffee table, not conicidentally after the new Pynchon was reviewed in the weekend papers. Not too shabby when you think about it - I'm reading old Pynchon and he's reading the book reviews. Could be worse. And to make life easier for me, there's a lovely illustrated web guide to GR, here. Even if I don't get past the opening banana fest, future trips to the fruit shop will take on an added dimension. (I've only bought kidneys once, and not for frying either.)

Following Kerryn's example, I sampled my bookpile on the bedside table for the odd one out -  Eagleton's After Theory, a Quarterly Essay and HEAT 7 jostle a recent excellent addition to the kitchen bookstack, Penelope Stack's Natural, Nourishing Recipes. I could make it easier by asking you to guess which ones I haven't read yet...

My last bit of news (till I get some better ideas, hopefully soon) is that the family is in uproar over my purchase of a planner, and tickled at me reading my own copy of Australian Best Essays in David Jones this morning and promptly tipping coffee over it. (But not on Nicholas Gruen's contribution, which I'm saving for later. Congratulations Mr. G.)

That's it for a few weeks, depending on how much GR I get through and how many plans I carry out. See you later in January.

Where blogging leaves creative nonfiction in the starting blocks

Here.

speaking is easy - online at AWM

The Online Writing Festival on Monday at the brand spanking new Australian Writer's Marketplace Online was host to several very welcome presenters and a good time seemed to be had by all. Online literary agent Miss Snark was complimentary towards her inquisitive audience, noting there were 'very few nitwits'. How 'kind of you, KIInd of you' to let me come, one might have said.

Viking and Firebird children's editor Sharyn November was taken with Penni Russon's suggestion that gamers were reading their own complex highly rendered 'choose your own adventure' books when playing online, and noted that as the writers and publishers of the future would probably come from this generation, it was worth recognising that some genre writers were gamers as teens, and that 'some still are'.  She also mentioned a rise in interest in Australian YA authors in the US, and that there was a  gap in the 8-12 market there.

John Marsden was mobbed by questioners after technical hitches were overcome - to my question about online writing festivals compared to the face to face variety, one of which he hosts himself at his property, Tye Estate, he answered whimsically that 'writing is so solitary, that these forums can make a big difference to writers' emotional health. And writers all have emotional health issues, don't we?'

australian writers- online and marketing NOW

It's official - the Australian Writer's Marketplace Online site is up and running, as well as the blog, Speakeasy.

Parts of this great new space are subscription based, however the blog is open to all comers to read.
This version of the print Australian Writers' Marketplace,  the bible of Australian writers looking for all tools of their trade,  is produced by the Queensland Writers' Centre.
There are forums on the site which will be put to good use tomorrow, as the inaugural AWM Online Writing Festival (9am-8pm, AEST), featuring guests from the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, goes to air.

The program for tomorrow can be found here - Darren Nash and Kate Forsyth's editorials will be available on the blog, but other sessions are limited to subscribers, with a special minimum subscription available of $19.95.

According to the press release for this venture, ABS statistics show that 556,500 Australians engage in writing as a creative or leisure activity; 185,500 Australians have paid involvement in writing; and more than 5,000 manuscripts cross the desk of an editor or publisher in a year. And I promise myself a visit to the Australian Bureau of Statistics online tomorrow, to winkle out that report for closer inspection - sounds like an awful lot of creativity's going down there per capita. I also hope to get some lurking done around the Online Writing festival forums, for reports back here later in the week. We'll talk again.

it's all good news

Simon Sellars, as a travel writer, can see the utility of Houllebecq's Platform, over at the revamped Sleepy Brain.  Seems they forgot to let me know that the new site was up, but it's great to see you back, guys. Sibling site Ballardian, of course, has been pushing on steadily during the hiatus for the mothership.

Someone who was speedy in her alarums, however, is Jo Case of Australian Book Review, who has emailed to let me know they have changed their blog address and format - comments are ON.  Even nicer, she's noted my remarks in the previous post and Ivor Indyk's essay will be featured online in November as part of a Web Archive section on the ABR website - I'll revisit my post accordingly at that time, because there's more goodness in that particular egg.

In the meantime, on the ABR website this month in their new ABR Critics section (link on the main page), there's a profile of esteemed academic, critic, former ABR editor and Oz litblogger Kerryn Goldsworthy, one of our most seasoned campaigners in the cause of Australian writing - and easily one of the most generous in her online incarnation. Here are just some of her remarks on reviewing (there are others in the comments to an earlier post on this site, which show you the accomplished teacher behind all this easily worn erudition):

Thoughtful and simultaneous engagement with content and context is one of my main criteria for a good review: the other is a structured argument.

I like a review that works in two ways at once, bouncing back and forth between the text and its various contexts, and at the same time working its way forward in a shapely fashion towards some general conclusion about the book.

I don't much like rough play or over-the-top cattiness and spattiness: if one must put the boot in, one should attempt to do so with quiet elegance.

Read her elegant and shapely review of Andrew McGahan's new novel in the October issue of ABR, and see practice made perfect, people.