Or by watching this:

Or by wearing something glamorous.

Or by drinking this (I wish):

Or you could make my day by entering this, or reading something here, or giving me some work, or just donating to the ‘research fund’ for my next planned novel (see the top of the sidebar).

Catch me soon interviewing Hannah Kent at Readings Hawthorn and at Sydney Writers’ Festival.

Thanks, as always, for reading x

I was also glad to review it for The Australian. It felt like a weighty task, in some ways, to review the posthumous novel of (arguably) New Zealand’s most famous author, for a national newspaper. But it also wasn’t difficult because as soon as I began reading the novel, it was like sitting down very comfortably with an old friend; a very smart, witty, entertaining old friend. And I felt confident that I was a good listener for her.

It’s different than many recent posthumous novels, too, as it was intended for publication after her death. It’s not one of those cases where the executor has failed to burn the manuscript, resulting in questions around literary ethics. This book is, instead, quite perfectly posthumous…

The review begins:

In the Memorial Room is not just a brilliant novel but a considered and poignant posthumous literary act, a curtain call by one of the world’s greatest authors, New Zealander Janet Frame, who died in 2004.

It’s the story of a young author of historical fiction, Harry Gill, who receives the Watercress-Armstrong Fellowship, allowing him to work in Menton, France. Harry has taken the fellowship despite the fact his sight seems to be failing.

Please click through and read the rest here.

Amsterdam

My last week in Europe. All the dorms at the hostel are full, so I’ve been placed at the top of a tight, winding staircase in a tiny attic room sliced in half by the roof.

I sit at the bar alone, trying to own the romance of loneliness. For the rest of the month I’d thrived on being alone, even trying for days to shake off Brisbane-boy who followed me from Venice to Vienna.

Maybe it’s because I’m so close to going home.

I look around the bar, my stomach twisting, annoyed at my own desperation (‘but you love being alone’, I remind myself) until an olive-skinned young man comes over to talk to me. His name is Fadil and he’s from Cairo. He produces a cartoonishly large, cigar-shaped joint from his pocket and asks me if I’d like to join him. We go up to the back of the bar, and smoke and talk. He answers his phone a few times, displaying his popularity, then invites me to hang out with him for the night. I’m relieved and grateful.

We enter a pool hall above a café, filled with smoke and Arab men. Fadil doesn’t play but needs to check in with about eight different people. I stand back shyly but not too awkwardly, relaxed by the drug.

Next we walk down an alleyway and Fadil presses a buzzer on a metal door. Someone draws back a flap, like in the Wizard of Oz when they reach the Emerald City. A fat man in sequins lets us in and leads us ‘darlings’ to the upper level (past rooms cordoned off with cherry-red velvet drapes). The nightclub has one long, elevated lounge around its sides and café tables and chairs on the dancefloor. The music is slow trance and there are arty white-light projections on the walls. The people around the edges have bare feet and bottles of Moet in buckets. I think one of them is Ralph Fiennes. We sit at a table and chair, exposed, and I order a glass of Moet from a menu, because I never have.

The next day Fadil and I eat among Kama Sutra tapestries in an Indian restaurant. He pokes at his phone during dinner, frowning and complaining about having too many friends. It is as though he’s complaining about having to be with me. I have not risen to the top, the cream of his many acquaintances. I have not passed some invisible test. I feel underappreciated and disappointed, so I fight the terror of loneliness and leave him to the rest of them.

That night there are such storms over Europe: rib-cracking thunder and the sky swirling, like Van Gogh’s starry night without the light. The anxiety of the possibility of flight cancellations compounds my melancholy and I drink, alone in my hovel, until I feel sick.

On the last day of my trip I take 80 self-portraits with wax figures at Madame Tussaud’s.

—

Helen Garner was invited to speak, prior to the prize-giving. She spoke honestly and personally about how prizes can be tricky, if you don’t win or aren’t nominated at all. You have to remember, she said, that prizes are judged by people, driven by unconscious urges. It’s also true that even the most intelligent, studied, insightful and well-read critic is a person. There is always a factor of subjectivity.

Slowly shedding the naive shell I carried when I moved to Melbourne five years ago, I’m starting to realise that the industry isn’t quite so humble. (Yeah duh, you’re saying.) I’ve been privy to conversations lately, at festivals and events, where people are wearing envy on their sleeves, often around writers who have received big advances or won multiple prizes. I’ve heard words like ‘prize-bait’, and ‘flashing their advance’. Among all the good and positive stuff, mind you, of which there is a lot. Sometimes it just slips out.

But it’s healthy to (privately) express such things, because the industry is tough and getting tougher. Honestly, many authors whom you would think of as famous and respected are getting such tiny advances, like $4000. These are authors who have published several books. So it’s natural, don’t you think, that hopes become higher, maybe a little desperation creeps in?

Since I consider that I’m at the beginning of my career, I’m realising that it is a smart idea to have other work—a day job, freelance work, or whatever—that is regular, enjoyable (or bearable) and can be relied upon for an income. It’s a challenge in itself to find this, because ‘artists’ are not always easygoing. ‘Regular work’ can be a big deal, especially if you’re nervy, neurotic or prone to anxiety or depression (as many creative people are—no, I don’t think it’s a myth, they need to be because they need to see the inner workings of things, even if they misinterpret them):

‘All writers—all beings—are exiles as a matter of course. The certainty about living is that it is a succession of expulsions of whatever carries the life force… All writers are exiles wherever they live and their work is a lifelong journey towards the lost land…’—Janet Frame, The Envoy From Mirror City.

My own envy swells up when confronted with artists who seem free to be artists. My biggest obstacle to that is not money (though of course that’s an obstacle), it is myself. My unfortunate absorption of others’ opinions of what I should be doing, and the distraction of other genuine but smaller goals, means that I often put my biggest, shiniest ambition last. It gets blocked. And then there’s all the life stuff.

And I’m not brilliant, anyway. I need to work on something a lot to make it any good. An author I very much like suggested the other night that publishing a book might actually hinder my career. But most Australian critics that I respect have published books, fiction and/or nonfiction; and secondly, I obviously don’t see my career in the same light as she does. And that’s kind of depressing. It effects me, and makes me think my ambition is lofty. And it’s hard to shake those words when I sit down to write. Who do I think I am? All the while I watch the musician on the cello, moving his head like a mad person, being pure music; passion, and I envy that.

There’s a reason, then, that I’m drawn to characters in both my reading and writing who feel inadequate (would that effect my critical bias? Maybe). But also, adversely, characters who are supremely confident. Or eccentric, or glamorous; even arrogantly so. Not hard to figure that one out. Characters and figures to relate to, to make you feel less alone, and characters and figures who possess traits you aspire to. Both types are outward expressions of one own ‘truths’ and desires, though how confused it often all becomes. Always Kafka and always glam rock.

Knausgaard

The Sydney Writers’ Festival 2013 program has been announced! The line up is rockin’: from Norwegian literary superstar Karl Ove Knausgaard, to actor/author Molly Ringwald, critic James Wood, Tash Aw, Cheryl Strayed, Claire Messud, Diego Marani (to mention a few internationals) and of course a HUGE amount of amazing Aussie authors/poets/journos/critics! Jemma Birrell and her team have done a fantastic job. Tickets are on sale tomorrow (Sat) morning.

I’ve been invited again this year, which is wonderful. I’m excited to be chairing a panel on blogging, and appearing on a panel about reviewing. Here are the details:

Writers who blog
Friday 24 May, 10am. Philharmonia Studio, Pier 4/5. FREE.
Panellists: Mark Forsyth (see blog), Tara Moss (see blog), Lorraine Elliott (see blog), Angela Meyer (facilitator)

Why blog? Is a blog audience different from a book audience? What role does social media play in on and offline writing? How do these forms interact? What are the benefits and drawbacks of blogging? Mark Forsyth, who traces etymologies online as The Inky Fool, Tara Moss, blogger of books and breast-feeding, food-blogger Lorraine Elliott from Not Quite Nigella, and Angela Meyer, who blogs about reading and writing at LiteraryMinded.com.au, talk about blogging as an art form. They might even offer some tips!

The State of Reviews
Thursday 23 May, 6pm. State Library of NSW, Metcalfe Auditorium. $20/$15.
Panellists: Stephen Romei, James Ley, Angela Meyer, Sophie Cunningham (facilitator)

Pages devoted to arts coverage in the mainstream media are diminishing, while social media sites offer high volume ‘reviews’. How does this compete with the views of professional critics and what does this mean for literary criticism in general? Join Sophie Cunningham, Chair of the Literature Board, as she discusses the state of reviews in Australian media with Literary Editor of The Australian Stephen Romei, Editor of Sydney Review of Books James Ley and literaryminded.com.au blogger and reviewer Angela Meyer.

Presented by the State Library of NSW and supported by the Literature Board, Australia Council for the Arts.

I’m also teaching a blogging workshop for beginners! Book here.

You might remember that I was Highly Commended in the Written Word category last year. Yay! Well since then I’ve done a lot more writing and I’ve changed direction a little bit (with a strong focus on flash fiction). Hopefully I’m in with a chance. If you’d like to go and read some of my writing, and ‘like’ and share my profile page, that would be awesome.

If you are under 30, you should also have a go!

—

You might also like:

Love, sex and intimacy with Krissy Kneen, author of Affection (a ‘responsive’ interview) (2009)

Swallow the Sound review (2007)

Entries close on 31 July 2013. Please read the submission guidelines very carefully, and do not send stories directly to me. I will be reading them blind.

So what’s the theme?

A woman driving across country sees the same hitchhiker again and again; another woman takes an elevator to a strange, deserted floor of a department building to be sold a busted thimble by a mannequin; the people on a quiet street begin to accuse each other of being aliens after the electricity goes off… these are some of the (trademarked) adventures in the realm of The Twilight Zone.

Watching and being spooked by these stories is a child in a lounge room at the bottom of the world. The settings are familiar, but also slightly strange. The child is used to these accents (except perhaps the way the presenter, Rod Serling, says Zyone) but it is not the way she speaks. She has heard that the water in her toilet even goes in a different direction. She suspects that, on this side of the world, they may be closer to the Zone than anyone suspects.

The ‘fifth dimension’ of The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling often said, was also the realm of imagination. And as anyone blessed/cursed with a good imagination may know, fear of the unknown or the inexplicable may not only keep you awake at night, but may compel you to write. Serling, and other writers on the show, developed frightening scenarios, and often with more than entertainment in mind. Episodes of The Twilight Zone are often metaphors for equality, justice, the nuclear threat and more. Though they are just as often pure, spooky fun.

You are being invited into the zone. You are invited to be inspired by it, by its mood, themes, characters, settings, symbols, liberal ideas, strangeness and openness; but you should also ponder the zone in relation to your own particular context. This competition invites zone-style, or zone-inspired stories from the bottom of the world. The ensuing collection will acknowledge the undeniable cultural influence of memorable American programs like TZ on our lives ‘down under’, but it will also engage with the way we appropriate the messages within them in our own context, and our own lives (and in regards to our own ‘uneasiness’). Your story can be set in any era, and any place (though our rich and varied landscape could provide so many great potential zones).

I’m looking forward to reading your stories…

You can buy it here for $8, in many different formats (DRM-free). All proceeds go to paying the writers. See the full list of contributors here. I’m pretty excited to be published alongside Sam van Zweden, one of my favourite bloggers.

Hope you enjoy!

After you’ve had a read, you might want to submit.