AustLit
Latest Issues
Notes
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Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
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'Keep Calm and Carry On' : An Unexpected Path to Publication,
single work
column
(p. 9-26)'Just over two years ago, I was - to put it plainly - shitting myself. It was January 2011, and the novel I needed to write, the historical novel that was to be the creative component of my PhD in Creative Writing at Flinders University, could no longer be avoided. While, in the first few years of my degree, I had managed to stave off my supervisors' queries with promises that I was performing 'very crucial' research into nineteenth-century Iceland, the time had come for me to finally produce my first attempt at a novel. My supervisors, their smiles slipping, were asking to see the goods. My scholarship - my only income - was rapidly drawing to a rude halt. The problem was, I had no idea how to write a book, and that terrified me...' (Publication abstract)
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Notes on Theatre Notes : The Importance of Being Seen,
single work
essay
(p. 36-47)
'Last December, after eight years of regular posting, I closed my theatre review blog, Theatre Notes. It was the first theatre blog in Australia, and one of the longest running anywhere. I expected a measure of dolour and dismay when I announced my decision; I didn't expect what actually happened. I was swamped by hundreds of tributes, private and public, that left me stunned and, quite genuinely, humbled. It was like being at my own funeral, without the inconvenience of having to die first. And it told me things about the blog that I never knew while I was writing it...' (Publication abstract)
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You Couldn't Have Afforded the Party Anyway : Berlin and the European Championship,
single work
essay
(p. 48-61)
'Summer evenings in Berlin are longlit, they stretch, the city brims. In the long dusk, the public spaces grow suddenly thick with long-shanked people, the shops spill their wares onto the street, apartment-dwellers drink beer on their building doorsteps. It's an unfolding of kinds. Summer is a special time in that city and I was always aware of my luck: I'd only been offered my exchange in June so it could coincide with a poetry festival held in early summer each year...' (Publication abstract)
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Suburban Revolutionaries : Making Frenemies at the G20 Protest,
single work
prose
(p. 62-73)'We wake to the shrill of the phone. It's Vanessa, calling to announce that she'll be arriving early. She's decided to make a banner, and she needs my help...' (Publication abstract)
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Clearing My Throat : Illness in Japan,
single work
essay
(p. 74-86)'I'm standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom, pulling my hair back and opening my eyes as wide as they'll go. It's early May and I've just woken up. Aaron's left for work already and it's cold in here. I know outside is warmer. I've seen the rice fields sprouting green and filling out, but the house has been cold since we arrived in Tokushima last November. I lean forward and open my mouth, but I still can't see it. I drink a glass of water and try again. A perfect pink bump the size of a pea is tucked so perfectly against the rigid ceiling where mouth meets throat it's like it's meant to be there. I drink another glass of water and go downstairs to put the kettle on...' (Publication abstract)
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Tipping Point,
single work
short story
(p. 88-99)'The nose of the old Holden rolls onto the gravel shoulder. Jane watches the front-end shudder before it dies. Matteo has overhauled the engine. She knows how much work he's put in, how much work he puts into everything: the tractor, the slasher, the generator. Everything seems to be in perpetual disrepair. They are living in a sea of half-broken possessions. Like that island of rubbish, she thinks, out in the Pacific. I am floating on a pile of junk...' (Publication abstract)
- 'Kill Your Darlings' in Conversation with Steven Carroll, single work interview (p. 102-125)
- Writing the Capital : The Myth of Community in NW and Capital, single work essay (p. 128-140)
