AustLit

'In hindsight, I suppose my approach was a tad cavalier. Pop to a few classes, listen to the odd podcast and. voila!.I'd be fluent in a second language. "You'll pick it up quickly," all and sundry proclaimed on the rare occasions I expressed niggling unease over my inabili. to croak out even basic sentences, despite my rapidly approaching relocation from Australia to Spain.' (Introduction)

'Over the Australian summer, I visited Beijing with Kezhen. She's the one the Bible is talking about when it says that "there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother" (Proverbs 18:24b). She was making her yearly trip to Beijing to visit her parents and invited me to come along. I'd heard a lot about her parents who she said were Famous Artists living in Beijing. Her dad is an art critic and the editor of a well-regarded contemporary Chinese art journal. Her mum is one of twenty to thirty poets in China who practise an ancient form of Chinese poetry called Ci, with prescriptions for the rhythm and tone of each syllable, dating back to the eighth century. The technique for singing these lyrics has long since been lost. (Apart from the rigour of the form, the language used is incomprehensible for the modern Chinese speaker, being the upper-class speech of ancient China.) Her mum is also a painter who fuses traditional Chinese fine art techniques together with modern Western ones.' (Introduction)

'When I walk into the club this is what I see: a long, low room with vinyl-padded walls. Dim red lighting. Low seats surrounding a catwalk with two poles. High round tables and bar stools. Other job applicants already filling out application forms. One elderly guy in a seat by the catwalk. A brunette woman in towering plastic shoes with LED lights in the soles, rotating slowly on one of the poles in a yellow g-string.' (Introduction)

'Christine Kenneally is a journalist. After completing a Bachelor's Degree in Linguistics in Melbourne, Kenneally pursued a PhD at the Universiš of Cambridge, and subsequently moved to the United States and turned to journalism. While living in New York, she produced pieces for the New York Times, New Scientist, Slate, and Time. Her account of the Black Saturday bushfires, wri€en for thŠe New Yorker, was collected in ŠBest Australian Essays 2010. Since moving back to Melbourne she has published in Šthe Monthly, and now holds the title of contributing editor at BuzzFeed News. In 2007 she published her first book, ŠThe First Word, an account of developments in the field of linguistics that have lead to recent research on the origins of language. Her second book, ŠThe Invisible History of the Human Race, was published in 2014, and offers what might be thought of as an introduction to modern studies of inheritance, in which Kenneally describes how innovations in genetic research have expanded popular and personal understandings of ‘what gets passed down’. It was shortlisted for the Stella Prize. Kenneally’s prose is uncommonly lucid both in its unpacking of thorny scientific concepts, as well as in its account of the significance of these concepts to our culture at large. Thickly larded with anecdote—both personal and historical—her writing offers an exemplary union of science and storytelling. This interview took place at Ms. Kenneally’s studio in Melbourne.' (Introduction)

'I often play this game and now and then I find it quite satisfying. A game can involve a handful of players and at other times maybe over one hundred people will participate. Most of these players are good-hearted people, even though they are ambitious writers. Some are established and some are simply trying to emerge from out of the shadows. It's a passive-aggressive game; a game of opportunity and survival.' (Introduction)