‘That must have been cathartic.’ This is the sentence I hear most when I tell people I’ve written a memoir.
Some days, it is true. Putting shape to a life that has been messy, traumatic, bizarre, and entertaining by turns …
The Writer Laid Bare
ON THE (WRITING) POWER OF RESTRAINT: A GUEST POST BY JOANNE FEDLER
You would think that at this ancient stage of my writing career, working on a rewrite of a book would get easier. Bring Us Home from Sorrow is my seventeenth book, a memoir about losing my mother to ovarian cancer. …
On identity and gatekeeping: A Guest Post by Susan Blumberg-Kason
The moment after I signed with my first literary agent, I immediately went to my website to add those coveted words: “Rep’d by…”. After four years of querying agents for a memoir, I felt I had finally made it into …
Who Gets to Speak at Writers’ Festivals?
A version of this post was first published at Australian Financial Review
During the Adelaide Writers Week scandal – the removal of Randa Abdel-Fattah from its schedule, then an apology and an invitation for 2027 AWW – my predominantly literary …
Writing a Book While Everything Was Falling Apart: A Guest Post by Simon Tedeschi
When I started writing my novel Turin, I believed I understood what the book was about. It began with my grandfather, a Jew from Turin who was forced to leave everything behind after Mussolini’s racial laws. For a long …
Writing as the World Changes: A Guest Post by Andra Putnis
The world we start writing in is never the same one we inhabit years later as we seek to finalise our work and publish. Fast moving global conflicts, political ruptures and the rapid pace of climate change have made this …