Welcome to GR Online, a series of short-form articles that take aim at the moving target of contemporary culture as it’s whisked along the guide rails of innovations in digital media, globalisation and late-stage capitalism.
After the afterword
THIS IS AN ending to my latest novel, The Book of Rapture, that was eventually abandoned – creating a very different...
On the strangeness of fiction
FELLINI'S COMMENT THAT ‘everything and nothing in my work is autobiographical' is a neat way of describing the mysterious...
On the same page, right?
Yes, Dear Reader, we're messing with your minds. When Paul Kelly sings, ‘Gather round people, I'll tell you a story,' he may as well be singing, ‘Gather round people, I'll rewire your cortex.' But as well as messing with your minds, we're messing with your – and our – societies.
Learning to write
A FEW MONTHS ago an article by the distinguished American author and academic Louis Menand appeared in the New Yorker, asking whether...
Writing from the past
I SPEND A lot of time in graveyards these days. On mornings when it's too blustery to walk my...
Writing Lessons: Settings
away from a place to write about a place I BEGIN THE first draft of my new book, a memoir...
Desserted
I WAS SEVEN and at my cousin's christening when I first encountered a lemon meringue pie. The other sweets...
Burnt sausages, gingerbread and fruitcake
LEANING AGAINST THE rear of my crew's fire truck, I open my lunch pack and pull out a sandwich. We'd...
Farming for a hungry world
IS AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE ignoring organic-style farming?Southeastern Australia has been gripped by one of the worst drought on record, yet...
Shopping for revolution
I'TS A MUNDANE household task: peel the shopping list off the fridge and take it to the shops. But...
The farm
‘WHO CARES? I mean, who the fuck cares?' This is more exclamation than question. Patrice Newell is exhausted. Exhausted and angry....
Rethinking Australian agriculture
THE FOOD CHAIN concept presents a philosophical quandary. It appears to be a simple model with a beginning, a...
