Journal
Articles
Fact and fiction
SO THERE I was, an outsider at the global epicentre of men with bushy beards and cardigans. They were...
Notes on unbelonging
‘HE HAD THE sagacity to realise that, once he was out of Australia, the colours would gradually bleed from...
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...
Pretence, sincerity, convention
RECENTLY I HAD an eyelash transplant. Hairs were taken from the back of my neck and placed across the...
East of the sun and west of the moon
THE NEW GIRLS is a 1979 novel by Beth Gutcheon. It relates the lives of five teenage girls, students of an...
The writer in a time of change
A WHILE AGO I went to a lecture on geothermal power. Afterwards I got talking to the man sitting...
Four shots at silence
1HIGH STREET, PRAHRAN. An ageing Toyota Corolla heads through drizzle for Punt Road. Once past Chapel Street the driver...
The silent majority
IT IS A truth universally acknowledged, Jo decided, that a bored teenager with a permanent marker is a pain...
