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[Published in Meanjin, Number Two 2012] Writing about Joan Didion can seem superfluous; after all, it is Joan Didion who has written most widely about Joan Didion. Perhaps more than with any other author, Didion’s personality is impossible to separate from the pages of her work. In five novels, three memoirs and an expansive collection […]
January 23, 2012
[Published on Meanjin.com.au, January 23 2011 After we’ve rubbed the sleep from our bloodshot eyes, kicked the empty beer bottles away from our bedside and willed ourselves to leave the comfort of our darkened caves, we begin the New Year’s dance of guilt and resolve. But before we can commit to paper all our soon-to-be-broken […]
November 28, 2011
[Published on Meanjin.com.au, November 28 2011] Sometimes it takes extraordinary power to survive the everyday. This is the premise of Steven Amsterdam’s second book, What the Family Needed, which follows the domestic dramas of sisters Ruth and Natalie, and their extended families. This idea may be something of a truism, and in the hands of a […]
November 24, 2011
[Published in Meanjin, December 2011 Edition] Artistic collaboration in the written word is surprisingly rare. For all postmodernity’s declarations about the death of the author, poetry in particular has upheld some facade of the artist as solitary genius. The relationship between poet and muse may be more familiar, but the poet’s act of creation is […]
November 10, 2011
[Published on Meanjin.com.au, November 10 2011] The Australian Research Council have recently released the final version of the 2012 Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) Journals List. Under the new system, both Meanjin and Overland have been added as ERA-recognised journals. What does this mean for readers? Not much at all, except maybe some bureaucratic […]
November 2, 2011
[Published on Meanjin.com.au, November 2 2011] Brisbane author Krissy Kneen is not afraid to write frankly about sex. Those who read her 2009 memoir, Affection, will recall a work of at times painful honesty, in which the author lay bare her unconventional childhood, her sexual history, her desires and her insecurities. Her latest novel Triptych, […]
October 11, 2011
[Published on Meanjin.com.au, October 11 2011] Only 25 when he won the Guardian First Book Award and the National Jewish Book Award for his debut novel, Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer remains a divisive figure in the literary world. The stylistic flourishes for which his writing has been both acclaimed and derided — his […]
September 9, 2011
[Published on Meanjin.com.au, September 9 2011] One of the final events in Melbourne Writers Festival’s schools program, Writers and Their Craft asked authors Maile Meloy and Steven Amsterdam about the nuts and bolts of their practice. And while the discussion was geared towards the largely adolescent audience (Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming has recently […]
August 30, 2011
[Published on Meanjin.com.au, August 20 2011] For anyone who dared to question the premise of Sophie Cunningham’s Big Ideas address, A Long Long Way to Go: Why We Still Need Feminism, Sunday night’s turnout alone said it all. She spoke before a packed BMW Edge, a sea of (mostly female) heads nodding in agreement and […]
May 16, 2012
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