The story so far: children’s books are biased towards males and the use of the masculine pronoun despite evidence being available for at least the last 40 years that ‘he’ is not a gender-neutral term. I wonder how my own childhood reading relates to this literary privilege for males. I may not have said that […]

The story so far: I’ve taken my grandson to story time at the library, where I am silently boiling as the librarian, as usual, identifies every creature in every game as male. No one else at story time seems to be as bothered as I am by the insistence on ‘he’ in the library books […]

Once upon a time, we didn’t have to worry about gathering in cafes or playgrounds. We could take our grandchildren to story time and listen to the librarian. But there was a flaw in this utopia. My story starts in the distant past of 2019, but quickly reaches the present, when we have the time […]

I am very fond of writers who share their work … Yes, alright, you got me, I am very fond of writers full stop. They are so supportive, and kind, and understanding. And so here, for my last blog post with Margaret River Press—thank you, it’s been an honour and a privilege—I am sharing a […]

In March, my Gothic fiction manuscript, Sargasso, was to my absolute joy shortlisted for the ASA/Harlequin Commercial Fiction Prize. Before the announcement I received a phone call from Harlequin telling me that while I was not the winner, they loved Sargasso and wanted to take it to acquisitions. I still don’t fully understand what taking […]

Are you a risk-taker? I didn’t think I was until I thought about it. I was twenty-one when the boy I was in love with sat me down to tell me he’d been offered a job in another country. He was in his final year of an electrical engineering degree and was going to relocate […]

Hello! I am delighted to be the guest blogger for Margaret River Press during the month of November, and during a time of a pandemic. For a while I was an earnest blogger with my own blogspot page, but then something happened, writing got in the way. Yes, I only occasionally blog these days because […]

Welcome to the ECU South West campus library and the celebration of our Arts alumnus, Leslie Thiele’s new collection of short stories, Skyglow. Leslie studied here for six years or so and graduated from our Bachelor of Arts course in 2018. I am very privileged to have this long involvement with her work and with […]

Change is inevitable. How often do we hear those words, and how much resistance do we carry for them? 2020 has been, for our entire planet, a year of deep change. The global COVID-19 pandemic has torn us all from our familiar patterns and imposed a different sense of time and place. For many of […]

Landscape and place in writing is as much a character as any protagonist. The landscape we reside in, and travel through, shapes us with the same inexorable force as wind and water sculpt the hills around us. In writing we strive to recreate, in someone else’s mind, the place we are describing – a place […]