I was surprised to learn that circling birds are a symbol of danger for a character, that this is a predatory act foreshadowing doom rather than a delightful aesthetic touch. Circling birds, flocks of screeching galahs, are a breathtaking sight, how could they be viewed as apocalyptic? Charlotte Wood’s Stella Prize-winning novel The Natural Way […]

On a strong recommendation from my local bookshop I started reading Mammoth the new novel by the talented Chris Flynn that’s currently receiving a lot of praise for its unusual narrator, a prehistoric mammoth skeleton from the Museum of Natural History. As part of my study I’ve been reading a lot of stories with non-human […]

Periods. I don’t want to talk about how growing up in the 90s we were taught to hide it, that it was a shameful embarrassing thing. Those of us who were there know it. Some of us are still there. And I don’t want to talk about how I have tried to be more open […]

Not all my first drafts have won awards, but all my awards have been won with first drafts. As I write this blog post a week before its due, I am forced to thinking about my propensity for uncovering last-minute gems. I have been entering prose and poem contests since I could write but, like […]

The story so far: A visit with my grandson to story time at the library has made me ponder the many privileges men have over women. Where some of those privileges are able to be viewed as statistics and percentages, the one that is embedded in our language and literature is less often identified. I […]