Over the years I have done my fair share of writing courses and I often wonder if they have made any difference to my writing outcomes. Have they really been a worthwhile investment towards improving my writerly craft? When balancing out the ledger sheet of pros and cons, I am confronted with copious squiggles of […]

Growing up in Willetton in the 70s and 80s holds special memories for me: traipsing back from Southlands Shopping Centre with a layered perm, the kind that made your hair frizz out like the steppes of some peasant’s mountain, and discovering the white spaceship house that had magically landed on a lake on Apsley Road. […]

I have a confession to make. Some of my short stories began their lives as novels. Novels that were cumbersome, messy affairs, that had no cogency or idea of an ending, some being relegated to the bottom drawer before they could even reach first draft status. But having been brought up in a household where […]

I don’t have an office so my writing desk is tucked away in the corner of the living room with plastic tubs filled with papers, old uni files and floor to ceiling shelves of books. A guilty shopping addiction, the books are now double banked and the smothered tomes seem to be creeping into other […]

The following is the title story from Fabulous Lives—our upcoming anthology by Perth writer Bindy Pritchard. Her collection features stories that embrace people with all their frailties and strengths, failures and hopes, as they reach critical junctures in their lives.   ‘Fabulous Lives’ It was too late for Edith. She knew that when she stood in the […]

We have been inundated with some incredible cover designs as of late, making it especially difficult to make the final decision for our upcoming covers. The latest cover reveal is Fabulous Lives by local author Bindy Pritchard, whose short stories have been shortlisted in several of our anthologies. Thanks...

For readers, I always recommend Elena Ferrante’s superb Neapolitan novels. For writers needing motivation, I like to recommend practical 'how to' writing books. My current obsession is the screenwriting classic Save the Cat! I have become quite evangelical, giving copies away like Gideons Bibles to wannabe writers...

Why I Need Writing Deadlines I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by. ― Douglas Adams I guess my mother’s death was my first writing deadline. I was 27 and working as a Customs Officer in Fremantle at the time: boarding ships at sea, securing bond stores and sitting on […]

Never underestimate the impact of being published in a Margaret River Press anthology. After my story ‘Dying’ was published in 2014 in The Trouble With Flying I was contacted by Cate Kennedy to be the emerging writer paired with her for the January 2015 edition of Review of Australian Fiction. Based on that story, ‘The […]