In early June, I flew from Brisbane to Western Australia. I had won the Margaret River Short Story Competition and was invited to the Margaret River Readers and Writers Festival. Our panel, about the collection Joiner Bay and other stories, was at lunchtime on the Saturday with a small but friendly audience. Emily Paull, Leslie_Thiele […]

Strong. Brave. Paralysed. My brother says ‘You were always strong, brave. I looked up to that. I still do.’ Honestly, I had no idea. On the inside, it always just feels like a pragmatic weighing up of options and going with the one that will let me sleep at night. I reveal to a new […]

Sit, stay. I stayed at Varuna, the Writers House in the Blue Mountains for two weeks in the middle of autumn. When telling friends about my fortnight there, I feel like I’ve emphasised the food angle quite a bit. I reckon I’ve said a lot about the biscuits, the fresh peaches, the homemade curries and […]

Finding my writing community By Gail Chrisfield When my copy of Joiner Bay and Other Stories arrived, I left the padded envelope unopened on the hall table while I changed, briefed my partner about my work day and played with our two excited little dogs. Then I was ready for the moment I had been […]

The bathhouse change cubicle is half the size of my en suite. Its oppressive walls are the same bland lemon chiffon. The faux marble floor tiles almost match our genuine ones. If I felt better, its clinical seclusion might appeal less. The previous occupant’s lingering Lily of the Valley perfume brings on a sneeze that […]

There’s something enthralling about myths—those stories passed down from one generation to the next to both entertain and explain the many mysteries of human existence. Some myths take liberties with narrative that many writers wouldn’t dare to, and they do it with flair. One of my favourites is Ovid’s myth of Narcissus and Echo. You […]

I’m standing cold in the sand, trying to see Rottnest Island through the sky’s swathes of grey. My face is slick with tears that taste of you. No-one can tell me why the intensity of my grief—the savagery of it, the way it has me by the throat—isn’t enough to bring you back. Sometimes I […]

Writing Blind One thing I always find fascinating is reading about the evolution of a particular piece – about the how and why considerations of travelling from A to B via Z, that might result in an author tossing the lot and resuming somewhere around G. Such a seemingly haphazard way of working initially made […]

  I had this deal with a guy who owned a noodle joint. Sundays and Wednesdays I sucked his cock; he fed me and Gus. It was solid. Meant I didn’t have to beg all day, scrounge slops half the night just to get by. He caught us one night trawling for scraps in the […]

FLASHES Short & Short Shorts & Flash Of course there are plenty of guidelines for the writing of short fiction. And a normal moth sticks to the rules. For a while. Sometimes I wonder if rules take the form of those tiny cardboard pyramids, ten dollars from Coles. A sticky surface entices the hungry moths […]