Writers, editors, agents, publishers and more share their thoughts, experiences and stories.
Advocacy is very often about telling stories that struggle to be heard. An experienced advocate and storyteller both, Arnold Zable spoke to Deanne Sheldon-Collins about some of the issues he was to cover in his February 2015 workshop, including the importance and complications of writing for social justice.
ERG: Can you talk a little about how you came to be a crime writer? Have you always been a fan of the genre?
AS: I’ve always loved suspenseful films. For a long time, I was infatuated with Film Noir, and loved trying to pick apart the ways tension was built and released in a story. I have always been a big reader, but was never really interested in crime novels. I think this is because I always saw them as very male and very conventional: a dead woman, a detective, a bad guy. It didn’t interest me.
2019 Summer School: Writing Your Way to the End: Plotting, Momentum and Re-Drafting
CJ: Your first memoir is coming out soon. Has the process of finding narrative structure or ‘plot' in your memoir been different to that of your novels?
Ahead of her Summer School Workshop: Writing the Body, Lee Kofman spoke honestly and openly about her sexuality, her relationships, and how both inform her writing.
2019 Summer School: Experimental Writing
NB: What first inspired you in the direction of experimental writing?
In this deep dive interview with Christy Tan, Claire Gaskin introduces her theories about language, becoming, and the sensory experience of poetry.
Richard Holt knows about making every word count. Ahead of his Summer School workshop on micro-fiction, he answered some of Nikki Bielinski's questions.
'Show, don't tell', is a mantra of good writing, but what does that actually mean? How can you tell when you're telling, and how do you know when you're showing? Steph Downing asked Nicole Hayes to enlighten us.
Dinithi Perera interviews Thuy On about criticism in the digital age, the art of reviewing, and and to whom the critic is responsible ahead of her Summer School workshop Reviewing and Literary Criticism.
When Lionel Shriver ignited public debate about cultural appropriation with her 2016 Brisbane Writers Festival opening address, ‘Fiction and Identity Politics’¹, followed by Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s swift rejoinder², I took it personally. Not in a white privilege, why-are-they-trying-to-stop-me-from-writing-whatever-I-want? kind of way, but in a way that made me pause and reflect on my own creative practice.
