Attractive men, Jane Austen, sensitive talk

Well there was some, but not much, chat about Jane Austen in the session, Three very attractive men talk sensitively about Jane Austen, hosted by columnist Mark Dapin and featuring two of Australia’s most prominent authors: Tom Keneally, and Rob Drewe. Actually between Dapin’s tattoed biceps, the twinkle in Keneally’s eye and the merry sparring [...]

Why sport is not like life

One can only marvel at the increasing audacity of the sporting world, its economic and business equations. While around the world people of all countries seal their wallets shut, companies go bust, governments issue stimulus packages, and GM receives $200,000,000 just to stay afloat, and within a period of one month, Real Madrid splashes out [...]

Gray’s place found in translation

‘After the frivolities of the morning session, I shall re-establish my credentials as a serious and melancholy poet,’ said Robert Gray to the large crowd attending the session Location, location: the importance of place in writing. Place is not only associated with the locality but the people, said Gray before reading Among [...]

Words on the fields of Belongil

Hmmm, this is different, I thought when I first saw the new site for 2009 at Belongil Fields, and especially the woodchips scattered across the ground. The Splendour in the Grass festival, two weeks earlier, was not kind to the grass. But then I just enjoyed all on offer at the festival. Perhaps [...]

Updated post on Geoffrey Robertson talks

What did I learn at Byron Bay Writers Festival? Never try to digest and write up a Geoffrey Robertson speech while sitting in a marquee surrounded by the chatter of people on your most-admired-writers list.
Here is a substantially updated post about Geoffrey Robertson’s speeches and his “wet-Sunday-afternoon effort” preamble.
Marian Edmunds

An Unimagined and word-of-mouth hit

Call for notes from Robert Dessaix’s lecture

I would be happy to hear from anyone who can provide their observations of Robert Dessaix’s Thea Astley lecture 2009 which I regrettably was unable to attend.

Australian myth takes a romantic turn

I caught up with Kevin Rabalais in the Green Room. I was curious to know what an American author could bring to a classic Australian story or myth, this one being the expedition of Burke and Wills. Rabalais moved from New Orleans to Australia to work on his historic novel Landscape of Desire.
He first [...]

How Can We Save Our World?

It is an all too familiar song. We all know it. But festival-goers were blessed to have three “new aspiration climate change observers” to sing it again, though we loathe to hear it. Climate change. The message is simple, we are not doing enough, both as individuals in our everyday lives, and as a [...]

How Muslims understand the West

Irfan Yusuf, lawyer and freelance commentator points out some fascinating, and other more frightening, ironies and contradictions that are observable within Eastern and Western relations. They are inevitable consequences of sociological studies. This is especially the case when considering the complexity of the loaded, but at the same time, vague definitions such East and West. [...]