The Inc. Blot

What We've Been Reading This Summer

2012-01-17T13:45:00.004+11:00

Of course we've been reading our own wonderful Black Inc. books over the break, from David Marr's must-read collection Panic to Mungo MacCallum's entertaining and educational guide to Australia's prime ministers The Good, the Bad and the Unlikely. We've also been busily reading manuscripts and advance copies of our forthcoming books (you can see some of them in our January - June catalogue.)

But we're bookish people by nature and we like reading other publishers' books too. So here's what else we've been reading over the summer:
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Q&A with Mungo MacCallum

2012-01-16T16:11:00.003+11:00

We interview Mungo MacCallum about his new book The Good, the Bad and the Unlikely: Australia's Prime Ministers, which tells the tale of the many men and one woman who’ve had a crack at running the country.

What are three of the most surprising facts or anecdotes you discovered while researching this book?

I like the story about Ben Chifley taking his own onions to a Gundagai café; he knew that otherwise, with rationing, he would be lucky to get them with his favourite steak. But I was intrigued by two others who were ahead of their times. Jim Scullin, beset on all sides as he battled his way through the Great Depression, still found time to set aside land in the Northern Territory to be reserved for Aboriginal Australians. And George Reid, frequently dismissed as a buffoon, turned out to be a lone voice against the harsh laws passed against the Chinese.

Christmas Gift Guide

2011-12-05T15:05:00.004+11:00

Books make the best Christmas gifts – everyone knows that. We’ve published some wonderful titles this year that are just perfect for the book worm, political junkie or history buff in your family.

And remember – support your local bookshop this Christmas! Don’t have a bookshop nearby? Then buy online from a great Australian bookseller such as Readings (free shipping and gift wrapping!)

Here are our gift ideas (for more Black Inc. books, visit our website):

An interview with the editors of The Best Australian Stories, Essays and Poems 2011

2011-11-07T16:09:00.004+11:00

Each year the Best Australian collections – essays, stories and poems – bring together the best and brightest that has been written across the country. We talk to the current editors about the 2011 editions.

Ramona Koval is the editor of The Best Australian Essays 2011.

What was the selection process like for The Best Australians Essays?

My kitchen table was covered with journals, magazines, newspapers and submissions and I moved these around to the yes, no and maybe piles. Then I would redistribute these and some maybes would go to the yes pile and vice versa. When a new essay was being considered, the rubic's cube process began again.

10 Myths About Language

2011-10-10T11:49:00.005+11:00

Robert Lane Greene, author of You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws and the Power of Words, reveals 10 myths about language.

1. In English, there are always clear rules; violate them and you’re wrong.

Who says? English has no committee that sets the rules; it never has. (France does, by contrast. More on them below.) The “rules” are frequently laid down in books intended to be authoritative; such books have often perpetuated non-rules that have been violated by great writers and speakers throughout history. The test of whether a rule is a Rule is not whether your English teacher told you so. It’s whether the body of speakers and writers observe it, establishing it as the de facto spoken and written standard by their use of English, not by their proclamations about rules.

An interview with Robert Lane Greene

2011-10-04T10:42:00.001+11:00

We interview Robert Lane Greene, author of You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws and the Power of Words.

Robert is an international correspondent for the Economist and his writing has also appeared in the New York Times, Slate, the New Republic, the Daily Beast and other publications. He speaks nine languages.

What's your new book You Are What You Speak about?

One reviewer put it well: it’s about language, but it’s also in large part about what we say and think about language. Why is every generation of parents worried the teenagers are ruining the language? Why do we think that some languages are more sophisticated, logical or powerful than others? Why do some countries ban or restrict the use of foreign or even native minority languages?

Our picks for Father's Day

2011-08-26T14:07:00.002+10:00

The best present you can give your Dad this Father’s Day is a book! Here are some of our suggestions:

'A first-class piece of historical writing. Boyce is a graceful and robust stylist and a fine storyteller.' – Sunday Age

Acclaimed historian James Boyce brings the founding of Melbourne to life. In 1835 an illegal squatter camp was established on the banks of the Yarra River. In defiance of authorities in London and Sydney, Tasmanian speculators began sending men and sheep across Bass Strait – and so changed the shape of Australian history.

Read more.

An interview with Alice Pung

2011-08-25T15:26:00.001+10:00

Alice Pung is the author of the bestselling memoir Unpolished Gem and the editor of the anthology Growing Up Asian in Australia. Her new memoir, Her Father's Daughter, is available now in all good bookstores.

Can you tell us a little about your new book Her Father’s Daughter?

My new book is an unspoken conversation between a father and a daughter, about growing up and growing old. In writing it I was not searching for easy epiphanies but an understanding of what it means to risk love again when you have lost almost everything.

The story started to emerge when I was living overseas for the first time, in Beijing. My father would call me up and give me updates about the Victorian bushfires which were raging through our state at the time. He couldn’t believe that the government allowed people to stay and defend their houses.

Read more »

Great bookshop moments in film

2011-08-17T11:41:00.001+10:00

In honour of National Bookshop Day this Saturday 20 August, we’ve put together a collection of some of our favourite bookshop moments from the movies.

The Never Ending Story

Interview with TV writer and novelist Steve Hely

2011-08-02T12:06:00.003+10:00

Steve Hely is the author of How I Became a Famous Novelist and a writer for The Office, 30 Rock and American Dad.

How did you get into writing for TV?

I'd always been interested in writing stories and plays. When I was in fourth grade I tried to produce a play at my elementary school about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but some wise teachers put a stop to it. Then when I got to Harvard University, I became a member of the Harvard Lampoon magazine. It's the oldest continuously published humor magazine in the world, and many graduates from there have gone into TV writing. So I learned for the first time that TV writing was really a job you could get. And that doing it was basically just like sitting around with your funny friends. So after I graduated I wrote samples for several shows I liked. I ended up getting my first job writing jokes for The Late Show with David Letterman in New York City.

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Steve Hely's Five Tips For Writers

2011-08-02T11:23:00.005+10:00

1. Only writing is writing. Talking about writing isn't writing. Reading isn't writing. Thinking up ideas isn't writing. Only sitting down and writing words counts. There's a quote I've heard attributed to Kingsley Amis that summarizes this nicely: The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of one's trousers to the seat of one's chair.
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An interview with author Tim Richards

2011-08-02T11:16:00.002+10:00

Can you tell us a little about your new book Thought Crimes?

This book is a collection of twenty stories; they're comic in the main, but seldom funny ha-ha. It's pitch black, bizarre comedy... Where my previous books, Letters to Francesca (1996), The Prince (1997), and Duckness (1998) had a strong autobiographical component, these are less immediately so. There are still plenty of personal elements, but the main focus here is on thought and perspective, most particularly the imagination. The stories tend to exist in the space where the creative imagination tips into the red zone and becomes destructive and endangering. Some of these characters may be guilty of spending too much time entertaining dead-end ideas, to the extent that it not only harms their thinking, but also their perception. They're often incapable of seeing the world around them for what it is.

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Alice Pung: Reflections on writing

2011-07-29T09:40:00.000+10:00

When I was living in the States I befriended a rare and generous soul, a poet and professor named Robert Cording, who had this to say about writing poetry:

“The poem has to feel, I think, as if there’s a real person struggling with real experiences that will not yield some handy lesson, but nevertheless are not entirely without meaning. The voice that convinces will always be the voice of the individual, not as a spokesperson for this or that idea.”

When I came to write my second book, Her Father’s Daughter, I had to remember this to get me through the darker parts.

Read more »

What we’re reading

2011-07-25T09:34:00.002+10:00

What do publishers read in their spare time?

Well, when we’re not reading Black Inc. books like the amazing new Alice Pung memoir or the hilarious novel we’ve got coming out in August or James Boyce’s new book of history, we’re reading books by other publishers.

Here’s a quick snapshot of the books we’re currently reading:

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A dozen things you didn’t know about Melbourne

2011-06-29T16:53:00.002+10:00

James Boyce is the author of the new release 1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia.

Here he shares with us a dozen things you may not have known about the founding of Melbourne:

#1 Melbourne’s mother island was not Britain but the notorious penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land.

#2 Melbourne was founded by unauthorised boat arrivals (or to use the contemporary term, ‘illegals’) who were breaking British law.

#3 The founding fathers (sadly there were few founding mothers) of Melbourne were not the cashed up squatters but their former convict workers. Very few of the famous Port Phillip Association members who sent sheep and shepherds across the strait were permanently resident in the Port Phillip District during the first year.

#4 The emancipist workers were experienced and environmentally attuned bushmen.
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Our pets

2011-06-24T14:21:00.003+10:00

In honour of Take Your Dog To Work Day, we are celebrating all of our pets. Get to know the dogs and cats behind Black Inc!

Alfie
Belongs to: General Manager
Likes: Snoozing, swimming in Merri Creek
Dislikes: Being referred to as "the dog", forced cuddle time

Interview with Benjamin Law

2011-06-02T09:32:00.004+10:00

To celebrate the release of the new format of The Family Law, we talk to author Benjamin Law.

Can you tell us a little bit about the experience of having your first book published?

Getting a book out into the world is a very wonderful—albeit consistently odd—experience. During promotion, you find yourself in places you never imagined, like saying hello to Mel and Kochie in Channel 7’s studios, or drinking wine with Jenny Kee and Waleed Aly in the headquarters of SBS. Complete strangers come up to you, saying they’ve read your book and tell me how much they love my mother.
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Interview with author Sonia Faleiro

2011-05-05T12:50:00.003+10:00

We interview writer and journalist Sonia Faleiro about her fascinating new book Beautiful Thing: Portrait of a Bombay Bar Dancer.

Can you tell us a little about your book Beautiful Thing?

Beautiful Thing is a work of non-fiction. It’s the story of a young girl called Leela who runs away from home after being prostituted by her father and reaches Bombay determined to build a new life for herself. She’s only thirteen when she gets a job as a bar dancer but because of her beauty and vivacity very quickly becomes popular, earning plenty of money and living the lifestyle of her dreams. When I met Leela in 2005, she was nineteen and hopeful that her affair with her boss, a man who was already married and had children, would turn into something more permanent. But very soon after, the government cracked down on dance bars, banning them on the grounds that they encouraged immorality, corrupted the youth and encouraged crime, essentially forcing Leela and about 75,000 young women like her out of work and onto the streets.
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Kate Jennings on writing Snake

2011-04-04T11:45:00.001+10:00

Kate Jennings

I wrote my novel Snake through two long winters at the beginning of the nineties out on Long Island. Low grey skies, the angry Atlantic. No distractions from re-imagining life on an Australian farm in the fifties.

When I began, I remember thinking “The world doesn’t need another dysfunctional family or coming-of age novel.” But most of those books were from the perspective of one person: the self-justifying writer-as-child. It was important for me to be even-handed, to present this family from the point of view of all the protagonists. It was also important to me not to write a feminist tract – this was a time when feminists were presenting mothers as nurturing and women in general as somehow innately morally superior. Arrant nonsense, of course. Some mothers are good, some middling, some appalling.

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Girls in publishing review The Girls In Publishing

2011-02-25T12:44:00.001+11:00

With a cover like that, we knew we needed to read it. Our industrious editor hunted down a copy of the book and it has been passed from desk to desk ever since.

What can we say? It lives up to the hype.

Things we learnt from reading The Girls in Publishing:

Cigarettes and whisky are acceptable during editorial meetings. Cover designers prefer hashish.

Every girl in publishing should own at least one pair of "mint-green lounging pyjamas".

If only we had husbands who were so supportive of our careers: "There was nothing about her, he thought with a deep flush of pride, that indicated she'd been working."

If you're a boy - sorry, man - in publishing, don't be afraid to turn on the charm. Say your associate editor appears at your cubicle. Why not ask her: "What can I do for you, Diana? Lunch, dinner, a moonlight picnic by the East River when your husband is conveniently not around?"

Age-appropriate dating is important: "Forty-six was hardly an age even the most liberated woman's handbook would consider ideal to attract a virile thirty-five-year-old man, much less be his wife."

It's the little things that keep the romance alive: "He noticed that she was wearing a gold pin he'd given her when they first started screwing."

In 1974, "cutting and pasting" involved real scissors and actual glue.

Agents ain't what they used to be: "Foster was a slimy, cigar-smelling, toupee-wearing man who would demand payment in bed for anything he did ... He was the best agent in the business."

Contracts were a lot messier back then too: “… the usual ten percent commission - plus one evening a week screwing until he got bored.”

Beware the notorious PUBLISHING BLACKLIST. Disgrace yourself too badly, girlie, and you'll never wield a blue pencil in this town again.

If you sleep with your boss and he dumps you, wearing a “tight lace bodysuit” to work is a sure way to regain his professional respect: “She wasn’t wearing a bra either, he noticed.”

Sure her publishing-executive husband sleeps around - but really, some women are so cold they have it coming: "'Why do kids love the zoo so much?' she complained. 'Nothing to see but animals.' She shuddered slightly."

If your colleague turns up to a party with a pretty blonde as his date, don’t be afraid to speak your mind - “‘I hear that Scandinavians are pretty sophisticated sexually,’ Kate said, in what she hoped was a cutting voice.”

The girls in publishing have a LOT of sex. But only with colleagues, agents, authors, failed authors and, at a stretch, copyright lawyers. No one outside the industry, ladies: publishing is a closed shop.

Black Inc.’s Gift Guide

2010-12-01T15:01:00.005+11:00

Give the gift of great reading this year. We’ve got something for everyone.

The Best Australian Stories
Edited by Cate Kennedy
RRP $29.95

The Best Australian Essays 2010
Edited by Robert Drewe
RRP $29.95

The Best Australian Poems 2010
Edited by Robert Adamson
RRP $27.95

The Best Australian Stories, Essays and Poems bring together the best Australian writing of 2010. On their own or as a set, they make a gorgeous gift.

Reading Madame Bovary
Amanda Lohrey
RRP $32.95

A brilliant collection of short stories from one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. A book sure to please any literary lover.

“Full of riches.” – The Age.

Australian Encounters
Written by Shane Maloney, Illustrated by Chris Grosz
RRP $24.95

Written by Shane Maloney and illustrated by Chris Grosz, Australian Encounters tells of 50 true encounters - public or private, ill-fated or fortuitous - between a renowned Australian and an international mover and shaker. Beautifully presented and highly entertaining, this is a perfect gift for the hard-to-buy-for friend, family or colleague.

The Family Law
Benjamin Law
RRP $27.95

A hilarious and moving collection of essays on life, love, family and growing up by one of Australia’s brightest new talents. If you know someone who likes David Sedaris, they’ll love Benjamin Law.

“A writer of great wit and warmth.” – The Sydney Morning Herald

The Sound of Pictures
Listening to the Movies, from Hitchcock to High Fidelity
Andrew Ford
RRP $32.95

An illuminating journey through the soundtracks of more than 400 films, including A Clockwork Orange, The Godfather, Cinema Paradiso, High Noon and many more. Perfect for music lovers and film buffs alike.

“A hugely enjoyable and revelatory read." —Margaret Pomeranz

Monsoon
The Indian Ocean and the Battle for Supremacy in the 21st Century
Robert D. Kaplan
RRP $34.95

In Monsoon Robert Kaplan shows how the rise of China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia represents a crucial shift in the global balance of power. A great gift for that friend or family member who is looking for thought provoking reading this summer.

Frugavore
How to Grow Your Own, Buy Local, Waste Nothing & Eat Well
Arabella Forge
RRP $29.95

An invaluable guide to eating and living well. This is a book destined to become a dog-eared kitchen staple, with fantastic recipes, tips and information on food that proves useful year-round.

“Frugavore is that welcome rarity – a food book designed to be used.” – The Big Issue

Into the Woods
The Battle for Tasmania’s Forests
Anna Krien
RRP $29.95

Smart, powerful reporting on Tasmania’s forest wars from a brilliant debut writer. Into the Woods will capture you from the first sentence and sweep you along for the ride. For lovers of insightful non-fiction.

“Anna Krien's intimate, urgent book pulsates with life and truth.” — Chloe Hooper

Love Poems
Dorothy Porter
$27.95

Love Poems collects Dorothy Porter’s most powerful love poetry: portraits of longing and infatuation, of bliss, passion, uncertainty and devotion. A must for poetry lovers and anyone looking for that special gift for a loved one.

Quarterly Essay 40
Trivial Pursuit: Leadership and the End of the Reform Era
George Megalogenis
$19.95

In the aftermath of the 2010 election and an era of power without purpose, George Megalogenis considers what has happened to politics in Australia. This smart and engaging essay is the perfect gift for any political junkie.

The Well at the World's End
AJ Mackinnon
$32.95

The Well at the World’s End is an astonishing true story of a remarkable voyage, an old-fashioned quest by a modern-day adventurer. This is a great gift for an armchair traveler or anyone with a taste for adventure and whimsy.

“One of the most enjoyable books I have ever read...a marvellous read by a travel writer with a unique style.” – The Canberra Times

For more great Black Inc. books, please visit our website.

Andrew Ford's Top 5 Sound or Music Moments in Film

2010-12-01T15:01:00.002+11:00

Andrew Ford is the author of The Sound of Pictures: Listening to the Movies, from Hitchcock to High Fidelity. We asked him to share five of his favourite uses of sound or music in film.

1. The Big Country (William Wyler, 1958) has one of those instantly recognisable cowboy themes by Jerome Moross, a popular hit in its day. It speaks to us of wide open prairies, mountains, canyons, tumbleweed – clichés, in other words, and fifty years on we might think of the music as clichéd too. But Wyler's most impressive use of the landscape has no music, indeed no sound. The dawn fist-fight between Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston is shown from a great height and a great distance, physically and theatrically. We see little and hear nothing. Wyler refuses to allow us to get involved in this futile punch-up. A Cold War parable? You bet!

2. There are dozens of examples from Hitchcock in the book, but here's one I didn't include. If the music Bernard Herrmann wrote (against Hitchcock's wishes) for the shower scene in Psycho (1960) is too well known to require comment, what happens next is very interesting indeed. As Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) lies on the bathroom floor, we hear the distant voice of Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) – 'Oh God, mother! Blood!' – and then, for the next ten minutes, there is only music as we watch Norman mop up the bathroom, tidy the bedroom, wrap the body in the shower curtain, drag it out of the motel room, put it in the boot of the car, drive it to the swamp, push it in and watch it sink. During those ten minutes, something very interesting occurs. We change our allegiance. Having been hoping that Marion would get away with her theft, and been horrified at her murder, it takes only ten minutes for us to hope Norman will succeed in disposing of her body and to share his feelings of panic when the car roof pokes out of the swamp.

3. The Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann, 1964) has a strikingly bizarre score by Dimitri Tiomkin, but the sound that never fails to raise what remains of the hair on my head, is the voices of the Roman legions standing in a snow storm, moaning in chorus. They are bewailing the death of Marcus Aurelius, their mouths hidden behind their long shields. It is a chilling noise.

4. The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sánchez, 1999) is based on the simple conceit that we are watching documentary footage shot on two cameras by three film students. They have disappeared, their cameras have been found, the film and video have been edited and this is the result. As they meet their sticky ends in the final minutes of the picture, we are shown images from one camera but hear sound from the other. The images are shot by Heather running downstairs into the cellar where Mike has been killed or at least knocked out. From the audio on his camera we hear Heather's screams coming closer.

5. There are dozens of sonic masterstrokes in Samson and Delilah (Warwick Thornton, 2009), some of them musical, some not. Beneath the freeway where Samson and Delilah camp out with Gonzo, the distant thumps of car tires hitting a join in the road form a continuous counterpoint to their fragmented conversations. My favourite moment, though, is when the film's sound design takes us inside Samson's head. As Samson (Rowan McNamara) lies on his mat, he has country music playing on the radio next to his left ear. Outside on the deck, his brother's band is going over and over its reggae riffs, an accompaniment in search of a tune. Samson covers his ears and the sounds become very distant. He uncovers first one ear, then the other, and we hear – in extreme stereo – the band, then the radio.

The Sound of Pictures is available now in all good bookstores.

A sneak peek at Australian Encounters

2010-12-01T15:00:00.001+11:00

Here is a sample encounter from the new release Australian Encounters written by Shane Maloney and illustrated by Chris Grosz. Australian Encounters tells of 50 true encounters - public or private, ill-fated or fortuitous - between a renowned Australian and an international mover and shaker.

Bob Hawke & Frank Sinatra

“A funny thing happened in Australia,” Frank Sinatra told a New York audience. “I made a mistake and got off the plane.” The plane in question – the private jet of one of Sinatra’s Las Vegas casino connections – landed in
Melbourne on 9 July 1974. Fresh out of self-imposed retirement, the 58-year-old Sinatra was visiting Australia for the first time in 15 years. His career was back on the upswing after a decade of poor record sales and crappy movies; his five shows, billed as the ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back’ tour, were eagerly awaited.
Trouble began the moment he set foot on the ground. Nobody was waiting to pick him up. As he headed to his rehearsal in a borrowed car, he was pursued by a journalist disguised as his then wife, the former Mrs Zeppo Marx. Sprinting through the rain to the venue with a media posse at his heels, he found himself locked out. Photos splashed across the afternoon papers showed a very cranky Frankie pounding on the stage door “like a demented fan”.
That night on stage, the Chairman of the Board let fly. In a prickly monologue, he described journalists as bums and “the broads who work for the press” as hookers worth “a buck and a half”. The crooner had bitten off more than he could chew.
When the journalists’ union demand for an apology was brushed aside, the ACTU slapped a ban on the tour. Its president, Bob Hawke, took personal charge of the campaign. The Silver Bodgie was then 45, a champion pisspot, notorious womaniser and the artful manager of Labor’s industrial wing. He declared that unless Sinatra could walk on water, he would be stuck in Australia until he said sorry.
With transport workers refusing to refuel his jet, Sinatra was forced to sneak onto a commercial flight to Sydney. Holed up in the Boulevard Hotel, he considered calling on the US Navy to rescue him. Eventually, he agreed to negotiate.
On 11 July, the two men met in Sinatra’s suite. Over four hours, an agreement was hammered out. In return for a statement that Sinatra “did not intend any general reflection upon the moral character of working members of the Australian media”, Hawke was prepared to green-light his remaining concerts.
Back in the US, it was joked that Sinatra was only allowed out of Australia because the union boss woke one morning with a kangaroo’s head on his pillow. Hawkie, meanwhile, did it his way. Eschewing the booze and broads, he became Labor’s longest-serving prime minister, until upstaged by Placido Domingo.

Australian Encounters is available now in all good bookstores. (RRP $24.95)

The perfect gift for Christmas!

Cate Kennedy's Top 10 Tips for Writers

2010-11-03T09:46:00.001+11:00

Cate Kennedy is the editor of newly released Best Australian Stories 2010. Cate is the author of the critically acclaimed short-story collection Dark Roots and the novel The World Beneath, and she is highly regarded as a teacher of short fiction and works as a mentor, editor and judge when not at work on her own writing.

To celebrate the release of The Best Australian Stories 2010, Cate shares her Top 10 Tips for Writers.

1. CLEAR A SPACE

For the moment, try to forget about marketability, prizemoney, fame, fortune, or who’s going to play you in the miniseries. None of these spurs will actually allow you to write a better story as you’re sitting staring at the blank page. Instead, try to visualise your unwritten story as something to approach with a respectful curiosity, something you need to pick up carefully in both hands.

2. GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION

You’re going to spin this out of thin air, so let your subject matter creep up on you from wherever it comes from, and permit yourself the playful mental spaciousness to pay it some non-judgemental, sustained attention. Get a good look at it.

3. UNPLUG YOUR INTERNET CONNECTION

There is nothing in the world you need to research or investigate at this moment, except what’s already bumping around in your head. Do yourself the favour of turning off the external, distracting stimulus for once. You don’t need more information – you need to see the patterns in what is already there.

4. TRUST THE POWER OF THE STORY

Don’t worry too much about where it’s going, or the direction it’s taking you in. This is not a cerebral, analytical process. Your rapier-sharp judgment and compulsive need to solve it all can come into play later. Just trust that you will, at some stage, come to see the story that is emerging in what you are writing.

5. YOU ARE AT YOUR MOST POWERFUL WHEN YOU ARE AT YOUR MOST VULNERABLE

Feeling hesitant, nervous, queasy almost, about the raw revelation needed to give away your deepest secrets? That’s the way. Sit tight.

6. ENGAGE NOW, DETACH LATER

Try to see this as a two-stage process – the hot stage and the cool stage. That egotistical little voice on your shoulder, whispering about control and competence, whining for your attention? Gag them for the moment. They’ll have plenty of time to show off later, when you’re redrafting and have achieved, through this process, a little more detachment from your work. For now, plunge in. Nobody’s watching – you’re allowed to skinny-dip.

7. GET OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY

Don’t overthink this. A story is an offer, not a claim. Writing with something to prove – your extensive vocabulary, your arcane bits of knowledge, your cleverness – will trip you up like clown shoes. Learning to write wholeheartedly instead will let you gradually burn away the lurking pretention and self-regard which will choke your story to death. Your inner voice is the one that has true pitch; your ego-ridden voice is dangerously tone-deaf.

8. COMPASSION AND A GOOD MEMORY

An unbeatable combo for storytellers and writers keen on getting better.

9. PREPARE TO FIND THIS TIRESOME

Here’s the thing – at the other side of your boredom (and disillusion, and aggrieved sense of entitlement) lies your better, more honest self and your stronger, more powerful story. Mastering your distracted restlessness will get you there, solitary minute by solitary minute.

10. THERE’S MORE THAN TEN TOP TIPS

as you’ll quickly find as soon as you get to the end of your first draft. Stories are living, breathing entities; they refuse to be corralled by aphorism. So...

11. KEEP GOING ANYWAY

until you no longer get a stitch every time you try, until you feel like sharing it, until it becomes its own reward. By then, it’ll be knitted into your DNA, so it’ll be too late to even consider giving up.

The Best Australian Stories 2010 edited by Cate Kennedy is available now in all good bookshops.
For more information, please visit The Best Australian Writing website.

Andrea Goldsmith on Dorothy Porter's Love Poems

2010-09-28T11:35:00.001+10:00

Love Poems is a collection of Dorothy Porter's most powerful love poetry. It was compiled by writer Andrea Goldsmith, the late Dorothy Porter's partner. We talk to Andrea about the collection.

Why did you decide on a collection of love poems?

Dorothy Porter – Dot – worked hard. With each new book, her poetry - which I always thought wonderful - seemed to get even better. Periodically over the years she would float the idea of a selected or collected poems. I would immediately dismiss the idea: collected and selecteds mean you’ve either run out of puff or you’re dead, I would say, and you, Dot, fit neither category.
With Dot’s death in December, 2008, everything changed. She left a nearly-completed collection of poems (The Bee Hut published by Black Inc in September 2009) and a long essay (On Passion, one of MUP’s little books on big ideas, published in May 2010), plus a number of unpublished poems. Dot and I often used to talk about the longevity of a writer’s work: who had it; whether their work warranted it, and most particularly what we would want for our own work. And Dot wanted what all serious writers want: for her work to live on. The time to consider a selected or collected had arrived.

I wish it hadn’t.

Given my long antipathy to selecteds, I knew I had to come up with a novel approach, one that was distinctly Dot. There are a number of themes that reoccur in her work from her first volume of poetry, Little Hoodlum, published when she was just 21 (with her looking like a little hoodlum in the cover pic) to her last poems. Primary among them was love. In fact love’s entire pantheon figures largely throughout her work: desire, sex, danger, flirting, humiliation, loss, rapture.
Love is Dorothy Porter territory.

How did you choose which poems to include in Love Poems? And the structure?

I’ve always loved Dot’s work – indeed I fell for the poetry before I fell for the poet. I gathered over the years an increasing number of favourite poems, including what Dot referred to as her Andy-poems, so from the beginning of this project there were certain poems that would automatically be included such as the sequence ‘Summer 92’, ‘Why I Love your Body’, ‘Lucky’, and many others. But making this selection took me deep into the whole of her work. Dot’s poetic imagination thrived on love. I found poems I had forgotten; I rediscovered old favourites. I had such a good time. And I discovered recurring patterns: when filtered through Dorothy Porter’s poetic imagination love always comes laden with risk, with edge, with the real possibility of humiliation and the eventual fall – even at the rapturous beginning. As I read through all her work it occurred to me to shape the poems to echo the arc of an affair: from the first excitement, through rapture, disillusionment and finally wisdom. Thus the sections in the book:

O flash! O honey!
The Big Sexy Risk
Ambrosia
Hot and Cold
The Labyrinth of Intimacy

Throughout our seventeen years together I was closely involved with Dot’s work. I was her first reader and her last. Dot trusted me as a critical reader. Working on her work both in the past and now brings me enormous pleasure. I plunged into her work, all 35 years of it.

And the final selection? It was easy. Dot prized lucidity in poetry – and practised it superbly. I wanted lucid poems with punch and passion, and I wanted wisdom too. I wanted the collection to read with whoosh! I wanted people to experience the push and pull of love, the excitement and fear, the tremor and disappointment. I wanted readers to feel love.

I was faced with the problem of what to do about the verse novels. It just wouldn’t be right to have a volume of Dorothy Porter on love without the steamy affair between Diana and Jill in The Monkey’s Mask, the obsessive pull that Alex feels for Phoebe in Wild Surmise, and the charged eroticism in Akhenaten – between Akhenaten and Nefertiti and most particularly between Akhenaten and his brother Smenkhkare. Briefly I considered splitting up the verse novels and inserting individual poems into the appropriate sections of Love Poems, but this would have undermined the narratives (and by extension, the integrity) of the verse novels. So I have kept the selections from each verse novel separate, and have arranged them in such a way together with a brief introduction so that the poems can be read with a sense of the narrative.

And I have included many of the song lyrics written to Paul Grabovsky’s music and sung by Katie Noonan in their album ‘Before Time Can Change Us’. In fact, it was this album that gave me the idea for the structure of Love Poems.

Do you have a favourite poem in the collection?

The first poems of Dot’s I heard her read were from Akhenaten. ‘Scarab’, which is included in the Love Poems, remains one of my favourite poems of all time. At least once a year Dot would include it in one of her public readings as a private gift to me.

With her death it has acquired additional significance.

‘Lucky’, a recent poem, is another favourite. Dot wrote it as a private poem to me. As soon as I read it I saw that it had legs – that it could withstand a public outing. And it has. Many people cite it as one of their favourites.

Why is poetry important?

Dot, like many poets, placed poetry at the top of the literary pile. But then she would. I’m a novelist, I don’t. But I am a novelist who has always read a lot of poetry. Poetry concentrates and distills human emotion, indeed all of human experience like no other written form. It is this quality above all that lends poetry its mysterious power. And central to this effect is the use of surprising, sharp, flamboyantly imaginative imagery. Consider these images of Dot’s: Your kisses like ‘smashed glass’, or the wonderful ‘Strawberries Sonnet’ – all imagery, all edgy love.

You’re all bones
You’re all quicksilver skin
Rough as a wild night
You’re not strawberries.
Your hands are ice
Your tongue cuts my face
Into conquered turf
You’re not strawberries.
You’re a determined wasp
Dying on my sting
You’re my murder and my delight
You’re not strawberries.

Your fingers play my windpipe
You’re not strawberries.

Many of us reach for poetry in extremis. We do so because a single poem can illuminate an aspect of human experience with a clarity and punch that is without equal.

Was Dorothy inspired/influenced by any particular authors when it came to writing about love and desire?

Oh yes. Catullus. Sappho. Shakespeare. Lorca. Cavafy. Neruda. She returned to these poets over and over again. Dot read a huge amount of poetry. Her best poetry-reading time was in the morning while her mind was fresh. In 2003 she started learning Spanish in order to read her favourite Spanish poets in the original. And there she would be in the morning, propped up in bed, with a couple of dictionaries and a half-dozen volumes of poetry scattered across the quilt.

Do you see Dorothy’s love poems as part of a bigger tradition of love poetry?

Yes, I do. Her work is romantic without being sentimental; it’s lyrical, insightful and emotionally resonant. And it is sharply contemporary in its honesty, its imagery, its unwavering grasp of the jugular. Most of all it illuminates love, which is, after all, the most powerful of human experiences.

Love Poems is available in all good bookstores.

Arabella Forge discusses Frugavore

2010-09-09T16:22:00.000+10:00

We talk to Arabella Forge about her first book, Frugavore: How to Grow Your Own, Buy Local, Waste Nothing & Eat Well.

What is a frugavore?

A frugavore is a person ‘who loves all things frugal’. From a cooking perspective, this means that they shop locally, buy good quality produce, but waste nothing along the way.

What inspired you to write Frugavore?

I have a background in health sciences and am a registered Nutritionist, so I have always been interested in good quality, healthy food and the importance of eating well.

Yet, the real inspiration for writing Frugavore came after I had been teaching a series of cooking classes for kids in temporary housing estates out in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. I was forever in a debate with the co-ordinator of the class about how to shop and cook effectively on a low budget. They kept wanting to include processed and pre-packaged foods for their menu, and I kept arguing against it, stating that people could eat just as well, if not better on a low budget if they ate frugally.

So I decided to put together a guide on how to eat well and save costs. I wanted to communicate to people that nutrient-dense, healthy foods are within everyone’s grasp; it might involve starting a vegie patch, keeping some chickens or developing some peasant-style cooking methods in your home kitchen, but the end result is always worth it. I also wanted to alert people about many of the grass-root food movements that currently developing throughout Australia. In an effort to access better quality produce, people are creating networks such as land-shares, farm-shares or community co-ops. This can be a great way to access better quality produce at a cheaper price.

Can you tell us a little about your book, Frugavore?

Frugavore is a ‘hands-on-guide’ to everything frugal about food; there’s information on how to grow your own produce, keep chickens, start a vegie patch and compost all of your waste.

The recipes in Frugavore have been developed in my home kitchen and they focus on traditional cooking techniques that enhance the available nutrients in food. If you are going to eat frugally, you may as well choose the best foods possible, and make the most of what you have. Frugavore explains clearly what “healthy” food is – how to access it and prepare it in home kitchen, whilst simultaneously keeping the grocery bills down!

When did you become a frugavore, and how has your life changed since becoming a frugavore?

That’s a tricky one! I think I have always been a frugavore at heart. Growing up, I lived in a very busy household in the suburbs. We kept plenty of chickens, had our own vegie patch and despite my mother working full-time we cooked all our own meals and very rarely bought take out. My family instilled in me from a young age, the importance of not wasting food, never throwing things out, and always looking to buy the best quality produce possible.

Yet it was not until I was in my early 20s, when I was living in a busy household and doing most of the cooking and sourcing of food myself that these peasant habits of frugality suddenly became useful. I was keen for everyone in my house to be enjoying the best quality food (we loved organic and locally-produced produce!) but our food bills began to escalate with a big household and plenty of mouths to feed.

So instead of buying ‘cheaper’ food, I just made a decision one day that we were going to be more ‘frugal’ with what we bought. We started by pulling up our front lawn and building a vegetable patch, then getting some chickens that were ‘on sale’ from a local battery farm. I also did some investigating and started to connect directly to a local farm for much of our produce. We invested in a large freezer and bought much of our food directly from the farm and kept it there in bulk.

In terms of my life ‘changing’ from this experience – I have to say it has changed for the better. If anything there is actually a lot less work involved in cooking and running a household once you become a frugavore. I find that shopping and going to the supermarket is incredibly tiring – particularly if you need to go there several times per week. As a frugavore, you are able to run your own mini-ecosystem in your backyard.

There are always fresh vegetables on hand, some eggs in the chook-house, and plentiful storage in the freezer. So you need to plan your meals in advance, but with peasant-style thrify dishes and less contact with the supermarket, you actually can prepare meals that are a lot healthier, and easier to cook. As my grandmother used to say, ‘simple food, is always the best!’

Is being a frugavore hard work?

Yes and no. Sure, it takes a lot more energy and time to produce a meal instead of buying take-out but you also pay a certain ‘price’ each time you buy inexpensive, nutrient-empty food.

Ironically, I actually started writing this book as a means to save time and money when I was cooking and sourcing food in a busy household. I really hate driving to and from the supermarket or organic foodstore every few days – it is not only expensive, it also takes a lot of energy to pack the car, get the shopping, unload it home, then cook a whole meal! So I started developing habits of ‘frugality’, I started growing some of our own produce, keeping chickens, and buying meat, directly from the farm in bulk. With this change in cooking habits, our household started to eat the most nutrient-dense foods possible, but what’s more, these habits actually made it a lot easier to prepare simple, healthy meals for every night of the week.

I’ll give you an example – if you live in a small or standard-size block, you should or could have the capacity to grow some of your own produce, or even keep a few chickens – our house is the size of a postage stamp, and we’re still able to do all that!!

So, you get home late from work, you’re tired, exhausted and you start to reach for the phone to find your local dial-a-pizza, BUT, if you are a frugavore, you will find the answers much more easily at your fingertips. Last night for instance, I got home late, but I went to our chickens, sourced out 2 eggs, then I went to the vegie patch and picked various greens to make a delicious and nourishing omelet.
Just like our parents or grandparents used to do, I make a lot of nutrient-dense food in bulk, that I can store for these last minute dishes – I make a big pot of stock on a weekly basis, and store this in recycled containers in the freezer together with excess meat and sausages from our local farm (despite popular opinion, meat freezes and stores extremely well), there is always sauerkraut and pickled foods in my pantry and plentiful herbs and fresh greens on my doorstep.

So back to the question – is being a frugavore hard work? Sure, setting up a herb garden initially takes time, making stock in advance takes time, visiting your local farm once per month takes time – but the result – you spend less time driving back and forth to your conventional retail outlets buying over-priced and nutrient-empty food, you become connected to your food source and have a better understanding of where your food comes from, and finally, you have less trips to the Dr’s, Dentist, weight loss clinic, and less days off work!

How can someone living in the city or in apartment become a frugavore?

People who live in inner city areas are showing an increasing demand for better quality food at more reasonable prices. They are using ‘frugal innovations’ to develop systems such as landsharing (where people build gardens on neighbouring properties), rooftop and community gardens and guerilla gardening (where people start planting in local parks or even on nature strips). Growing food in this manner – with little available space, but plenty of enthusiasm, is one of the best ways to be a frugavore and access better quality produce at lower prices.

Similarly, people who live in inner city areas are often craving a closer connection to local farms. I have plenty of frugavore friends who buy their produce in bulk from local organic farms and car-share the drive so that they only need to make the trip out there once every month or so. So even though they live in the city, they still have all the benefits of good-quality, local produce. Along this theme, there are plentiful farmer’s markets in inner city areas now.

There are also new systems of food access developing such as Buyer’s Clubs and Farm-Shares, which allow city people to buy food directly from farms from either a warehouse, or home-delivery. In many of these cases, these systems have developed to make certain foods (ie raw milk or farmer-made sauerkraut) legally accessible. They also allow city folk to enjoy the best quality foods possible, and avoid the added prices of going through a retailer.

What are benefits of being a frugavore?

The primary benefit of being a frugavore is that you are able to cook and prepare the most nutrient-dense foods possible. This means that you will feel healthier, stronger and have less days off work!

Being a healthy person and keeping my grocery bills down was my primary motivation for becoming a frugavore, but as my household and chicken coop developed I also realized that there were several other benefits. As a frugavore you can significantly reduce your waste output – which means that you will lessen your impact into local landfills. Did you know, that just by buying less processed and pre-packaged foods, and by keeping a compost heap or wormfarm, waste output can be reduced by 1 tonne per person every year?!

We are a society that is becoming increasingly aware of its environmental impact, but for us to truly make change, we need to think a lot more carefully about how we dispose of our waste. By composting or keeping a worm farm there is double benefit – not only do we reduce our waste output, we also create a superb garden fertilizer for our plants.

What kind of recipes will readers find in your book?

Frugavore is intended as an overall guidebook for the frugal kitchen, so the recipes are based on traditional style cooking methods that are thrifty and easy to prepare.

Readers will find recipes for vegetables dishes - using vegetables that are easy to grow at home, egg dishes -from your lovely hens, meat dishes – using thrifty cuts of meat and whole-animal cooking, grain dishes – using traditional grain preparation methods such as sourdough bread making and leavening, milk dishes – using good quality dairy products, and of course wonderful and easy sweet dishes using natural sweeteners.

There are many frugal ingredients and cooking techniques, which are aimed at maximizing your produce and wasting nothing! For instance – peasant-style soups, stock-making and cooking with lentils, beans and pulses.

What are your favourite recipes in the book?

I love peasant style soups, as they are so nourishing and easy to prepare. I have plenty of recipes along this theme such as minestrone, stracciattella and pea and ham soup. But of course, I also love desserts – so my two ingredient chocolate mousse is always a winner!

If we looked inside your pantry right now, what would we find?

In my pantry you would find plentiful preserves that I made from last summer when fresh fruit and berries were in season. I also have large jars of sauerkraut, home-brewed beers and other fermented foods that I put together in winter. I also keep plenty of long-life storage foods in there such as dried beans, lentils and chickpeas, which are wonderfully economical foods to cook with.

Frugavore: How to Grow Your Own, Buy Local, Waste Nothing & Eat Well is out now in all good bookstores.

Arabella will be discussing Frugavore at 6.30pm on Thursday 16 September at Readings Hawthorn bookstore, 701 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn, Victoria. For bookings and further details click here.

Anna Krien discusses Into the Woods

2010-09-01T09:53:00.001+10:00

Photo credit: Jesse Marlow

We talk to Anna Krien about her first book Into the Woods: The Battle for Tasmania’s Forests.

What’s your book about?

Into the Woods is about getting past the stereotypes, slogans and spin-doctoring that tend to swarm around most environmental stories. Specifically - my book is about the forests and the people of Tasmania. I wanted to investigate if it is reasonable – not just economically but also environmentally and socially – to be harvesting native forests for woodchips, and also why Tasmanians in particular, seem so entrenched in a vitriolic battle over 'their' trees. What was initially meant to be a story about activists versus loggers soon became a book about one woodchipping company's influence not just on the Tasmanian state government, but on the entire island.

What first made you interested in the forest debate in Tasmania?

Actually it was this footage that first drew me to Tasmania's forest issues. A warning – it makes for some ugly viewing.

The video (filmed by a forest activist hiding in a tree) shows Tasmanian logging contractors smashing a gutted car that is blocking a forest access road in the Florentine valley with sledge hammers. There are two young activists are inside the car. The loggers are yelling and grabbing them through the broken glass, trying to pull them out of the car.

An activist friend of mine working on the island sent me the footage and I booked a ticket within an hour of watching the video. I had intended on staying in Tasmania for five days, and was still there a month later.

What made you decide to write a book about this issue?

My dad is a newspaper editor and one of his favourite pearls of wisdom that he likes to share with me, is his response to journalists when they ask how many words he wants them to file on a story. What's the story worth? he likes to reply cryptically. This came to mind when I found the story of Tasmania's forests to be much larger than I'd expected. Initially I had gone down to the island and thought – 2000, 3000 words maximum – only to end up writing quadruple that without even touching the core of the issue. And unfortunately for me, once I've waded into a story, there is no going back, I'm mentally stuck in the story until it's finished. So, in a sense, the ongoing nature of the issues in Tasmania, the sausage string of political decisions and free kicks to forestry, the entrenched hate and division between the two sides, gave me little choice but to write a book about what I discovered there.

Who are some of the main people you interviewed for your book?

I spoke to so many people – there were the usual suspects such as 'Big Red' – also known as Paul Lennon, a former Labor premier and union boss, and Bob Brown, political leader of the Greens party. But as I often find in reportage, the known names don't give much away – and it was the ordinary Tasmanians – loggers, scientists, activists, foresters, police, vets, small business owners – who spent time with me and patiently explained the issues to me. Of note, I met with Bill Manning, a forester with Forest Practices Authority until he blew the whistle on what he saw as a completely negligent forestry agency in 2002. There were many people who didn't make it into the book but their help was crucial to the writing of it – such as Lindsay Tuffin – editor and founder of the online news site Tasmanian Times (which Paul Lennon described as 'fucking useless' after the site broke the story of renovations the then premier had done on his house by woodchipping company Gunns.)

What’s the most memorable moment from the interviews you conducted for the book?

Possibly meeting a baby wombat rescued by Kevin Perkins, a well-known furniture designer. He had to use a chisel to pry open a dead mother wombat's pouch to free the baby and he and his wife took turns nursing the wombat throughout the night for three months.

What was the most surprising thing you learnt from writing and publishing a book?

I have learnt many things during the course of writing this book. I discovered the 'mess' thresholds of my partner and housemates. I learnt how many dishes I can use before being forced to wash up. I've had the unfortunate pleasure of learning about the ailments of my elderly neighbours – blood pressure, a shonky ticker, one eye isn't working, and sore calves. And finally I also have to acknowledge that my cat is obsessed with me and she is probably organising another book contract just so we can spend more time together on the couch, her purring and trying to crawl on top of my laptop.

What advice would you give to other aspiring, non-fiction writers?

I was asked this same question a few years ago at a student media conference and had replied 'Be Original' only to watch as 100 heads looked at their notepads and scribbled this down. I'm not against note-taking – but something felt amiss. The idea that originality is something that can be prescribed was naive of me. So today's advice? Maybe it's more a plea than advice but if you want to write non-fiction, then please actually write something that hasn't yet been published. The amount of content in newspapers that has simply been copied and pasted from other news sources, then tweaked so it appears relevant to a local audience, is obscene. The internet has invented the 'hyperlink ' for a reason – to send a reader directly to a source. There's no need to put out rehashed version.

Oh no, have I just written a long-winded version of 'Be Original'? I have, haven't I? My apologies!

Into the Woods: The Battle for Tasmania’s Forests is available now in all good bookstores.

10 Tips for Writing A Short Story by Amanda Lohrey

2010-08-30T13:30:00.001+10:00

Author Amanda Lohrey shares her tips for writing a great short story:

It’s difficult to generalize about what makes for a good short story. I once sat on a panel of three judges for a short story competition that attracted over 400 entries. We whittled that number down to a short-list of twelve and all twelve stories were first-rate – and all were different. Here, however, are a few broad-stroke guidelines:

1. A story should lock into one of your obsessions or you won’t bother to finish it.

2. It shouldn’t be in any way predictable, including to you while you’re writing it. It’s good not to be sure where you’re going.

3. After a first, second or third draft, leave it to cook in the oven of your unconscious for at least a month, preferably 3-6 months (longer even).

4. If a story isn’t working try changing the voice from third person to first – or vice versa – or the point-of-view from one character to another.

5. Poets sometimes assert that poetry differs from prose because in a poem every word counts. They’re wrong. In a story every word counts as well. Even a simple thing like a sentence that has too many occurrences of ‘a’ or ‘the’ in it can wreck the rhythm of a paragraph. Be ruthless in purging cliché and lazy phrasing from your drafts (unless deliberately planted in the idiomatic speech of a character). Purging cliché helps to avoid flatness of tone. Flatness of tone is death to a story.

6. The ending of a story should be both surprising and yet feel inevitable. This is the paradox of what readers think of as a good ending. If the right ending doesn’t come to you then the story needs more cooking (see 3).

7. Be like a film director – work on several story projects at once. You never know which one(s) are going to turn out well.

8. A story is a message in a bottle and not everyone will get the message. Some of my favorite stories by other writers have been rejected by famous editors. If someone doesn’t like your story, don’t fret. Write another story.

9. Hold your nerve. Don’t censor at source and take at least one major risk of self-exposure in writing the story. Something has to be at stake, including that you might make a fool of yourself. If that’s not happening then the story probably isn’t worth writing.

10. Don’t worry about what your mother will think. She’ll surprise you.

Amanda Lohrey's new collection of short stories Reading Madame Bovary is available now in all good bookstores.

Father's Day Gift Ideas

2010-08-30T11:56:00.000+10:00

Looking for a great book to give your Dad this Father's Day? Here are our suggestions:

The Well at the World's End by AJ Mackinnon is an astonishing true story of a remarkable voyage by a modern-day adventurer. Read more.

Looking for Australia is a engaging collection of essays about Australian culture by historian John Hirst. Read more.

In A Game of Our Own, esteemed historian Geoffrey Blainey documents the fascinating history of the AFL. Read more.

The Skull is an irresistible true-crime story about Australia's most feared policeman, Brian “Skull” Murphy. Read more.

In Rise of the Ruddbot, Australia’s funniest, most incisive political commentator, Annabel Crabb, chronicles the last few years of Australian politics. Read more.

In The Family File, Mark Aarons tells the story of how his family became the most monitored family in Australian history: his father, uncle, grandmother and grandfather were leaders of the Communist Party of Australia. Read more.

In The Family Law, Benjamin Law writes a linked series of hilarious and moving essays about his weird but wonderful family. Read more.

In Secrets of the Grown-Up Brain, a leading science writer examines how the brain reaches its peak in middle age, and how to keep it there. Read more.

In Axis of Deceit Andrew Wilkie tells the story of how he resigned from Australia's senior intelligence agency in protest over the looming Iraq war in 2003. He was the only serving intelligence officer from the Coalition of the Willing - the US, the UK and Australia - to do so. Read more.

Vanessa Woods on her memoir Bonobo Handshake

2010-08-04T14:06:00.003+10:00

We interview Vanessa Woods, author of Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo.

What are bonobos?

For the last forty years, we humans have compared ourselves to chimpanzees. It turns out chimpanzees have a type of culture. They make tools. They use gestures to communicate. They have sophisticated political systems and emotions that can only be described as love, grief, and jealousy.

Even the dark side of our nature that we thought was exclusively ours, such as hunting and war, is found in chimpanzees too. A chimpanzee community, similar to many human communities, is male-dominated. Females can be raped, infants might be killed. As a chimp, you have more chance of being killed by another chimp than by anything else.

But we have another closest living relative.

Mimi

Bonobos look almost exactly like chimpanzees, except they have black faces, pink lips, and hair parted down the middle. They only live in one country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Their populations are so scattered that it is impossible to know how many there are, although current estimates are between ten thousand and forty thousand.

Most people barely even know there are two “closest living relatives” to humans. Like an embarrassing relative, bonobos are frequently missing from the family tree. According to Microsoft Word’s spell-check, bonobo isn’t even a word.

In the 1980s that Frans de Waal published a study of bonobos in the San Diego Zoo. He saw tongue kissing, fellatio, and a kama sutra of sexual positions. Before de Waal, people thought that nonconceptive sex, or “sex for fun,” was unique to humans. But bonobos were having sex in all sorts of crazy ways, including the missionary position, which no one had ever seen in an animal. De Waal also concluded that bonobos were female-dominated and that compared to chimps, they committed very little violence. He suggested that here was another model for human behavior, one that didn’t include war and bloodshed.

How did you come to find yourself studying bonobos in the Congo?

It was a series of happy accidents. Like most people, I had no idea what a bonobo was. Then I fell in love with an anthropologist whose dream was to study bonobos in Congo… so off we went!

In what ways are bonobos and chimpanzees different to work with?

Chimpanzees are so focused on the task. They’ll sell their soul for a banana. If they get the answer wrong, sometimes they’ll get so upset that they’ll refuse to participate. Bonobos are completely different. You usually have to have a quick ‘bonobo handshake’ before you start. And then they’re more likely to do cartwheels around the room for half an hour rather than do the test. So we have to make sure the experiments are fun, more like games than work. We can’t force anybody to participate!

Do you have a favourite bonobo?

Vanessa with Kata

Yes! Her name is Kata. She is the sweetest bonobo ever, and she gives me a great big hug every time I see her.

Why is protecting bonobos so important?

When I wake up this morning, someone might try to kill me. I live 10 minutes from a small town called Durham, NC, where according to the last statistics, 22 people were killed, 76 women were raped, and there were 682 cases of aggravated assault.

When a chimpanzee wakes up in the morning, they probably have the same thought. In fact, if you're a male chimpanzee, you're more likely to be killed by another chimpanzee than anything else. If you're a female chimpanzee, expect to be beaten by every adolescent male who is making his way up through the ranks.

People often ask me why humans are so intelligent, as in, what is it other apes lack that makes us so unique.

I'll tell you this: I would swap every gadget I own - my car, my laptop, the potential to fly to the moon - if I could wake up as a bonobo. No bonobo has ever been seen to kill another bonobo. There is very little violence towards females. The infants get an idyllic childhood where they do nothing but hang out with their moms and get anything they want. There is plenty of food. Lots of sex. And yet, according to one of our studies, 75% of people have no idea what a bonobo is.

This isn't really our fault. It's been 13 years since Frans de Waal published Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape, and since then, there has not been one popular book published on bonobos until I wrote Bonobo Handshake.

But it's also because politicians, scientists, and the media have been trying very hard to pretend they don't exist. Why?

Bonobos have gay sex. For bonobos, sex is a mechanism to reduce tension. And you can't talk about two females rubbing clitorises together until they orgasm in documentaries, intelligent design classes, or to right wing demographics who believe homosexuality is unnatural.

Bonobos are not considered to be family friendly, despite the fact that children can see people cut up, blown up and shot before 8pm on television.

When it comes to scientists, even scientists who I like and admire, only ever refer to 'our closest living relative, the chimpanzee'. There is never any mention that we have TWO closest living relatives, the chimpanzee and the bonobo.

If scientists do speak about them, they are constantly trying to neuter them. Bonobo researchers get annoyed by bonobos' reputation of being the over sexed ape, and are constantly downplaying the differences between bonobos and chimps. Even in cognition studies, despite Kanzi, bonobos are rarely tested for cognition because 'we've already done this in chimps, why should we do it in bonobos?'

Mikeno

As for politicians, bonobos never had a chance. Acknowledging the existence of an ape who shares 98.7% of our DNA (suggesting descent with modification i.e. evolution), has homosexual interactions, and is female dominated, is completely out of the question.

As a lemur scientists once said to me, 'So what? No one knows about sifakas' (the dancing lemurs, even though they do, because of the cartoon Madagascar) 'why should bonobos be any different?'

Because bonobos hold the key to a world without war. Their physiology, biochemistry, and psychology is set up to avoid violence. The fact that sex is their mechanism to reduce tension is irrelevant. We need to study the hell out of bonobos and use our big fat brains to find our own mechanism so we can live peacefully.

We've had 26 days without war since WWII. Right now, there are 7 conflicts throughout the world killing over 1,000 people a year. In Congo alone, 1,500 people die every day. Despite cognitively knowing that we need to cooperate and get along, our emotions get in the way.

We have to find a way to be more like bonobos. They share 98.7% of our DNA. What's in that 1.3% that makes them the way they are? And if we can use hummingbird flight to make helicopters and cat's eyes to make reflector lights, why can't we use bonobos to make peace on earth?

2010 is going to be the year of bonobos. With my book coming out, Sara Gruen releasing the first fiction about bonobos, and the bonobo genome due any day, expect bonobos to move to the front of public consciousness.

What made you want to write this book?

I wanted to write this book because I was puzzled by the scientific community’s rejection of the bonobo’s uniqueness, their sexuality, and their place in the wider question of what makes us human. I’m tired of meeting blank stares of people when I say I work with bonobos. I want everyone to know what bonobos are!

What’s next for you?

Right now, I’m enjoying talking about bonobos to everyone, from the New York Times to the Adelaide Advertiser. I’m hoping as more people read the book, more people will realize how important they are, and why we should care about their future. Then I suppose it’s back to Congo☺

Bonobo Handshake is available in all good bookstores. To read more about Vanessa, you can visit her website or her blog.

AJ Mackinnon on his new book The Well at the World's End

2010-06-30T12:11:00.001+10:00

AJ Mackinnon, author of the bestselling The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow, has just released his second book The Well at the World's End. We to talk to him about his new book.

The Well at the World’s End is about your travels from New Zealand to the Scottish island of Iona, what made you want to travel to Iona?

Ever since I first visited Iona as a 19 year old, the place has held a spell over me. In the book, I tell the story of bathing in the Well of Eternal Youth there, a little mountain spring with a long magical tradition, and how I mis-read the instructions in the old guide book and got it wrong. Ten years later, when I wanted to set off travelling from Australia and have adventures, it seemed a good goal to aim for - to go back and to the little enchanted island of Iona and visit the Well of Eternal Youth and do it properly this time. But even had there been no well, Iona is the sort of place that has a World's End feel to it. It is very reminiscent of all those old Celtic fairy tales where a traveller comes literally to the last shore, the place where a voyager sets out from in a magic coracle or barge, off to find the Land of Tir nan Og or the Blessed Realm. It is right on the border between mortal and fairy lands, the Uttermost West. It makes the perfect place to strive for.

You travel by land, sea, truck, train, horse and yacht – why didn’t you fly?

The answer to this goes back to something I've written in an earlier book, a bit about loving Doctor Dolittle as a child, and especially the fact that all his adventures seemed so simple, as he would set out in a little ship and just bump into places. I've always been convinced that flying has robbed travel of its true adventure. It is very convenient, very fast but very soulless as well... and terribly seductive. Once you buy into the air-route, it is very hard to get away from it again. Aeroplanes lead to airports which introduce you to more planes which deposit you at more airports... and even when these allow you to escape from the immediate loop, you find yourselves on shuttle buses to city hotels, lined with information counters and racks full of tour brochures... all of which offer a safe and easy return via shuttle bus back to the airport again. It is very easy to think that you are really seeing a country because all those airports and hotels have souvenir shops with Zulu woodcarvings or painted didgeridoos or Beefeater dolls... and before you know it, you have 'travelled' the world and never been more than 80 metres from a Tie Rack or a travelator.

Besides, the old guide book on Iona said, 'Pilgrims must come by land and by sea to find the Well of Eternal Youth,' and as I'd promised I'd do things properly this time, I forbade myself from flying.

You find yourself in some interesting situations on this trip, like the time you were chased by Komodo dragons. Were there moments on your travels when you found yourself in situations that made you wonder why you’d set out on this trip in the first place?

It was never the dangerous moments that made me question what I was doing. Those bits, even in the heat of the moment, invariably made me realise more than ever that this was exactly why I had done it this way. It is all to do with the power of story. I read the work of some scientist who said that the story-telling urge is so strong in human beings, and so important in having driven our evolution, that our scientific name really should be Pan Narrans - the story telling ape. (The idea is that making stories is really the process of trying to find cause and effect in random events, and this is the same process that drives our scientific minds and develops our brains. In stories, all the facts have to be relevant and contribute to the outcome - so too, any scientific theory as to what makes the thunder rumble or why a particle behaves as it does has to tie in with all the observable facts.) Anyway, if this is true, then I am pure ape with not much else in the mix. If something happens to me that can contribute to a good story to tell my friends later, then it is pure gold and worth all the danger or discomfort. It was only the long

periods of inactivity that made me question why I was doing things the hard way. In any travel, there are enormously long and tedious periods of sitting around waiting, or idle, discontented evenings of loneliness in city hotel rooms... and this trip was no exception. But for starters, these things don't make good telling so don't really make it into the book, and secondly, going back to the point about not flying, it is far nicer to spend three hours waiting on a sunny dockside in the Bay of Islands for a late yacht, or sitting under a flap of a tent in the Sahara Desert for a horse to be caught and broken in, than to sit in yet another airport lounge mishearing annoying announcements and wondering whether a fourth cup of Gloria Jeans coffee might be warranted.

Who is the most memorable character that you met on this trip?

I met a number of people who were memorable for the wrong reasons. Alec the psychotic skipper was unforgettable for his unpredictability and scariness, as were the Chinese policemen who arrested me and spent three days questioning me. But to balance these were some truly saintly people. Les McLeod, the long-suffering and infinitely patient skipper of a yacht that I lived on for five weeks in New Zealand not going anywhere, was one of the nicest people I have ever met. I was so incompetent in helping him with a paint job that he ended up repainting a section of the deck FIVE times to amend my botched work, and in all this never said anything but the warmest words of praise in his soft Yorkshire accent, commending me on my enthusiasm, my creativity, my flair, my doggedness... all the nicest euphemisms possible for my total bloody incompetence in getting the paint to go where it should and not all over the ropes, the portholes, my shoes, our washing and his sandwiches. Another favourite were the American yachting family, the Flying Dolphins, who took me into their hearts and lives as we sailed through the Indonesian archipelago. Still twenty years on, we still remain friends and I have visited them in the States on a number of occasions, most recently last year. The two children, Peter and Heath, are now grown up into lovely young adults, but I remember them still as beautiful children - adventurous, warm, avid for learning, wide-eyed when I told them a story or showed them some origami or taught them something extraordinary about mathematics or mazes. They were the best pupils I ever had, young Arthurs to my would-be Merlyn. But I am getting carried away...

What was your favourite part of the trip?

A hard question, but the highlights were probably the sailing through Indonesia and later my adventures up through Laos. This was back when very few western travellers made it into Laos and travel was very restricted. A lot of my travelling was done on foot along jungle roads through the mountains, and there were clouds of butterflies everywhere. The people of the villages I passed through were astonishingly gentle and kind, a little awed by seeing someone so different from themselves, and vying with each other to offer me hospitality for the night. This was the time I felt most like some 18th century traveller seeing the wonders of the world, especially when travelling up fierce rivers in tiny sampans and seeing great caverns carved into temples up remote gorges, lit by thousands of candles and with a glimpse of a golden Buddha deep in the recesses. I wonder if even today, travellers ever get to see these hidden treasures.

Do you have another adventure that you’re planning to set off on soon?

This is the commnest question that I get asked. I simply don't know. My past adventures have always been fairly spontaneous, with no great plans leading up to tem, so I imagine that if I do find myself off on another voyage, it will be a matter of being swept away again by the dwarves of adventure off to see Wilderland without even my hat or pocket handkerchief. However, next year I have arranged to take a year off work and live in my beautiful new house, just purchased, sitting right on a mountian trout river and with an acre of wonderful garden - plum trees, magnolias, candlebarks, apple trees, an oak, a corkscrew willow, and wide verandahs all around. The idea is to write another book but this time, a novel - something I've always wanted to do. I'm actually quite nervous about the prospect of doing this. True life travel books are one thing but a really good fictional story is another task altogether, and I'm not completely confident of being able to produce something worthwhile. This will also be a new experience for me in that it will be the first time of living settled in a house without my beloved students and a community of good colleagues at my doorstep, something I have always revelled in. Will I cope with the solitude and independence? But one thing that struck me the other day was this, and we have to go back yet again to Doctor Dolittle. Much as I loved the idea of Doctor Dolittle setting out on his travels, I also always loved the last paragraph of each book, his homecoming. After all the adventures, he always ended by coming up the lane and turning in at his own gate, unlocking the door with his own key and hanging his hat in the hall. In my past travels, this is something I've never had, as each voyage has been a stage to a new life abroad. But now, I love the thought of being able to go away on an adventure, knowing that I too have somewhere to come back to - a garden, a familiar stretch of river, a peaceful house, and my own desk waiting for me, to sit and write it all up for a new story to tell.

The Well at the World's End is available in all good bookstores.

An interview with Benjamin Law

2010-06-02T10:31:00.003+10:00

Benjamin Law is the author of The Family Law, a collection of hilarious essays about his family.

1. Describe your book in three words…

Heartfelt. Obscene. Slitoris.*

2. How would you describe your family?

I come from the Law family, a bunch of second generation Chinese-Australians: two parents; five kids. We grew up in Coastal Queensland, even though my mother hated how sandy the beach was, and my father believed that wearing thongs would unnaturally split our toes.

My book documents growing up alongside my four siblings as we all navigated our way through our parents’ divorce, amongst other things. It’s sort of like the Wonder Years meets The Squid and the Whale, crossed with David Sedaris, except everyone eats rice.

3. What made you want to write about your family?

The short answer? Well, my family makes for great material.

In all honestly, I didn’t actually realise this until I started writing for frankie, a magazine I’ve been with for the last six years. Louise, my editor at the time, asked all the senior contributors to write a column called “My Mother’s Advice.” This was my first paragraph:

As a Chinese immigrant, my mother often gave us kids advice that sounded horrific, weird or offensive when translated to English, or taken out of cultural context. One of the most mortifying examples is something she often said to my sisters if they hadn’t showered yet, which directly translated to: “Go have a shower now, or your vagina will breed worms.

Needless to say, it spoke to people, and I’ve kept on writing about them all.

Admittedly, I sometimes struggle with the ethics of writing about people in my life. But then one of my family members says or does something so intensely funny or foul that I think, “Hell, it would be irresponsible not to write about you.”

4. What was your childhood relationship with your older brother like?

My older brother Andrew is awesome, but we are poles apart.

He beefs up at the gym; I’m medically underweight. He’s sporty and über-heterosexual; I’m a book-reading poof. We were arch nemeses growing up, but because we were the only boys in our family, we were forced to share a 3.5m-cubed cell bedroom for 16 years. Growing up, my fights with him would involve him tickling me to the point of tears, and me spitting and scratching at him, cat-like. This is all documented in the book.

5. Has your family read the book? If so, what have been their reactions?

Because of my frankie articles, I’m quite used to passing drafts of my work to family if they’re depicted in a story. Partly, it's about getting their permission, but it's also a practical thing: I want to ensure I have details correct, or at least, have them verify what happened.

(I have a horrible short to medium-term memory. Everyone who knows me will tell you this.)

All of my family members laugh and say wonderful things about the stories. But inside, I’m sure they’re all completely and thoroughly horrified. As I would be too.

6. Your Mum is a very strong character in the book – can you tell us a little more about her?

My mother, Jenny, is one-of-a-kind. She’s probably the family member I write most about. She separated from my father when we were all really young (between the ages of four and 18), and decided to approach motherhood pretty much solo, with five kids in tow.

It’s only later in life that you start to appreciate what that actually means.

Nowadays, she’s feisty, quotable and incredible frank. If she discusses her vagina and childbirth within the first few minutes of meeting you, this means she likes you.

7. What is your favourite essay or story from within the book?

I can’t pinpoint my favourite piece from the book, but I really loved writing ‘Oceans Apart,’ which is about my father.

Ever since he moved to Australia, my dad has worked seven days a week, 365 days a year — right through Christmas. He’s an amazing machine, but it’s hard to really know someone who’s removed from your life like that.

Writing that story meant I had to interview him to fill in my gaps about his life. And once you read the story, you’ll discover (as I did) that what happened in those gaps is quite remarkable.

8. Can you tell us a little more about your father?

Like a lot of migrant fathers, my dad’s a workaholic both blessed and cursed with the heart of an ambitious, mad entrepreneur. He works like an goddamned ox, and has seen both dizzying successes and crippling lows in the world of retail and hospitality. It definitely made for an interesting childhood.

The workaholism extends to this day, so we all worry about him a lot. But it’s also made us all quite disciplined. Even though the five kids are different (school teacher; tender coordinator; photographer; two writers), we’re all sort of workaholics too. Dad’s probably responsible for that. Or maybe it’s just because we’re Asian.

9. You paint a very vivid picture of your younger self – was it difficult to be so brutally honest about your early life and early self?

Oh look, I basically see my life as a 27-year history of embarrassments and failures. Writing about all the horrid, unforgivable things I’ve done and said over the years is a way of spreading the mortification around, really.

10. What was it like growing up with so many sisters?

I have three sisters. As a result, I grew up amongst robust discussions about menstrual cycles, sanitary napkins and vaginal discharge around the dinner table. These discussions continue to this day. It goes without saying that I think my sisters are wonderful people.

11. What other works have influenced your writing?

Anyone who’s read my stuff could guess that I’m a big fan of David Sedaris. I remember first reading Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim in my early 20s, and desperately wanting to be his friend. We’re from completely different backgrounds and generations, but he just spoke to me: big family; migrant parent; homosexuality; lots of sisters; quotable mother. So it won't surprise anyone that Sedaris’s entire back catalogue is stacked neatly near my desk.

I read a lot of fiction, but my first love is non-fiction. In terms of essay writing, I really love Joan Didion, Helen Garner, Zadie Smith, Augusten Burroughs, Michael Chabon, David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen.

But what I adore about Sedaris is how he walks that wonderful line between stand-up comedy and literary writing. For such a lightly spoken man, he’s a bad-arse genius.

12. What was the hardest part about writing the book?

Editing out all the poo jokes.

13. Who will enjoy reading this book?

Anyone who comes from a big, dysfunctional, migrant, Asian or foul-mouthed family should enjoy this book. Actually, scrap that: I hope anyone who comes from a family – period – enjoys this book. Although, if you’re easily offended by vagina and vomit references, perhaps this mightn’t be your thing.

* This will make sense after you read the first story.

The Family Law is available in all good bookstores.

Catherine Deveny

2010-05-05T13:55:00.008+10:00

We are disappointed about the sacking of Catherine Deveny from the Age. We’re proud to publish her books (see below!)

If you would like to express your disappointment about Catherine's sacking, please email: newsdesk@theage.com.au

You can join the Facebook group "Bring back Catherine Deveny to the Age" here:
http://bit.ly/dhSJIy

Below are links to selected articles and blog posts on the issue:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/05/2890855.htm?site=thedrum

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/purepoison/2010/05/05/fairfax-vs-deveny-gutless-paper-bends-in-the-wind/

http://meanjin.com.au/spike-the-meanjin-blog/post/women-behaving-badly/

http://benpobjie.blogspot.com/2010/05/for-what-its-worth.html

http://www.danielburt.com.au/

http://www.rlemay.com.au/2010/05/05/bernard-devenys-tweets-were-no-accident/

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/manufactured-outrage-is-the-real-joke-20100506-uelf.html

http://www.rustylime.com/show_article.php?id=4205

http://dowzocalypse.com/2010/05/09/miranda-devine-pulls-a-catherine-deveny

http://bit.ly/96JwqL#rogeringgerbils

Catherine's books:

For more information on the books, please visit our website.

Baking with Yeast

2010-03-30T10:46:00.013+11:00

This April, we're excited to release The Lost Art of Baking with Yeast by Baba Schwartz.

Many cooks would love to utilise the incredible properties of yeast, but lack a guide to inform and inspire them. The Lost Art of Baking with Yeast shows how simple baking with yeast can be, and how irresistible the results.

The book includes recipes for cakes, slices, pastries and buns. You can find two delicious sample recipes below.

Kindli

This traditional cake comes from northwest Hungary. It is usually baked for festivals and other special occasions.
Makes four rolls, two with poppy seed and two with walnut filling.

15 g fresh or 1 heaped teaspoon dry yeast
50 g sugar
3 tablespoons warm water
140 g margarine
350 g plain flour
1 egg yolk
¼ cup orange juice
pinch of salt
apricot jam

Filling:

Nut Filling
1 egg white
100 g sugar
juice of ½ lemon
rind of ½ lemon
150 g ground walnuts or almonds
¼ Granny Smith apple, grated

Poppy Seed Filling
1 cup water
½ cup sugar
250 g freshly ground poppy seed
grated rind of ½ lemon
egg wash for glazing

Dissolve the yeast and a pinch of the sugar in the warm water and set aside to bubble for 5 minutes.

Work the margarine into the flour with your fingers until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add the risen yeast, egg yolk, orange juice, the remaining sugar and salt, mixing by hand to form a dough. Knead, bringing the dough in from the sides of the bowl and pushing it into the middle with your knuckles. The dough should be firm but elastic. If it is too stiff, add a little more orange juice. Continue to knead for 5–6 minutes, then cover and set aside to rest for 30 minutes.

To make the nut filling, beat the egg white and sugar together, add the lemon juice and rind, then mix in the ground nuts and grated apple.

To make the poppy seed filling, put the water and sugar into a small saucepan and heat until the water dissolves. Add the poppy seed, stirring well, and simmer for a few minutes. Remove from the heat and add the lemon rind. If the mixture is too dense, add a little more water.

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Divide the risen dough into four equal portions.

In turn, roll each portion out into a rectangle 35 x 45 cm. Spread a thin layer of the apricot jam over the entire surface. Using a metal spatula or knife, spread a 2–3 mm layer of filling over the layer of jam.

Roll up tightly and press the long side and both ends to seal and enclose the prepared filling. When all four portions of dough have been rolled out and filled, transfer them, seam-side down, to a baking sheet that has been lined with baking paper or well oiled.

Brush with beaten egg and set aside to rest for 10–15 minutes. Prick with a fork at 2.5 cm intervals on the diagonal to form a decorative pattern.

Bake for 30–35 minutes or until golden, rotating the baking sheets after 15 minutes to ensure even browning.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool before cutting, on the diagonal, into 1.5–2 cm slices.

Jam Cornets (Hamentaschen or Oznei Haman)

These are special cakes baked for the Feast of Purim which commemorates Jewish Queen Esther’s saving of her people from destruction by the wicked Haman. In Hebrew, their name means ‘Haman’s ears’. It is traditional to give gifts to the poor and send trays of sweetmeats including these cakes to all one’s friends during the Feast of Purim.

5 g fresh or 1 level teaspoon dry yeast
pinch of sugar
2 tablespoons warm water
150 g margarine
250 g plain flour
100 g caster sugar
2 eggs
rind of ½ lemon

Filling
thick jam such as powidl
beaten egg white for glazing

To make the dough, dissolve the yeast and pinch of sugar in the warm water. Cover and set aside to bubble for 5 minutes.

In a large bowl, work the margarine into the flour with your fingers until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add the risen yeast, sugar, eggs and lemon rind, mixing well. Knead for 3–4 minutes, then set aside in a warm place to rise for 25–30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Turn out the dough onto a floured work surface and roll it out to a thickness of 3 mm. Cut out circles with a large round cookie cutter. Put a generous spoonful of your preferred filling in the centre of each circle and roll into a cornet shape. Place each cornet on a paper-lined baking sheet.

Brush with the beaten egg white and set aside to rise for 20 minutes. Bake for 25–30 minutes or until golden brown, rotating the baking sheet after 15 minutes to ensure even browning.

The above recipes are just a taster of what you can find in the book. The picture below shows lots of other delicious goodies you can make:

And here's a picture of the results when our very own staff members made some of the recipes (boiled bagels and Kindli):

We can confidently say, if you love baking, you'll love this book! Available now from all good bookstores.

International Women's Day

2010-03-04T16:35:00.001+11:00

In celebration of International Women’s Day on Monday 8 March, here are some of our most talented and inspirational female authors. We’re immensely proud to publish their work.

Catherine Deveny
Writer, comedian, serial pest and author of Free to a Good Home, Say When and It’s Not My Fault They Print Them.
www.catherinedeveny.com

Alice Pung
Writer, teacher, lawyer, mentor and author of Unpolished Gem and editor of Growing Up Asian in Australia.
www.alicepung.com

Kate Jennings
Writer, poet, essayist, and author of the newly released Trouble

Ariel Levy
Writer, feminist and author of Female Chauvinist Pigs
www.ariellevy.net

Rebecca Huntley
Writer, social researcher and author of Eating Between the Lines.

Anna Goldsworthy
Writer, pianist and author of Piano Lessons.
www.annagoldsworthy.com

Amanda Lohrey
Writer, essayist and author of Vertigo

Ann Blainey
Writer, historian and author of I am Melba.

Tanya Levin
Writer, social worker and author of People in Glass Houses.

Maude Barlow
Writer, activist and author of Blue Covenant.

Dorothy Porter
Poet, lyricist, librettist and author of The Bee Hut.

Of course, this is just a sample of some of our wonderful female authors, not an exhaustive list. Visit our website to discover more.

Guest Post: Author AJ Mackinnon on travel

2010-03-03T09:45:00.004+11:00

I’m not sure I’ve worked out this whole travel thing actually. In my younger travelling days, I always chose to do things the good old-fashioned proper way. That is, I’d set myself the task of getting from one end of the world to the other without resorting to air-travel, or of seeing how far I could get a dilapidated wooden dinghy, pretending it was the Golden Hind or something similar. Despite the fact that this approach has led to a couple of books and an undeserved status of minor eccentric and explorer, I’ve never been really convinced that this was actually a good way to travel.

“I went through Laos,” I’d explain to some interested chap in a bar.
“Ah, Laos! Now there’s a marvellous country for you,” the chap would enthuse. “How about the Plain of Jars, eh? Astonishing, eh? Good for you!”
Tentatively I would admit that I hadn’t actually visited the Plain of Jars and there would be a stunned silence.
“But surely… I mean… the Plain of Jars? Are you SURE it was Laos you went through?”
And I would slowly gather that the whole point of visiting Laos in the first place is solely to see the Plain of Jars. Why else would you go? How could you have missed them?
In vain would I explain that they weren’t actually on my route, that if one drew a straight line from Vientiane on the Thai border to Mengla on the Chinese border, then the Plain of Jars were a bit off to one side of that line and so therefore not something I had time to swerve aside for, being too busy at the time finding out which sampan, train or explosives-truck was heading north in the next hour.

Conversations like these have left me feeling that for all the adventurous potential of my self-imposed travel rules, it’s not actually a very good way of seeing all that a country has to offer. It’s a bit like someone arriving in Port Adelaide, hopping on the first train to Alice, catching a Greyhound coach to Darwin and utterly failing to see the Flinders Ranges, Uluru or Kings Canyon on the way. Surely you took in the Barossa Valley? Nup. Katherine Gorge? Nup.
Darwin Mall?
Nup.
Straight to the shipping terminal and a tanker out of there… but it seems a nice enough place, Australia. Did I miss much?

So as I say, I’ve never been entirely confident about choosing to travel the hard way and thus devoting ninety percent of my time to arguments with truck-drivers. But now, I’ve just had the luxury of travelling for three months on Long Service Leave, of travelling as the rest of the world do – a cruise up the Norwegian fjords, a driving-tour down the entire west coast of the United States, a there-and-back-again expedition to Morocco, an idle plane-hopping ramble through Switzerland, Spain and Holland and much, much more – and I am equally doubtful about this type of travelling as well.

Don’t get me wrong. And please don’t think that I’m pretty bloody difficult to satisfy. The three months of travelling were packed with beauty, friendships old and new, extraordinary sights and old familiar favourites. But I have also felt such a fraud. I hated being asked by a chance-met stranger where I was off to next, knowing that the reply was something bland and all too easy – something along the lines of having a flight booked that afternoon from Marrakech to Oslo, or a hire-car waiting at Gatwick, or that I thought I might swing by Maine before jetting to London. I so wanted to be able to look into the distance with a steely look in my eye and mutter between pursed lips that I was due to meet a camel-salesman here an hour ago to organise the next leg down through Mali and that if he didn’t show up soon, it would have to be the old mule-train after all.

So I remain confused. Are faraway places and foreign lands to be dipped into at will, no more obstinate than a tray of milk-chocolates, as we hover over the Taj Mahals and the hazelnut swirls, dive in and sample, and then out again Business Class to the next succulent and foil-wrapped delight? Should the In-Flight magazine replace the compass and dodgy roadmap as our guide to exploring the world? Or should we re-kindle the romance of travel again by eschewing the conveniences of the world.

Romance? What a foolishly inappropriate word. The toughness of travel, the incorrigibility of travel, the sweaty-shirted, camel-dunged, loose-bowelled exasperation of travel, is more accurate perhaps. But then again, oh the wonders. The sudden hoopoe flying to hide in an orange tree against a wall. The haze and the seabirds shrouding the loom of the Rock of Gibraltar seen over the stern of a churning ferry. The darkening moors and the first fine spatter of rain and still four miles to walk before any chance of a fire and a beer or two with an old friend and much to talk about.

So hey ho, what to do? And it must be admitted that even in the tamest travel there is a feeling of intrepid resolve. Air travel might have become easier but there will always still be the immigration official who looks at your passport thirty seconds more than is absolutely necessary and has one wondering if someone has scribbled ‘Viva la Revolucion!’ across the title page while one’s back was turned. And there are still items on foreign menus that baffle and intimidate and result in an unexpected dose of fish-head soup. And if all else fails, one can thoroughly rely on New Yorkers to be breathtakingly rude at the drop of a hat and leave one feeling bristlingly indignant and alive for the next three days.

So long live travel, however it’s done - and cheers to the big wide world.
_______________

AJ Mackinnon is the author of The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow. His new book The Well at the World's End will be published in July 2010.

Interview with Robert Milliken, author of Mother of Rock

2010-01-29T10:28:00.004+11:00

Robert Milliken is the author of Mother of Rock: The Lillian Roxon Story. Mother of Rock is the riveting true story of trailblazing Australian rock journalist Lillian Roxon.

Who was Lillian Roxon?

Lillian Roxon was a brilliant Australian journalist who took New York by storm in the 1960s and early 1970s. Her book Lillian Roxon’s Rock Encyclopedia (1969) was the world’s first encyclopedia of rock music. It still stands as an unparalleled chronicle of the classic names in music and counterculture from that turbulent era. Lillian became a Dorothy Parker figure at Max’s Kansas City, the New York bar and nightclub where the stars of that time gathered. In New York today, she is still recalled as “the mother of rock and roll journalism”.

What drew you to writing about Lillian Roxon?

As a student in Australia, I was a fan of Lillian’s writing about America from New York (she was then a correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald). Whatever the subject – flower children, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Richard Nixon’s 1968 Presidential campaign – she brought it to life with a style that sprang from the page and bucked the rigid writing conventions back then by often putting herself in the story. Then she died tragically from an asthma attack in 1973, aged 41. Years later, I discovered Lillian’s family had lodged her papers with the Mitchell Library in Sydney. She was one of the last great letter writers. Her papers included her correspondence with a who’s who of art and culture in Australia and New York. With many of those figures still available to be interviewed, I decided there was a story to be told about a writer who, in many ways, defined an era.

Why is Lillian such an important Australian identity?

Lillian was one of the great Australian trailblazers. She came to Australia as a child with her Jewish family just before the second world war to escape Hitler and Mussolini. She was a rebellious teenager during the war years in Brisbane, then awash with American servicemen. In Sydney, she was a star figure in the Push, the group of bohemians who questioned the social and sexual mores of 1950s Australia. Donald Horne discovered her as a journalist. She started her working life on Weekend, a lively tabloid he edited for Sir Frank Packer. Lillian was his favourite writer. When she left for America in 1959 – stopping in Hawaii on the way to interview Elvis Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker – he begged her to stay, then offered her all sorts of job inducements to come back, to no avail. And in America, Lillian held on proudly to her Australian identity and accent. Here again, she defied convention: most Australians who moved to America then soon became de facto Americans. She was a great champion of Australian writers, artists and musicians who needed help in New York. On the Australian Ballet’s first big tour of America in 1971, she threw a party for the company at Max’s Kansas City. Lou Reed and Iggy Pop were among her 250 guests.

Thirty-seven years after her death, Lillian’s story seems to keep growing in stature. A documentary, which my book inspired, is due to premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival in July, before screening on SBS. It’s called Mother of Rock: the Life and Times of Lillian Roxon, produced by Robert de Young and directed by Paul Clarke.

And 40 years after the publication of the Rock Encyclopedia, some of the most influential figures in the music business in America still hail its unique contribution. Danny Goldberg, a former music journalist who knew Lillian (he covered the 1969 Woodstock festival for Billboard), and later record company President (Atlantic, Warner Brothers and Mercury), says Lillian had an elevated notion of rock and roll as culture that was ahead of its time. Goldberg, who now owns and operates Gold Village Entertainment, an artist management company, told me:

“Lillian Roxon’s Rock Encyclopedia set the tone for writing about rock and roll for years, with ripple effects that endure to this day. Previously, there were two extremes: breathless fan magazine fluff, and often ponderous intellectual over-think. Lillian was able to bridge the gap and speak in the language of the millions of fans of rock and roll who emerged after the late 1960s. She understood brilliant and sexy were not contradictions, but went together in the best of rock and roll. She was able to express the perspectives of both a teenager and an adult in the same passage, uniquely reflecting the mixture of emotions that existed in rock music, in its fans and in herself.”

Of all the famous stories and anecdotes about Lillian, which is your favourite?

David Malouf told me the best one. He was a shy 18 year-old student from Brisbane visiting Sydney in 1953. Zell Rabin, a mutual friend (another brilliant young journalist, and Lillian’s great love) told David to look Lillian up. He went to her flat in Jamison Street, in the centre of Sydney, where Lillian was holding court with her Push crowd. She handed the nervous young man a book called Sexual Anomalies and Perversions by Magnus Hirschfeld, a 19th century German pioneer sexologist. Then she instructed him: “Read this book and put bits of paper in the places that excite you. We want to know everything about you.” It was a classic case of Lillian, the older, independent, fearless woman, setting out to shock. In later years, David Malouf and Lillian remained great friends.

Can you tell us a little bit about Lillian’s feud with Germaine Greer and her friendship with Linda Eastman (who later became Linda McCartney)?

Germaine was not yet a literary star when she visited New York for the first time in 1968. Mutual Push friends had put her in touch with Lillian, with whom she’d hoped to stay. But Lillian’s tiny Manhattan apartment was swamped with papers, as she rushed to meet her deadline on the Rock Encyclopedia. So she sent Germaine to the Broadway Central, which Germaine years later described to me as “a welfare hotel where people screamed and ran up and down stairs all night”. Germaine was not pleased. Lillian also introduced Germaine to the crowd at Max’s Kansas City. They had a terrible verbal fight there one night, and didn’t speak for a year. Although this was the start of women’s liberation, I think these two strong, brilliant, ambitious Australian women – both seeking to make their marks on the world – in some ways were rivals. And, let’s face it, Lillian had already lived the life of a liberated woman long before Germaine wrote the women’s lib bible, The Female Eunuch, two years after Lillian’s Rock Encyclopedia came out. Germaine nonetheless dedicated her book to Lillian. It was a backhanded dedication, for which Lillian never forgave her.

Lillian met Linda Eastman, then an aspiring photographer, in early 1966 when they were both discovering the New York rock scene. Lillian was a good 10 years older than Linda. She saw in her a talent worth nurturing in an industry dominated by men. The two women formed a close professional alliance with Danny Fields, a rock manager who also held considerable clout in the Max’s Kansas City scene. Lillian became Linda’s confidante, especially after Linda and Paul McCartney got together following their meeting at a Beatles press conference. When Linda married Paul, at the height of “Beatlemania”, she cut off contact with Lillian and her other New York rock friends. Lillian was heartbroken and furious, in equal measure. She got her revenge by writing an unflattering piece about the McCartneys (especially Paul) in her weekly column in the New York Sunday News, read by millions. The two women never met again before Lillian died in 1973.

Linda McCartney agreed to talk to me for the book 25 years later. Just before I arrived in London for the interview, the McCartneys’ office told me they’d had to re-schedule and were going away. I didn’t realise how ill from cancer Linda herself was at the time. She died before a later interview was possible. Her break with Lillian was tragic. I think she regretted it in her later years.

What is your favourite piece of writing by Lillian?

There are two, both in the Appendix of Mother of Rock. The first is an essay called “Will Success Spoil Lillian Roxon?” Lillian wrote it in 1970 for Quadrant, not then the archly conservative journal it is now. It’s a wonderful piece, in which she describes how she came to write the Rock Encyclopedia, but is more an incomparable snapshot of her New York world in the late 1960s.

The second favourite is “The Other Germaine Greer: A Manicured Hand on the Zipper”, from 1971, in Crawdaddy, the first magazine in America devoted to rock and roll criticism. It’s a racy, no-holds-barred take on Germaine and, I suspect, Lillian’s last word in their feud.

For further information on Mother of Rock: The Lillian Roxon Story by Robert Milliken, please visit the Black Inc. website.

Interview with Catherine Deveny

2009-12-01T16:09:00.005+11:00

Catherine Deveny's latest book Free to a Good Home has just been released. The book collects the best of her television and opinion columns from the Age in 2009.

For readers who don’t know you, how would you describe yourself and what you do?

I am a serial pest and professional pain in the arse. I swing between stand up and sermon, cultural therapist to cultural terrorist. I come from a stand up background and write columns, do radio, knock up books, talk rubbish and swan round Melbourne flirting and glassing people. Mostly I feel like the little girl saying “The Emperor’s not wearing clothes.” Then flashing my undies.

I’m dyslexic, an atheist (no jokes about the dyslexic atheist wondering if there really was a dog, heard them all. Although I did find out I was dyslexic when I turned up to a toga party dressed as a goat) and the mother of three boys 6, 8 and 11. That’s their ages not their names. Living in an all male household does make me want to get a tee-shirt printed that just says WHERE HAVE YOU LOOKED?

What were some of your most controversial columns this year?

Chadstone (abattoir of souls). Two And A Half Men (the drink the date-rape drug is slipped into). Hey Hey It’s Saturday (it’s about time someone exhumed and resuscitated the festering corpse of Hey Hey. Something had to be done about the staggering deficit of blokey, cobbled up, camp-concert style content on television and the shortage of middle-aged white men with relevance deprivation on our screens. Daryl Somers is the host. Host as in organism that is invaded by a virus on which parasites thrive.) Marriage (Not married. Obviously because I haven’t found the right owner. Or the right dress.)

Which columns did you most enjoy writing this year and why?

The “You know you’re from Melbourne if…” columns. (Lanes full of people sitting on milk crates eating breakfast at 3pm seems normal. You think a massage with a happy ending means when you’re finished they give you a café latte and a Readings voucher. You’ve read The Slap and hate every character in it. But they remind you of your friends. And you would have slapped the kid too. When holding a dinner party, you know the point is to serve food no one has ever heard of, from a country people didn't know existed, bought from a little shop they'll never be able to find. The fact there’s a Chardonnay Crescent and a Champagne Road in Chirnside Park reinforces your suspicion Kath and Kim is a documentary. Your wife grows the hair under her arms but waxes her growler. Partner. Whatever. You know Sunshine, Rosebud and the Caribbean Gardens are not as good as they sound. You consider yourself a socialist yet you drive a European car and have a cleaner.)

Where do your ideas come from?

Probably from not working in an office and being incredibly socially promiscuous and a huge sticky beak. The best ideas I get are when I am hanging out with my kids, drunk, avoiding work or all of the above. See AUSTRALIA’S MOST BADLY BEHAVED MOTHERS Gallery of Shame for more details.

What’s the best show on TV right now?

Seriously good? The Wire, Nurse Jackie, Rockwiz or anything on GO! Seriously bad? Rock Of Love, Deal Or No Deal, anything on Channel Nine involving Sam Newman, Eddie McGuire or Livinia Nixon. Or anything with the words ‘Gone Wild’ on the end of the title.

If you had the power to cancel any show on TV right now, which one would you cancel?

What do you mean, “if I had the power?” Big Brother? Axed. Hey Hey? Boned. Macleod’s Daughters? Gone. One call from me baby, that’s all it takes. Or a word into Harry Connick Jr’s ear….

What’s the best thing about being Catherine Deveny?

The other day I did an interview and the first question is “Why are you such a bitch?” I wet my pants laughing! Because people find my writing voice is so noisy, bossy and rude people expect me to be an arsehole. So they are surprised that I’m friendly, aggressively helpful and inappropriately affectionate on first meetings but it does give me a licence to get away with murder at times. The best thing? Not scared of anything. Incredibly happy. I feel I have escaped from social convention and been released back into the wild.

Who should receive your book for Christmas this year?

Who will or who should? Who will is latte swilling lefties, house husbands, Crikey subscribers, Monthly readers, people who vote Green, old trade unionists, 16 year olds whose parents want them ‘fighting the good fight’, firebrands, blue stockings, metrosexuals and hippies who ride bikes with baby seats on the back.

Who should? Uptight white honkies, Christians, middle-aged middle-class white men suffering relevance deprivation, private school fans, women who change their name when they get married, shopping tour trolls and climate change skeptics. Why? To watch them recoil when they rip the wrapping paper off hoping to receive a John Howard biography, a new bible or something from Chadstone.

What books will you be reading this Christmas?

Anything with a centerfold of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins or the Virgin Mary in it. That’s right. You heard. I’ll be chilling out over the festive season writing my one woman show for the 2010 atheist conference and the Melbourne’s International Comedy Festival; God Is Bullshit. That’s The Good News.

Anna Goldsworthy on music and writing

2009-11-06T13:49:00.002+11:00

Anna Goldsworthy, author of the memoir Piano Lessons, discusses music and writing.

Over your life, you have excelled in so many different areas. What drew you to the piano first and foremost?

As a young child I was obsessed by Young Talent Time, so that’s what inspired me to begin piano lessons. Later, the piano came to mean more to me: it provided me with a faith, an identity. It also challenged me more than anything else in my life.

What is the greatest lesson that your mentor and teacher, Mrs Sivan, ever taught you?

Humility. There’s a humility in living alongside these great composers, and there’s a humility going to a teacher each week to have your playing (and your character) deconstructed. ‘I don’t give compliments,’ she always reminded me, ‘my compliment is to sit and work.’

In the book, you talk about piano practice becoming a physical need for you, without which you felt fidgety and unmoored. Do you still feel like this, and how does playing the piano fit into your life today?

Practice is still an important part of my life. There’s a saying I sometimes torment myself with: ‘if you haven’t practised for one day, you know it; if you haven’t practised for two days, the critics know it; if you haven’t practised for three days, everyone knows it’. It’s a dishonest musician who tries to get by on work they’ve done in the past. Having said that, maintain a practice regimen is not as easy as it once was: a baby eats your practice.

Early in the book, Mrs. Sivan says ‘Anna will never be a concert pianist’. How did this comment impact on you?

At the time I was devastated – I don’t think anyone had ever previously told me that a path was not open to me. Childhood is this charmed place of endless possibility, before you’ve made the decisions that shape your life. But once I recovered from the insult, I saw it as a throwing down of the gauntlet, as an assertion I had to disprove. Now I wonder whether it was in fact an ingenious piece of reverse psychology…

What advice would you give someone dreaming of becoming a concert pianist?

There are easier ways to fame and fortune. Don’t do it unless you have to – and then don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Has writing always been a calling for you, or is it something you have found yourself doing unexpectedly?

When I was thirteen, I spent a week at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival with my father, and felt a sudden certainty that this is what I wanted to do with my life. And immediately afterwards, a devastating guilt about my piano, waiting for me at home like a faithful spouse. This was a dilemma that tormented me for years, until I finally decided I had to both play and write.

Can you draw any parallels between the process of writing and the process of making music?

Although one is an interpretative art and the other a creative art, the processes are similar. Each is an art that unfolds in time, in which you have to keep an eye on both the big picture and the detail: on structure and pace, but also on the finer details of rhythm, of cadence, of phrasing. In Mrs Sivan’s words, ‘you see every little tree and enjoying, but always you remember big forest.’

How do you fit writing into your busy life?

Each morning I write several pages of long-hand, and after a few pages of drivel, I might arrive at a sensible thought. Then I fit the writing into spare parts of the day as I find them: on planes, in dressing rooms, while my baby sleeps.

Do you have any tips for aspiring memoir writers?

I think the critical thing with any writing project is just to start, and then to continue. And with a memoir, it’s probably important not to censor yourself too much in the first draft.

What was the most interesting or unexpected thing about the process of publishing the book?

One of the most touching things has been people telling me how much they have been affected by Mrs Sivan, and inspired by her teachings.

How closely involved were you with the book’s cover design?

I was shown a few potential covers, none of which seemed quite right. After I submitted a number of childhood photos to the designer, Tom Deverall, he came up with this one. I thought it was perfect – elegant but also warm and personal.

How did you feel to receive endorsements for the book from Helen Garner and Alice Pung?

Thrilled and honoured. Helen Garner has been an idol of mine for years – I’ve always found her the most disarming of writers – and I was captivated by Alice Pung’s candid memoir, Unpolished Gem, when it came out a few years ago.

What are the books and writers that inspired you during the writing of Piano Lessons?

Both of the women mentioned above. I have also imbibed the writing of my father, Peter Goldsworthy, since childhood, and doubtless traces remain in my prose – perhaps most conspicuously when I write against his influence. After I completed the first draft of this book, I was mortified by my how much I had dwelt on failure and wanted to bring more wonder and joy into the story. I thought of Li Cunxin’s Mao’s Last Dancer – not because I felt nourished by its sentences, but because I was so moved by its climactic moment, and sought this visceral response. And at the risk of sounding grandiose, Proust is my literary hero, because he can do everything (or everything that counts): psychology, poetry, comedy, philosophy, inner worlds, outer worlds, painstaking excavations of consciousness... Whenever I struggled to articulate musical experience and considered taking the easy option, I felt chastened by his example.

An interview with Robert Forster, author of The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll

2009-10-28T16:01:00.003+11:00

Robert Forster was a founding member of The Go-Betweens and is currently the music critic for the Monthly magazine. His first book The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll is an exhilarating trip through the past and present of popular music – from Bob Dylan, AC/DC and Nana Mouskouri through to Cat Power, Franz Ferdinand and Delta Goodrem.

You were first known as a songwriter and musician, how did you come to be a music writer, and was it something that had always interested you?

I was asked to be a music writer by Christian Ryan who was the first editor of the Monthly. Music journalism was something that always interested me but only as a reader. I thought about music and I would almost run ideas through my head when I listened to a record or saw a concert, but I never put any of thoughts to paper. I needed some impetus to do that, and that eventually came from Christian's request.

Are there particular music writers whose work you admire, and have they influenced your own writing in any way?

I admire the following people but you may not see any of their influence in what I do. And there has been no overriding person whom I have wished to be with my writing. No one example. But I like or have liked Nick Kent, Robert Christgau, Ann Powers, Bernard Zuel, Victoria Segal. There are many others.

What 2009 album have you enjoyed most this year?

Sarah Blasko's As Day Follows Night.

The bands and albums that you write about are diverse, what are some of your most loved albums?

Hunky Dory by David Bowie. Blood On The Tracks by Bob Dylan. Marquee Moon by Television, If You’re Feeling Sinister by Belle and Sebastian.

What are some of the best and most memorable gigs that you’ve been to?

Talking Heads, at Festival Hall in Brisbane in 1979, Orange Juice at Glasgow Technical College in 1980, The John Steel Singers at Trobador(sic) Club Brisbane in 2009, and The Beach Boys at Festival Hall in Brisbane in 1978.

An interview with Anna Goldsworthy

2009-09-29T16:37:00.006+10:00

An interview with Anna Goldsworthy, author of the new release memoir Piano Lessons

Piano Lessons is a memoir about growing up, following your passion, teaching and learning, music, ambition, family and much, much more. Is there one central theme or idea that captures the essence of your story?

I thought I was writing a memoir of vocation, in which I explore my relationship with music through my relationship with my teacher, Eleonora Sivan. But I’ve had a range of responses from its early readers, each of whom feels it is about something different: anxiety and obsessiveness; the lacerating nature of artistic pursuit; growing up with a writer for a father…

Do readers need to have an understanding of classical music to enjoy Piano Lessons?

At the start of the book, I have no understanding of classical music, so that provides an entry point for a reader with no musical background. I also hope it might be of interest to members of the music-loving public who wonder what goes through a musician’s mind on stage.

What made you want to write Piano Lessons?

I had always planned to write a book about Eleonora, but I always imagined this might be a project for my twilight years. Then a couple of years ago I received an email from Chris Feik, the publisher at Black Inc, asking if I might like to write a memoir about the ‘piano-playing life’. At first I thought a memoir - how presumptuous! – I’d been studying the piano for twenty-five years but still felt I was only beginning…. but gradually I came around to the idea. It occurred to me that writing such a book might clarify my own thoughts about music, and might also be a way of honouring Eleonora. But the book went beyond this to incorporate many of the themes you mention above.

Did you find it difficult to write about yourself and your family?

I enjoyed writing about childhood but the writing became more problematic for me as I grew up. I didn’t think I could still be embarrassed by my adolescence – surely a statute of limitations applies in such cases – but reliving those years was still painful: writing about my teenage anxieties seemed to resurrect them. And while I loved writing about my family, I wondered afterwards if I had said too much.

What has been the reaction from your family after reading the book?

My sister was the first to read it. She’s a trainee psychiatrist and had been counselling me through my anxieties about the manuscript before I showed it to her. And while she was very reassuring I could tell she was a little concerned (what has she written about us this time? Can it really be that bad?). So when she called me up to say she loved it, I felt tremendously relieved. My mother was equally gracious, as was my father, who provided me with good editorial feedback (he also suggested that I spice up his dialogue with the occasional witty Latin one-liner, but that didn’t seem fair). And although my grandfather fretted that he seemed ‘even more pedantic than I admit to’, he was generous enough to proof-read the manuscript meticulously, discovering any number of rogue commas and grammatical errors.

How did you choose which parts of your life to include and exclude from the book?

Mostly the material chose itself. There were certain formative events that needed to be there: key triumphs and disappointments, my first audition for Eleonora. I did find I was more drawn to stories of failure than of success, so that by the time I finished the first draft I had completed a catalogue of disasters: the memoir of a failed musician. I’m not sure why this fixation on disaster – self-deprecation gone rampant? An unwillingness to appear ‘up myself’? But there’s also a relief in admitting to failure. The construction of a c.v. and of a career is all about focusing on successes, while failures contain more comedy, certainly – but also better lessons.

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To read more about Piano Lessons, head over here. The second and third parts of this interview will be posted on this blog throughout October.

John Hirst on his new book The Shortest History of Europe

2009-09-02T10:24:00.003+10:00

When I turned my lectures on European history into a book, The Shortest History of Europe, I was told that they could not be called lectures. Lectures are boring. So they are called chapters. But my lectures were not boring—they were interesting, varied and arresting. Since the scope of the course was so broad—from classical times to the French Revolution— I wanted very specific, memorable things to happen in the lectures to anchor the broad concepts and give them meaning.

I paid actors to stage a debate from the Assembly in classical Athens as recorded by Thucydides. I showed the early scenes from films of Romeo and Juliet and King Lear, the first to show how aristocrats lived and feuded in Italian towns, the second to show how German kings divided up their kingdoms among their children as Charlemagne did with his. I did lots of readings—the rape of Lucretia from Livy’s History of Rome, the Ten Commandments, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. I demonstrated how clever the Greeks were by doing a geometrical proof on the blackboard.

At the end of the lecture on political history I paired off the students in the aisles and had them demonstrate the mode of salutation to rulers through the ages: in Rome from the republican salute (similar to the fascist salute) to prone on the floor before the later emperors; kneeling before a feudal monarch while he grasped your hands and then rising to kiss as equals; kissing the hand of absolute monarchs while kneeling; and finally the reappearance of the republican salute in revolutionary France. Learning by doing!

How much of this could survive in a printed book? A good deal. It doesn’t look like a normal history book. There are many readings, a geometrical proof, a Newtonian law, a good deal of what I put on the blackboard —summaries, time lines and short cuts. The whole history of Europe is reduced to a one-page diagram.

My talk has been tidied up but I wanted to keep the feel of a spoken lecture. In lectures scholars have the licence to be bolder than on the printed page. Except I am not a scholar of Europe. My expertise is in Australian history. Only a non-specialist could take the leaps I do.

Adam Shand on how the police force has changed since Brian 'Skull' Murphy's day

2009-08-19T10:29:00.025+10:00

What a wonderful world of hindsight we live in. Today we conclude that police like Brian Murphy got too close to villains and were corrupted in the process. I would argue that police of today are too far away. There is an ever-expanding array of technology available to police to ensure they don’t get too close to their targets. In fact, with surveillance technology, the officer may never look an angry man in the face before he arrests him. The cops can eavesdrop on conversations of villains, track their movements with devices hidden in their cars, or simply follow their mobile telephone signal. Despite this, there are still lots of guilty men going free because the cops did not do their jobs properly.

In Murphy’s day, to keep tabs on a villain you had to be in his pub, his line of sight and often right up in his face. It took some courage and guile. Today the force is largely reactive. The cops will wait till they can lock a bloke up before they move.

In Murphy’s day, it was standard practice to let a bloke know he was being watched, that the cops knew what mischief was being committed. It was an early warning system that helped keep the peace. Today, if a member of VicPol were to do this, he would find himself charged with perverting the course of justice.

In 1978, two Perth detectives asked Murphy to set up a meeting with Christopher Dale Flannery in Melbourne. Flannery would later become famous as “Rentakill”, one of the country’s most notorious hitmen. But at this time, he was a minor crim just out of jail, working as a bouncer at a sleazy St Kilda nightclub where Murphy operated his informer network.

Flannery had form in the West having beaten an armed-robbery charge for the hold-up of a David Jones store in 1974. Murphy promised Flannery that the West Australian cops wouldn’t arrest him, question him or belt him. They just wanted to tell him something.

Flannery agreed to meet them at Marchetti’s Latin Quarter in the city but only after a good deal of cajoling. After a couple of drinks over entrées and idle chit-chat, he grew increasingly agitated.
“So what’s all this about?” he asked.
“Well,” said one of the detectives. “We know that you’re planning to break your mate Archie Butterly out of Fremantle Jail with a helicopter.”
Flannery’s face froze.
“You should be aware that you’ll be flying in Swanbourne Army Barracks airspace, where the SAS are based.” He paused. “If they spot you, they’ll shoot you out of the fucking sky. So I’d think twice about it if I were you.”
Flannery was thunderstruck. He jumped up as if to leave the restaurant, but then his face softened. He thrust out his hand and shook with the Perth detectives.
“Thanks very much. You’ve probably just saved my life,” he said with genuine gratitude. Flannery was now indebted to Murphy.

Today this kind of deal making is way out of bounds. Imagine if Flannery had decided to carry on with breaking Butterly out of jail in a spectacular hail of gunfire. Imagine if the SAS, as expected, did shoot the pair of them out of the sky, the flaming helicopter crashing down on Fremantle’s residential areas. Imagine the scandal if it came out that police in two states had prior knowledge of the plot. The headlines would be irresistible. Rather than arresting Flannery on conspiracy, they had tipped him off and bought him dinner to boot. It doesn’t bear thinking about the aftermath. But none of this happened. Flannery dropped his plan and was grateful to Murphy. For the next year or so, Flannery and his network of villains in St Kilda fizzed to Murphy. Murphy even had advance warning Flannery planned to kill a solicitor Roger Wilson before it happened. He also tipped off the homicide squad that Flannery had killed another man, an associate from the St Kilda disco where they worked. The calculated gamble of tipping Flannery off had paid off, even if the homicide squad did little with the precious information that Murphy passed on.

It’s easy to condemn the past. Murphy broke plenty of laws in the service of what he was as his duty. Yet it was because of men like Murphy that police have the equipment and powers they do today. I would argue they are only marginally more effective than the old cohort, despite their obvious advantages.

Guest blogger – Adam Shand, author of The Skull

2009-08-05T13:24:00.006+10:00

Early in The Skull I wrote how a former Deputy Commissioner Bob Falconer said either Brian Murphy was “the most corrupt and dangerous man ever to be a member of Victoria Police or the most maligned. I don’t know which.”

It’s a dichotomy that troubled me ever since Falconer passed the comment. Falconer was part of a Vic Pol team that investigated Murphy and his protégé Paul Higgins in the early 1980s for involvement in Melbourne’s brothel wars. Vic Pol’s investigations would eventually land Higgins in jail for five years, while Murphy escaped without charge. That a competent investigator like Falconer could come to this ambivalent position was daunting to say the least. How was I to trip up Murphy if the State with all its resources and coercive power could not? It suggested Murphy had a power and cunning that went far beyond the norm.

If I were pressed, I would agree that Murphy was “corrupt and dangerous” but not in the conventional sense of the phrase. No-one I spoke to had any first hand accounts of him copping a quid. Second hand accounts tended to disintegrate upon investigation. His lifestyle does not suggest a man living beyond his means. But I would say that he did manage to “corrupt” the system he worked under. However, as another colleague told me, Murphy’s methods may have appalled him but whatever he did was always in the service of the community. It might not have always been lawful but justice in the extra-legal sense is not always clear cut. That’s why the second half of the book is called Ways and Means, back then the public generally did not worry about the methods, only the results. That has all changed today.

It’s interesting that many complain police have lost the battle for the streets. People are no longer safe at night, they can’t walk home alone without fear. Despite all the public surveillance technology, few offenders are brought to book for random assaults and thefts. And putting them in jail is often a shattering experience for the victim in court. It’s no wonder then that people fondly remember the days when police inspired fear and respect in the criminal classes. If they lost in court, they would square up with the villain later on. As brutal as it seems now, there was a deterrence factor that was undeniable. If you wanted to walk the streets in Murphy’s district you had to submit to his power.

I wonder how a modern day Murphy would fare today. Would he be drummed out of the force, even jailed for his methods? Or would he survive in any era, able to adapt to changing circumstances. I wonder whether we need such officers today.

Patrick Allington on book covers

2009-07-27T11:54:00.008+10:00

Can you tell a book by its cover? I’d say you can ... sometimes, sort of, up to a point. And that’s as far as it should go. A huge part of the pleasure and the mystery of reading comes from readers’ capacity — independent of the influence of the writer or the book designer — to dream up their own versions of people and places within a story.

A cover is the only overtly illustrated part of a novel, which is why it should never give too much away or be too precise. New editions of books published to tie in with films are the worst offenders. If I read, say, Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda, I don’t want the versions of the main characters that form in my head to look like Ralph Fiennes (very hard not to think of airplanes) and Cate Blanchett (Australia’s first female PM in waiting, with apologies to Julia Gillard). But I can’t help it: now they do.

If the feedback I’ve been getting is any indication, Figurehead’s cover gets it about right. It’s visually striking: the faceless man — there’s a faint hint of his features beneath a blue-green wash of skin — suggests somebody secretive, shadowy, possibly sinister, somebody expert in the wearing of masks, somebody with a public persona that sharply diverges from the private, inner man. It’s a visual hint about the ‘tone’ and the subject matter of the book. But no more.

My fascination with book covers stems partly, I think, from my use of visual art and photographs to help fire my creativity. There’s something about looking at art that sends my imagination off on unexpected tangents. My computer screensaver — a John Olsen etching of a bewildered, faintly depressed-looking fish, possibly a Murray cod (if you were a Murray cod you’d probably be depressed too) — has saved me from a failed day’s writing more than a few times.

But my interest in book covers also stems from the fact that I worked for many years in various Adelaide bookshops — most recently at an antiquarian booksellers (that’s a seller of old books, not an old bookseller). For dealers and collectors, book covers take on a whole different type of importance. To maximise their monetary value, the dust jackets of modern first editions (anyone remember the hardback?) must be present. But more than that, the jacket should be intact, bright, and free of rips or tears or chips or stains or those mould stains known as foxing — so named because it’s as if a muddy-pawed fox has pattered across the book.

I remember once coming across a first edition of Peter Carey’s Bliss in a box on the floor of the Community Aid Abroad (now Oxfam) charity bookshop on East Terrace in Adelaide. For some reason or other, UQP decided to issue the book with a snazzy but utterly impractical silver foil jacket. My copy still had its jacket but, as tends to happen to foil over the years, it was creased and scratched and looked a little like it had been stored in somebody’s outhouse.

Book collecting is an odd pursuit (it’s something I’m exploring in my novel-in-progress, Potatoes in All Their Glory). I put my first edition copy of Bliss inside a protective cover, made from a special type of plastic designed to not react chemically with the book, and sat it on my shelf. A few years later I sold it, along with a pile of other books. I didn’t get much for it — maybe four or five times the loose change I paid for it at the Community Aid Abroad shop. In the time I owned it I never opened it to read. I never would have dreamed of doing so, because it was a first edition with a fragile jacket. It was hardly a book at all, by then.

Guest blogger Patrick Allington on first novels

2009-07-16T17:13:00.005+10:00

First novels, I’ve had a few.

Tim Winton published his first novel, An Open Swimmer, when he was twenty-two years old, an achievement that has always faintly irritated me. I intend no personal malice towards ‘our Tim’, and I don’t doubt that he worked hard at his craft even though he was young. It’s just that when I was in my early twenties I could barely tie my shoelaces.

I take solace in the fact that Peter Carey wrote three unpublished novels before he published Bliss. Without trying to link Carey to my own floundering formative attempts at writing, I reckon Winton is probably the exception to the rule. So it feels strange — and in some ways misleading — to call myself a first-time novelist. Figurehead is certainly the first novel I’ve written that I could honestly call ‘finished’; it’s also the first novel I’ve written that a publisher has chosen to publish. But I recently turned 40 (as one of my workmates gently explained on my birthday card, ‘It’s all downhill from here’) and I’ve been writing novels most of my life. From well before I was 22 years old, I’ve filled notebooks and hard drives with half-finished manuscripts, first chapters and outlines. Any number of voices and all sorts of ‘grand’ ideas — some vague, some intricately formed — have rattled around in my head for weeks or months or years before seeping away.

Despite the frustration that comes from so much unfinished business, and despite the amused bewilderment that comes from asking myself ‘What on earth was I thinking?’, I find that remembering those lost novels is fun. And, no doubt, an excellent distraction. I’m especially fond of one early attempt at a Great Australian Novel — written when I was, give or take a birthday, twenty-two years old. I saw it as a road story of sorts, but also a Voss-like saga of exploration. The main character was a talking three-humped camel called Barney or Fred or Bruce or something like that. It trekked north from Adelaide’s pancake-flat suburbs, through the vineyards of the Clare Valley, through abandoned copper mines and the wheat-sheep belt, through the red desert and straight over Uluru, through crocodile-infested swamplands, all the way to the tropics where it bounded triumphantly into the water at a place called Escape Cliffs. I don’t remember why.

I do think of Figurehead as my first novel. But I also see it as sitting on a foundation consisting of many other stories and fragments — some abandoned, many forgotten, a few I would like to forget, and some, I hope, still gestating.

Upcoming events with Patrick Allington

2009-07-13T14:06:00.007+10:00

We're really excited about Patrick Allington's new-release novel Figurehead (Patrick is going to continue guest blogging on The Inc. Blot throughout July.)

If you live in Adelaide or Melbourne, don't miss the chance to hear Patrick talk about his book in person. He'll be in Melbourne this Thursday at Readings Carlton and Figurehead will be officially launched by J.M. Coetzee on Wednesday 29 July at the South Australian Writers' Centre in Adelaide. Details on both events can be found on our website.

And here's a review of Figurehead from the Australian.

Guest blogger – Patrick Allington, author of Figurehead

2009-07-06T10:21:00.008+10:00

I love books. Not just reading them. I love holding and caressing them, blowing dust off them, sniffing their musty pages, and especially standing before long lines of them contemplating all those titles ... all those stories.

A book is a feat of technology and craftsmanship. I’m talking about the paper, the ink, the glue, the spine, the covers. Sure, these days the crafting is mostly performed by machines. But, still, a book is an inanimate object — a leaved brick — capable of springing to life without resort to a password or a lithium battery. Books age — some gracefully, others like they’ve been left out in a storm — but it takes a lot to kill a book.

I’m no Luddite (at least not when it comes to reading). I’ll embrace the e-book, with all its revolutionary implications for how we will read and probably even what we will read. But I’ll do it when — and only when — the technology and the design combine to create a product as magical and as dependable as the paperback. And when some inventor comes up with a way that I can wander aimlessly around my house, browsing through my collection of electronic tomes in desperate search for the exact right tale to suit my mood.

Mind you, my book collection is an undignified mess. It urgently needs order — only I can’t decide what system to impose. And there’s an added complication: recently I took delivery of my first novel, Figurehead. Now that I’ve got over the excitement of picking it up and holding it (or some of the excitement, anyway) I have to decide where it should go on my shelves.
Adjacent to my favourite book, perhaps? But which favourite book? The Yes, Prime Minister scripts, which help me fall asleep most nights? Or in amongst Saul Bellow, who never fails to wake me up?

Or should I sit Figurehead with those books that I so loved as a child that I grew up wanting to be a writer? As a boy I was tiny, and I still have a picture book my parents gave me called Patrick Will Grow: “I’m glad Patrick is small,” Mother said. “I don’t know where we could put another bed.” “Patrick will grow,” Grandma said wisely.

If not Patrick Will Grow, then perhaps Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree series. These are the first books that I can remember trying to imitate: the child-heroes in my handwritten stories had great adventures and faced terrible dangers by going down a magic cave instead of up an enchanted tree.

My wife, in an uncharacteristically fastidious moment, recently suggested that I order our books in straight alphabetical order. At first I found that proposition horrendous, but I’m starting to come around to the idea. What I find most appealing is that despite the illusion of extreme tidiness, it will actually lead to wonderfully weird and random couplings: Evelyn Waugh’s brilliant satire on Fleet Street, Scoop, will share space with Steve Waugh’s autobiography; Frank Moorhouse’s Loose Living will stand beside Marlo Morgan’s whacky new-age Mutant Message Down Under and not that far from The Latham Diaries.

And Figurehead will be in most agreeable company. On one side, there’ll be a row of Margaret Atwoods. I’ll put Figurehead spine to spine with The Handmaid’s Tale in the hope that some of Atwood’s magic will rub off on me. When I first read The Handmaid’s Tale I knew — again — that I wanted to write a novel.

On the other side of Figurehead will sit Douglas Adam’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. At one time (I was still at school) I re-read that book so many times that I could just about have recited the whole thing — definitive proof, surely, of the indestructibility of the paperback.

Don Walker in conversation with Stephen Cummings

2009-06-30T11:19:00.009+10:00

Earlier this year we published Shots, a memoir by Don Walker, the former Cold Chisel keyboardist and songwriter. Don spoke with The Sports’ Stephen Cummings (who has also released a memoir recently) at the Sydney Writers' Festival in May. The resulting conversation was lively and entertaining - they spoke about music-making, the music business, writing and much more.

You can watch the first part here:

And the second part here:

Thanks to SlowTV for providing the footage.

Black Inc. wins Small Publisher of the Year

2009-06-24T09:07:00.004+10:00

We're very proud to announce that Black Inc. has won Small Publisher of the Year in the 2009 Australian Book Industry Awards.

You can read all about the awards and various winners in this article from the Sydney Morning Herald.

We would also like to congratulate Penguin for winning Publisher of the Year and Readings Carlton, one of our all time favourite bookstores, for winning independent bookshop of the year.

Annabel Crabb talks to David Marr

2009-06-19T16:26:00.010+10:00

Annabel Crabb and David Marr discussed the latest Quarterly Essay Stop At Nothing –The Life and Adventures of Malcolm Turnbull in Sydney recently. If you couldn't be there in person, we highly recommend you watch the videos below – they are very entertaining.

Part 1

Part 2

Ten book giveaway

2009-06-16T09:28:00.009+10:00

Looking for ten good books to read?

Visit the Ten Books website to enter.

Alice Pung on becoming a writer

2009-06-09T09:39:00.015+10:00

We asked Alice Pung, author of Unpolished Gem and editor of Growing Up Asian in Australia, "When did you first decide to become a writer?"

Here’s what she had to say:

When I was younger, I did not yet know how to deal with my feelings, or with the seemingly unending plagues of headlice and scabies I used to get, or with looking after younger siblings while my parents both worked, feeling trapped in a horrible domestic nightmare. I had such low self-esteem, I needed to feel like a winner at something. So I began a Guinness Book of Records at thirteen, where I made myself the world record holder in all the categories: ‘Record for the person who has pilfered every single hairstyle Ronald MacDonald has had for the past ten years’ (mum made me get a perm to burn off all the head-lice eggs), ‘Record for the best Ironing-Board impersonation’ (I was flat-chested), and ‘Record for the Worst Face in the history of the Universe’ (self explanatory). I still have that little notebook tucked away in a journal somewhere.

I looked back over my journals when I was eighteen and found them rather hilarious, even though they were unintentionally so. And that was when I decided that I would write a funny book.

I was tired of reading manuals by Asian women on how to feel miserable and oppressed. Young girls - particularly Southeast Asian girls - are socialised not to vocalise any form of anger or annoyance. And girls are not supposed to make fun of themselves because it is meant to do some sort of irrevocable damage to their brittle self-esteem. However, it seemed that Asian women could write countless books on their ten thousand sorrows, and be published, as long as the misery came from the forces of the outside world.

So I was tired of reading Oriental Cinderella stories and migrant narratives of success. Instead of inspiring me, they actually made me feel like an abject failure. When will I ever accumulate enough suffering to be a real writer? I wondered. I had defeated no communists/nationalists/evil stepmothers, did not have a seedy past or narcotic addiction, and the only thing I had ever smoked was salmon (in the oven).

Then I thought, damn it, I'm going to write a book about yellow people aspiring to become white middle class! It's not going to start with the struggles of war, but something more ironically Marxist - it would be about a working class family and their petit bourgeois dreams. And damn those who perpetuate the stereotype of the joyless Asian. My characters are going to laugh. So Unpolished Gem was begun, a book that was premised on poking fun of my abysmally low, adolescent self-esteem; and a book about my love for my quirky, daggy family.

The Life and Adventures of Malcolm Turnbull

2009-06-04T13:37:00.013+10:00

The latest Quarterly Essay Stop At Nothing – The Life and Adventures of Malcolm Turnbull by Annabel Crabb will be hitting shelves this weekend. The essay is causing quite a media stir.

Here's a taster:

Malcolm Turnbull talking to Annabel Crabb about his falling out with Kerry Packer:

Kerry was, um; Kerry got a bit out of control at that time. He told me he'd kill me, yeah. I didn't think he was completely serious, but I didn't think he was entirely joking either. Look, he could be pretty scary...He did threaten to kill me. And I said to him: 'Well, you'd better make sure that your assassin gets me first because if he misses, you better know I won't miss you.' He could be a complete pig, you know. He could charm the birds out of the tree, but he could be a brute. He could be like that. But the one thing with bullies is that you should never flinch...

And Annabel Crabb musing on Malcolm Turnbull:

How would Australia be different if he were prime minister? What are his most closely held policy convictions? I asked dozens of Malcolm Turnbull’s political colleagues this question, asking them to name three. Many of them had to pause before responding. ‘You’ll have to excuse me. I’m eating some chocolate,’ was the best initial response, from a Liberal on the other end of a phone line.

Here are links to some of the coverage of the essay – the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, and Sky News.

Annabel Crabb will be discussing the essay at events in Melbourne and Sydney next week. Book a spot now so you don't miss out.

Reporting from the Sydney Writers’ Festival

2009-05-27T10:51:00.017+10:00

USA author George Friedman attended the Sydney Writers’ Festival to talk about his book The Next 100 Years – A Forecast for the 21st Century. George’s sessions were booked out, with hundreds of people in attendance. The questions George was most commonly asked were about China (“Is it the next global superpower?” – George says no), Australia’s role in the world (George says we are a trading country that relies on being able to use shipping routes across oceans that we have no control over – a potentially dangerous position), and also which countries will emerge as great powers (George thinks Turkey, Poland and Mexico – if you want to know why, you’ll need to read the book.)

Nicolas Rothwell’s The Red Highway was launched at the festival on the Saturday night. The launch venue was packed and David Marr officially launched the book, speaking glowingly about Nicolas and his work.

Don Walker had three sessions at the writers’ festival. In his in-conversation session on Saturday, he spoke about his memoir Shots and his early years with Cold Chisel, including some fascinating insights on what it was like to play gigs in a jail. Don also performed with guitarist Charlie Owen to a sold out session at Glebe Library.

Amanda Lohrey traced the shifting line of truth in fiction in the session 'The Truth in Fiction and Non-Fiction', recalling the bushfire she lived through in north-east Tasmania in 2004 that influenced her novella Vertigo. Amanda also spoke about her childhood immersed in a fiercely political family, and her feisty grandmother who would talk to Amanda about politics as Amanda sat drawing at the kitchen table at the age of four.

A lot of Black Inc.’s author's events were filmed by SlowTV. You will be able to watch them, and many other sessions from the festival, on the SlowTV website soon…

Diary of a Publicist

2009-05-27T08:38:00.014+10:00

A day in the life of a book publicist at the Sydney Writers’ Festival

1.30am – Awaken in Sydney hotel room to the sound of dripping water. Hotel room roof is leaking.

1.40am – Discuss the issue with the night manager (try to look both dignified and outraged whilst wearing brightly patterned pajamas)

1.43am – Due to the number of authors and publishers staying in hotel, there are no spare rooms available. Make do with a bucket and towels to stem the flooding.

6.15am – Alarm goes off.

7.25am – Meet author in hotel lobby for his first session, a breakfast event.

7.35am – The pre-booked car transfer from hotel to the venue is held up in airport traffic. Rush to find a cab.

7.45am – Cab circles the same block several times whilst we all peer out the windows, trying to read building numbers and find the venue. (I’m not a Sydney local, needless to say.)

7.50am – Safely deliver author to session.

9.50am – Session has ended and author still signing books for audience members. Call the producer of a TV interview we have lined up. Let him know we might be delayed.

9.55am – Rush to find a cab.

10.20am – Arrive at studios for pre-recorded TV interview.

11.00am – Interview successfully filmed. Find a cab and rush back to hotel for interview with a journalist from newspaper.

11.20am – We are ahead of schedule. So is the journalist. Interview begins.

12.10pm – Interview ends and photographer from the newspaper takes author “across the road” for a photo shoot. Whilst my back is turned (chatting to journalist) the author and photographer disappear.

12.20pm – Author and photographer still missing. Wander up and down road looking for them.

12.30pm – Author reappears. Says he was taken to what appeared to be some kind of cave. Is nervous about the photo.

12.45pm – Head back to the hotel to move out of my flooded room.

1.30pm – Eat lunch, check emails, make calls. Set up several more interviews for the author. Watch a few minutes of Days of our Lives.

3.15pm – Meet author in hotel foyer

3.30pm – Travel to ABC studios for a radio and a television interview.

5.45pm – Interviews both successful. Detour by the make-up room at the author’s wife’s request to remove all the heavy foundation applied to his face for TV interview.

6.00pm – Cab back to the hotel

6.30pm –Time for dinner with another publicist to debrief and gear up for the next day.

Writers' Festivals

2009-05-19T14:32:00.012+10:00

Some of the Black Inc. staff are preparing to head up to Sydney for the Sydney Writers' Festival this week. Funny things can happen at writers festivals. Just ask Sandy Mackinnon (also known as AJ Mackinnon, which is the name he published his book under.)

Sandy recently returned from the Williamstown Writers' Festival. He told us the following story about his adventures in Williamstown, which he has kindly allowed us to publish here:

I stayed in the most superb Bed and Breakfast right by the sea in the centre of Williamstown, a boutique outfit called Captain's Retreat, beautifully restored and furnished and, as it turned out, run by the sister of a teacher colleague of mine from the Corio campus. She was marvellous and ran the B&B superbly, with home-made cakes and everything just perfect. I was put in the Captain's Suite where, Hal Porter, the famous Australian writer writing in the 60's, had written much of his stuff. After a slightly dreary afternoon, I settled down to some much needed relaxation, finishing up in a very deep hot bath in the en-suite spa. To really relax, I lit the three little tea-candles, turned out all the lights, switched on the bubbly jet things and lay back to relax in the candlelit darkness. As I lay there, I felt all the tension in my shoulders easing away and my body slumping lower, lower, lower in the water. Then the place exploded and everything went pitch-dark.

What had happened was that I had accidentally dislodged the bath plug so the water was slowly draining out - hence the feeling of slumping lower and lower. This wouldn't have been a problem except that when the water level dropped below the air-jet pipes still going at full-force, they sent all the water rocketing straight up in great fountains of spray like power-sprinklers, extinguishing the candles and hitting the ceiling, the mirrored walls, the window sill and curtains, and hissing like a nest of angry cobras. It was like suddenly turning on ten fire hydrants all at once. Of course in the darkness I couldn't find any of the controls to turn the damn things off or replace the plug or turn the taps on to refill the bath so I wallowed and blundered around getting sprayed in the face before I finally managed to hit the right button and everything went quiet, except for the steady drip-drip of half a ton of water as it descended from the ceiling to the floor again.

After that the mood was lost somewhat, so I called it a night and went to bed, helping myself to half a bottle of port that had been thoughtfully put by the bedside.

Best spots to read in Melbourne

2009-05-15T13:11:00.011+10:00

What are the best spots to read in Melbourne? We asked a few of our Melbourne authors to name their favourite spots. Here’s what they had to say:

Alice Pung:

Recently, I have been reading, standing up, on the Number 19 Tram when I head to and from work. Reading on public transport is like being in a mobile pedestrian library - you get to see what other people are reading too, particularly during peak hour. And you actually get to watch people read, which is usually quite a private matter. You get see the pace at which they turn their pages, how engrossed, embarrassed or distracted they look. It is the best way to find out about interesting books to read.

Catherine Deveny:

My favorite place to read? Public toilets. It's not a book I am reading but the graffitti. Sex is ace. Sex is olden. Sex is best in the back of Holden. Reservoir Station 1981 (I wrote that). Also this. If God didn't want us to have cleaners he wouldn't have invented people who didn't go to university. Brunswick East Primary School 2009, cubicle three, prep room (I wrote that too). Also the dunnies at Mario's in Brunswick Street - Catherine Deveny Is HOT!!! (yep me again). Also love lying under a tree on a blanky with my kids at Heidi drinking hot chocolate. Love the kids book room at Readings. Great on a winter's day followed by a slab o cake at Trotters. It'd be cheaper than the movies if I didn't end up spending $100 on books every time.

Ann Blainey:

I like to read in the Fitzroy gardens - either in a seat near the Clarendon Street entrance, under a tall pine tree, or in a seat near the Conservatory, looking across at the elms along the main path.

A quick survey of Black Inc. staff revealed a few other favourite reading spots – Systems Garden at Melbourne University, Illia Cafe on William Street in the CBD, the 109 tram to Richmond, CERES cafe in East Brunswick, and, of course, in bed, in an armchair or on the couch.

The Red Highway launch

2009-05-14T16:32:00.007+10:00

We launched The Red Highway by Nicolas Rothwell in Melbourne on Tuesday 12 May. It was launched by Marcia Langton. You can watch a video of the launch below

The Sydney launch of The Red Highway will be at the Sydney Writers' Festival on Saturday 23 May 23 at 6pm, Bangarra Mezzanine, Pier 4/5, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay. David Marr is the official launcher. This is a free event, and all are welcome. You can find out more details on the Sydney Writers' Festival website.

Mother's Day gift suggestions

2009-05-06T13:22:00.018+10:00

A typical Mother’s Day gift guide tends to promote either cookbooks or chick lit when it comes to books. If your mother’s reading tastes are a little broader than that, here are some alternatives suggestions:

For the environmentally conscientious:

Now or Never
By Tim Flannery
RRP $22.00

For lovers of blood and gore:

The Shanghai Murders
By David Rotenberg
RRP $22.95

For the arty (if you’re generous, because it’s pricey):

Performances 1971 - 2008
By Mike Parr
RRP $199.00

For the armchair traveller:

The Red Highway
By Nicolas Rothwell
RRP $32.95

For the muso:

Shots
By Don Walker
RRP $27.95

For the devoted Age reader (who doesn’t drive a 4WD or watch The Footy Show):

Say When
By Catherine Deveny
RRP $24.95

For the lover of literary fiction:

Vertigo
By Amanda Lohrey
RRP $19.95

The above books are available at all good bookstores (although Performances 1971 - 2008 is a specialty art title, so it could be a little harder to find.)

And here are some other, non-book options that we like:

- Her very own vegie garden
- A family of ducks from Oxfam
- Quarterly Essay gift subscription
- Mad Men Season 1

Our favourite bookshelves

2009-05-05T14:39:00.025+10:00

Here are some of our favourite bookshelves

The Opus Bookshelf
Inspired by the Romans. Designed by Sean Yoo.

The Bookworm Bookshelf
Flexible and able to assume any desired shape. Designed by Ron Arad.

The Staircase Bookshelf
A 'library staircase' in which English oak stair treads and shelves are both completely lined with books. Designed by Levitate Architects.

The Infinity Bookshelf
The shape of the bookcase is a lemniscate—a figure 8 and the mathematical symbol of infinity. Created by Job Koelewijn.

The Annotation Bookshelf
Created by Lau Design.

The See-Saw Bookshelf
To balance out your books. Created by Generate Design.

Check out more great bookshelf designs here, here and here.

Author Tours

2009-05-01T09:17:00.015+10:00

We have two national author tours coming up in May that we are really excited about. Nicolas Rothwell is going to be discussing his new book The Red Highway at events in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney. And USA author George Friedman will be touring Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane and Byron Bay to discuss his book The Next 100 Years.

Both authors are guests of the Sydney Writers’ Festival. You can find out more detail about their events on the Black Inc. website. (You can read about their books there too.)

Here's an interview with George Friedman from the Business Spectator website, and a lecture by Nicolas Rothwell on SlowTV.

10 Top Ten Book Lists

2009-04-27T13:31:00.006+10:00

A random selection of 10 Top Ten book lists:

Time’s Top Ten Books of All Time
The Times Top Ten Spectacular Second Novels
The Times Top Ten Cursed Second Novels
The ABC’s Australia’s Ten Favourite Books
The Times 10 Literary One-Hit Wonders
The Guardian’s 10 Best Nuns in Literature
The Guardian’s 10 Best Weddings in Literature
The Guardian’s 10 Best Identical Twins in Literature
Clive Sinclair’s Top Ten Westerns
Toni Jordan’s Top 10 Flawed Romantic Heroines

Want more? Visit the Lit Lists blog made for literary list lovers.

AJ “Sandy” Mackinnon

2009-04-23T14:33:00.011+10:00

Author AJ “Sandy” Mackinnon is the kind of person who has adventures. Not jumping-off-a-cliff extreme sport type adventures but proper, old-fashioned adventures.

When he was nineteen, he decided to travel to Iona, a tiny isle lying off the west coast of Mull, which in turn lies off the west coast of Scotland. He went in search of the Well of Eternal Youth.

At age thirty-five, Sandy decided to leave his job as a teacher in England and row his dinghy down the River Severn. He ended up still rowing, in Romania, a year later. Along the way he crossed the English Channel; was arrested by the River Police; tear-gassed in the Budapest Metro; trapped without funds in Serbia under threat of bombardment; and captured by Balkan river pirates.

Currently Sandy is a teacher at Geelong Grammar’s Timbertop campus. His interests include conjuring and home-made fireworks.

Here’s a great clip of Sandy talking about his life and book, if you want to know more. (His book, by the way, is The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow.)

Submission guidelines for Best Australian Stories, Essays and Poems

2009-04-21T11:26:00.008+10:00

Head over to the Black Inc. website to download the submission guidelines for the Best Australian Stories 2009, Best Australian Essays 2009 and Best Australian Poems 2009. (The link to the pdf is in the news section at the top of our homepage, if you’re lost.)

All three anthologies accept unsolicited, previously unpublished work. The deadline is 1 August 2009.

We’ve got two new editors this year – Robyn Davidson will be selecting the pieces for Best Australian Essays 2009 and Robert Adamson will be selecting the poems for Best Australian Poems 2009. Delia Falconer will be editing Best Australian Stories for her second year.

Want to get to know the editors a little better?

Read a transcript of Robyn Davidson’s appearance on ABC TV’s Talking Heads, an essay by Delia Falconer, or listen to an interview with Robert Adamson on ABC Radio National's Book Show.

The Page 99 Test

2009-04-17T11:24:00.009+10:00

English novelist, poet, critic and editor Ford Madox Ford once said "Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you."

We’ve applied this test to our new crime fiction release The Shanghai Murders by David Rotenberg. Here’s page 99 (the main character Detective Zhong Fong and his colleagues are at a gruesome crime scene in an alleyway in Shanghai):

Over and over again, Fong was approached with “What are you looking for?” And over and over again, he said, “I’ll know when I see it.” So they brought him everything they found. A small handful of one-fen coins, half a well-leafed-through Hong Kong porno magazine, bits of several different kinds of food in various degrees of decay, a sole from the toe of a lady’s shoe, and many more things—none of which pleased Fong. He had already found the piece of heart and the strip from the JAL airsickness bag, where he thought they would be. The Chinese driver informed the police that his Zairian charge never carried a wallet, that he, the driver, always went in after his client was finished and paid the bills. So that accounted for the wallet’s whereabouts.
As the driver headed downtown with a police officer to make a full statement, Wang Jun approached Fong.
“One hand points to the guy’s ID.”
“The other to the second part of the message,” replied Fong.
“Which is?” asked Wang Jun.
“Which is what we are looking for. No! What we’ll keep looking for until we find.”
Wang Jun slipped a cigarette into his mouth. “Did you notice that the body pieces weren’t put together very well this time?”
“I noticed that.”
“Could it be that our guy is slipping? Maybe he made a mistake.”
“Perhaps.”

You’ll find more books being put to the test at the Page 99 Test Blog.

What we're reading

2009-04-15T13:55:00.018+10:00

Non-work books that Black Inc. staff are reading right now:

Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins (publicist)
The Vivisector by Patrick White (web content coordinator)
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (office coordinator)
The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek (marketing and publicity manager)
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (editor #1)
Dark Palace by Frank Moorhouse (editor #2)
The Baader Meinhof Complex by Stefan Aust (publisher)
Things We Didn’t See Coming by Steven Amsterdam (general manager)
England’s Dreaming – Sex Pistols and Punk Rock by Jon Savage (designer)

A new book

2009-04-14T15:44:00.015+10:00