-
So You Want To Be A Book Reviewer Panel at Continuum 2018
I promised a run down of Continuum and I realised I would have to do it bit by bit so here is the first panel on being a book reviewer. So You Want To Be A Book Reviewer I was joined by Elizabeth Fitzgerald and Stephanie O’Connell (better known as Figgy). Figgy writes for a rock and roll magazine and so her reviewing tends to be mostly within that genre of books though they are expanding a bit to take in other genres. Elizabeth is an editor who has her own book review blog where she reviews science fiction and fantasy work. Me, I was the journalist book reviewer. I…
-
I hit 10,000 words!
I suppose I gave it away in the title but oh my God! 10,000 words! Here’s what happened on each day. Day 5 was the Friday. Nothing got done on Friday. I was really exhausted. My sleeping patterns were out of whack and I was trying to fix my ear issue. I thought I could go out to meet my union colleagues and friends for drinks and come back and write. The drinks part happened and was fun but the writing part did not happen. So I had zero words for Friday. I had about four to five thousand words at this point to write in order to hit 10,000…
-
Day 4: Freedom to write, freedom for writers
Day 4 already. Well, nothing was going to happen on Day 1 given how tired and jetlagged I was. Today, most of the day was pretty boring. I had not slept well the night before. So the day was full of waking, sleeping, doing things I needed to do like eat and so on. I thought about the book a lot. And then I did my makeup, changed, called an Uber and went to see my friend Vicki Laurie interview Peter Greste at the WA State Library. So three things happened today on Day 4: Peter Greste pleasantly surprised me. I was very happy about that. Thank you Peter Greste.…
-
Day 2: A cat is here!
Day 2 and I woke up joyful today. Joyful because it was such a wonderful thought that I could write and everyone was going to be mindful of that. That no one would disturb me, no one would interrupt me, no one would think to themselves “She is free – let’s get a hold of her.” Also annoyance because my article was overdue and I needed to get it done so I knuckled down to do that while battling my ear going strange again. I made a mental note to see my doctor as soon as I get back to Melbourne. I figured out the A/C and I had a…
-
9 things I did not expect in 2017 & Happy New Year!
2017 has been a year full of ups and downs. Or at least for me, a lot of things that I well – did not expect to happen. Not to me. I am still quite giddy and grateful and in other ways also sad. We had a lot of unnecessary violence, hate and tragedy this past year. I did not expect… so much travelling I did not expect to travel as much as I did. I criss crossed Australia for the IPEd 2017 Editors’ Conference in Brisbane as a speaker and for the MEAA for union meetings. You can catch up on my conference updates here. I did not expect……
-
Building alliances – a panel on organisations working together
So I was asked to be on this panel about building alliances which mostly came about because I had previously contacted IPEd with ideas about how IPEd and MEAA could collaborate. The panel consisted of myself, representing all things MEAA, Juliet Rogers of the ASA, Sherrey Quinn from ANZSI, Queensland Writers Centre’s CEO Katie Woods and the Rosanna Arciuli from the Copyright Agency. In a nutshell we definitely agreed on several points: It was vital for us to band together on several big theme issues because there was power in numbers no matter which organisation spearheaded the issue and campaign. Such big theme issues that we cared about were copyright…
-
Amanda Jay’s The Other One is a Fairway Literary Award finalist!
Ok, first things first, who is Amanda Jay? Amanda Jay is a Sri Lankan writer – Amanda Jayatissa – who wrote a book titled The Other One. I edited it earlier this year and she decided to self publish it in both e-book and hard copy format. It’s not doing too badly sales wise. But yesterday she got the news that it was shortlisted for the Fairway Literary Awards in the English Language section. Guess who got shortlisted for the Fairway literary awards? One of my authors! @mandysillybob I’m very proud of you. I’m so excited. You better win so that we get two in a row! #srilankanauthors #srilankanliterature #theotherone…
-
3 amazing Australian authors I read in 2016 and absolutely loved
I tend to stumble upon my books (matters not if it is work by Sri Lankan or Australian authors) and I started young. We have a bookcase in our house that spans the length of the downstairs study. It is mostly filled with modern day thrillers and what I refer to as airport novels – Jeffery Archer, Frederick Forsythe, Connelly, Koontz, Deaver. John Grisham. Those books. A smaller bookcase housed the encyclopedia set and the treasure trove of Agatha Christie novels. In the bookshelf for us kids, there were Enid Blytons and Carolyn Keenes, topped up by regular birthday and Christmas gifts. I read the classics – the cornerstone foundation of…
-
Maudiegirl and the von Bloss Kitchen by Carl Muller
The first author I read this year is not an Australian female writer but a Sri Lankan male one. It was Carl Muller and his book Maudiegirl and the von Bloss Kitchen. I thought it would be prudent to try and read more POC authors this year as well as try to understand a bit more about my own English language literary background and read more Sri Lankan authors. Carl Muller can come across as crude. His stories about the Burghers (the mixed race descendants of European colonisers and native Sri Lankans) feature life in the raw as it was in what seems to be early 2oth century life in…
-
The best Australian books that 7 Australian writers loved in 2016
I wanted to write about some of the best books by other Australian writers that I had read and been blown away by during 2016. And then I thought – why not ask them who they read in 2016 that was amazing AND an Australian author? So that then I could have a list of books to then go read myself in 2017? So I did. I yelled out into the Twittersphere: Australian #writers: what was the best book by an Australian that you read this year? I want to write a blog post & will link back to you. — Marisa Wikramanayake (@mwikramanayake) December 24, 2016 And true enough, over…
