Upcoming Events in February and March

I'm very pleased to announce that I will be appearing at the Perth Writers' Festival, Beaconsfield's Festival of Golden Words, and at Adelaide Writers' Week over February and March 2014.

Please do come along to hear me speak, introduce yourself, get a book signed, and help support Australia's literary festivals. More information about each event can be found by following the links.

Friday 21 February: Perth Writers' Festival - Burial Rites with Julia Lawrinson

Saturday 22 February: Perth Writers' Festival - Fallen Women with Evie Wyld and Annabel Smith

Sunday 23 February: Perth Writers' Festival - Absence at the Heart with Jo Baker and Rachel Robertson

Monday 3 March: Adelaide Writers' Week - Epic Journeys with Elizabeth Gilbert and Kalinda Ashton

Monday 3 March: Adelaide Writers' Week - Burial Rites with Steven Gale

Saturday 15 March: Festival of Golden Words - Dissecting a Killing with Louise Adler

Sunday 16 March: Festival of Golden Words - Why Tragedy Attracts Us with Professor Stanley, Rohan Wilson, Poppy Gee and Russell Eldridge

My Reading Year

Ever since 2008 I have been in the habit of noting down the books I read. What started as a practical means to keep track of titles used for university research has become an ever-lengthening list that is almost diaristic. When I flick through the thin pages of my notebook I am reminded of what I was doing, and what I was thinking by the books I was reading at the time. The earnestness of my early 20s hinted at by Winterson, Nin, McEwan. A time of loneliness tempered by month-long binges of Angela Carter. A quarter-life panic both soothed by the reliable brilliance of Atwood and Lawrence, and interrogated by rounds of de Botton and Orwell. The months where I read few, or God forbid, no books at all point are significant in their emptiness, suggesting times when love or grief or fatigue occupied my mind with such extremity that it was impossible to think about anything else. 

So precious is this notebook to me, this faithful scribbling of books encountered, that recently it was one of the eight or nine things I felt compelled to take with me when clearing out of a house under threat from bushfire. 

There are a few rules I try to adhere to. Half-finished books don't feature, but unpublished manuscripts do. Books completed for work, for research, for pleasure are all in there together, as are the titles and guilty repeat-reading I would rather not boast about. Honesty is important, as it results in both truth and intimacy. Privacy, too, is necessary. It, in turn, encourages honesty.

At the beginning of 2013 I was gently warned that I might not have time for reading or writing because of the release of Burial Rites, and the associated travel I would need to do. Not being blessed with the ability to write steadily (or well) while in transit, I  did struggle to write as often as I am usually accustomed. But reading? What better occupation on a long-haul flight, or on a gritty, sleepless, jet lagged night, than to open a book? 

Here is a selection from the books listed in my notebook for 2013, one title for each month. 

January           Slater, Nigel - TOAST

February         Chapman, Emma - HOW TO BE A GOOD WIFE

March              Forrest, Emma - YOUR VOICE IN MY HEAD

April                 Lanagan, Margo - TENDER MORSELS

May                 Torres, Justin - WE THE ANIMALS

June                Smith, Patti - JUST KIDS

July                 Toibin, Colm - BROOKLYN

August            Catton, Eleanor - THE LUMINARIES

September     Williams, John - STONER

October          Bulawayo, NoViolet - WE NEED NEW NAMES

November      Case, Jo - BOOMER AND ME

December      Tartt, Donna - THE GOLDFINCH

Frederick McCubbin's 'Lost' (1886)

The Royal Academy of Arts, in collaboration with the National Gallery of Australia, are currently showing the exhibition Australia in London. Marking the first major survey of Australian art in the UK for 50 years, 'this exhibition spans more than 200 years from 1800 to the present day and seeks to uncover the fascinating social and cultural evolution of a nation through its art.'

The Guardian recently asked several Australian writers to pick their favourite artworks from the exhibition, and I was honoured to be included in their number. My selection of Frederick McCubbin's 'Lost' is below. The full article, with responses from writers such as Christos Tsiolkas, Tim Winton, MJ Hyland and Chloe Hooper can be read here.

Frederick McCubbin's

'Lost' (1886) 

I first saw Frederick McCubbin's Lost when I was a child, no older than the girl in the painting. It frightened me. As the daughter of two country-born parents, I had grown up knowing the bush and its dangers. I knew what it was like to walk in the dry air, blistered grass cracking underfoot, the horizon disappearing behind stretches of saplings and the smell of eucalypt lifting with every footfall. I knew how thirsty you could become when the shadows lay thin on the ground, and how the scrub could rise around you – grey, scorched and watching – until you were afraid you would never get out. "If you become lost," my parents would tell me, "don't go anywhere. Stay in the shade. If you wander, it will be difficult to find you." When I first saw McCubbin's painting of a young girl, alone and straying, I feared for her. The artist's impression of the bush captured, in its detail of peeling bark and yellowed grass, the menace I sensed from this landscape as a child. McCubbin captures its beauty – its extraordinary quality of light – but also its deadliness. The little girl is insignificant in the bush's expanse. The sky is disappearing. 

Lost is said to be inspired by the 1885 case of Clara Crosbie, a young girl who was miraculously found alive in dense bush after having gone missing three weeks earlier. I'm drawn to McCubbin's paintings for the way they suggest a deeper narrative. I see the Australia I know: lyrical, singular and unsettling.

Read the full article here.