Notes of Substance

Hunter G's exhibition ‘The Kimberley’ St Helier’s St Gallery at the Abbotsford Convent. We often tell our stories about land and our place in it with words. In his fight to raise awareness of the threats to The Kimberley region of Western Australia, Hunter G has told a story through photographs. It is an invitation to us all. In testament to the power of the visual, and the potency of art as protest, Hunter G's exhibition has made us aware of a far away beauty that words cannot describe. This year saw Hunter G pack his things into a two wheel drive Toyota Town Ace van, and trek diagonally across Australia in a campaign to raise awareness about what is under threat on the far west coast of our land. Along the way he blogged, wept, and wrote, whilst taking photographs of the land he passed through. He faced  50 degree heat, mozzies, road trains and road kill.  Oh, and he got bogged. It was

One Little Room takes us beyond our selves... Ampersand . It’s such a great name for a magazine. Its offer of possibilities, its promise of more. And its f ormat-it’s gorgeous! A little flip book, filled with poems and stories and art essays and drawings. I cannot wait to read it. I couldn’t read it last night, because as I sat in the wonderful warehouse space of 1000 Bend in the dim light, I realised that, yeah, I probably really do need glasses. Last night saw the launch of  Ampersand ‘s  latest issue, One Little Room. Amp-er-sand. Reminds me of Lo-Li-ta, the way the rhythm stamps itself on a word. To get there, I hobbled down a cobble-stoned laneway, past dumpsters and stencils, turning back on myself to arrive. Turn around, look down the alley ways, sneak up the stairs, said Bill Henson later in the night – ‘seek out the weirdos.’ OK … The crowd here didn’t look like weirdos. Just a bunch of passionate readers and writers, damn happy to be celebrating a magazine l

Notes from the Emerging Writers' Festival, 2013 Sure, we all have something to say, but why would people want to read it? This Town Hall session discussed blogs, memoir and biography. Specifically, how to make writing about oneself interesting to others. Why do we want to read your travel stories, your disasters in love, your encounters with cancer, your intimate meanderings? Along with the crucial question: how does one avoid pissing off friends and family so much that they will no longer speak to you? The panel certainly had great credentials for writing the personal:   Fiona Wright, author of a collection of poems,  Knuckled ; Walter Mason, travel writer,  Destination Saigon ; Anna Poletti, author of  Intimate Ephemera-Reading Young Lives in Australian Zine Culture  and Luke Ryan, comedy writer and author of soon to be published  You’re Only as Sick as you Feel. The session was hosted by blogger, Lily Mae Martin. She blogs at  Berlin Domestic,  where she pokes arou

The short form has hit the big time. Over the last month, two major literary prizes have been awarded to authors of short form fiction. Lydia Davis won the Man Booker International , for her body of short form work, and Maxine Beneba Clark won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript for her collection of short stories. Personally, I have fallen in love with ‘flash fiction’ like Josephine Rowe’s gorgeous collection, Tarcutta Wake . Some of these stories are less than a page long. This panel, Cutting it Short, explored the short stuff. Why do we read it, why do writers work with this form, will people buy it, will publishers take a punt on it? Chi Vu, Miles Vertigan, Ryan O'Neill and Jennifer Mills Cutting it Short, Emerging Writers' Festival, 2013 The panel addressed a packed room at the Town Hall last Saturday. The lighting was dim, but the chandeliers shone. Host Johannes Jakob, fiction editor at The Lifted Brow, started off