Morag Joss’ Puccini’s Ghosts has two of the most suspenseful literary tropes – the slow reveal and the unreliable narrator. And when it’s the unreliable narrator who’s divulging the slow reveal the effect is intriguing. Continue reading →
Author / Melissa Watts
Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute Library
The building contains a glass reading room with a collection of newspapers and early books that were bought to Ballarat* through the wealth amassed by the goldfields. The Institutes Library was initially designed to cater for the education of the miners, but quickly grew to supply miners with newspapers from throughout the world, a collection of books and even a ladies reading room (containing homemaker books and magazines suitable for ladies). Continue reading →
Southern Cross Literary Competition
Do you have a short story up to 5000 words sitting in the bottom drawer? Ballarat Writers are running the Southern Cross Literary Competition worth $1000. This year’s judge is Paddy O’Reilly.
Visit http://www.ballaratwriters.com for info. Continue reading →
Ballarat Writers and Illustrators Festival
I’m pleased to report that this weekend was a great success for the Ballarat Writers’ and Illustrators’ festival for 2011. This year’s theme was ‘words and pictures’ with a focus on Children and Young Adult authors and illustrators. A dinner on the Friday night kicked off the festival in fine form. Dominic Brine from ABC Ballarat was the MC for the night with Maureen McCarthy as the keynote speaker. I was lucky enough to be on a table with authors Ebony McKenna, Nicholas Brasch, editor Catherine McCredie from Penguin Books and illustrator Dave Hackett. The mood of the room was inspiring as a range of professionals within the industry shared a few drinks, a fantastic 3 course meal, and countless stories.
It was hard to leave for the night, but my job the following morning was to kick off the festival by interviewing our keynote author Maureen McCarthy. This was intimidating; it was my first public interview, besides the work I do with Voice FM. I read Maureen’s novels when I was in high school and in the lead up to the festival I refreshed my memory by reading Queen Kat, Carmel and St Jude get a life, Rose by Any Other Name and Careful What you Wish For. Her novels are great and there were plenty of questions that I could have asked, but I wanted to make sure that the audience got a lot out of it, whether they were novelists, illustrators or picture book authors. It was a great experience and I really enjoyed doing it.
By the end of the day my head was spinning with all the fantastic panels. There were 26 panellists and each panel was loaded full of tips, tricks and advice. One of the days highlights was the montage of images that Simon Swingler produced. He had been silently animating in the corner throughout the panel discussions and then produced a computer animated image of each of the panellists (I’d love to track down the one he did of me – it was fantasic.)
Ballarat Books was a fantastic sponsor, making sure a great collection of each authors work was available. It was a great festival and something I’m happy to have been involved in. The festival committee consisted of Alice Barker, Jill Blee and Nadine Cranenburgh, who should be congratulated.
Tim Pegler
Over the last few months I have been helping Ballarat Writers to prepare for the Ballarat Writers and Illustrators Festival for 2011. As part of this I have prepared by reading the novels of young adult author, Tim Pegler. Continue reading →
Workshopping
A few weeks ago I attended a Ballarat Writers workshop run by Alison Arnold from Text Publishing and Cath Crowley, young adult author. The day previous Cath Crowley had won the Prime Ministers Literary Award for Young Adult writing, for her novel Graffiti Moon. The class was instantly excited when Alison told us about Cath’s success, and I have to give her credit for turning up so bright eyed the day after the announcement (if that was me I would have had a champagne headache to say the least.) Continue reading →
Noni reads Go the Fuck to Sleep
Last week I recieved my Text Publishing newsletter with the fantastic video 0f Noni Hazelhurst reading Go the Fuck to Sleep.
If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out here, it’s well worth the watch. Continue reading →
Geraldine Brooks in Melbourne
Last week I went to see Geraldine Brooks in an event organised by Readers Feast bookstore. I am a big fan of Geraldine Brooks and it was fantastic to see a full house. It was located in the Collins street Baptist church which meant I was able to see the front clearly (at my height this is exciting). I was intrigued by the general demographic – in a full church I could only see 9 men around me, and I was left feeling very young by the end of it. The full house did endear me to the fact that people not only buy historical fiction, but they come out on a freezing Melbourne night to hear about it.
Geraldine herself was eloquent and kept her confidence with the range of microphone issues that occurred throughout the night. I enjoyed hearing about how the characters speak to her, once she finds the initial historical fact that catches her interest. She called it “collecting the string” of the story, imagining the story from the fact.
The one thing I can’t stop thinking about is the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. Geraldine used the example that she wanted to use the work foetus but was sure that that word would not have been used in 1600. So she used the thesaurus to identify the correct word for the correct period. Originally published in printed form, the thesaurus has now been incorporated into the Oxford English Dictionary Online. According to Wikipedia work began on the collection in 1965 and was completed in 2009. It sounds like such a fantastic resource for writers of historical fiction.
Geraldine Brooks
Last week Geraldine Brook’s new novel Caleb’s Crossing made it to number 1 on the Independent books top 10 list.* It was released on May 3.
It’s fantastic that an Australian female author, who writes historical fiction has made it to number 1 in such a short amount of time, and plays into the recent debate about literary awards, chick lit (or perceived chick lit) and the ongoing saga of historical fiction not selling well. Continue reading →
Melissa Watts 