In 2010 I completed the Year of the Novel course at the Victorian Writers Centre. I have been meaning to write about it for some time, but I seem to have struggled to come up with the correct approach. I’m not going to critique the course but here are a few personal thoughts. Continue reading →
Category / Writing Events
Going Down Swinging Launch
Wheeler Centre – 175 years of Victoria
Last night I attended the Wheeler Centre’s Celebrating 175 years of Victoria event in Ballarat. It was fantastic to get some regional events from the Wheeler Centre after my usual approach of staying in Melbourne after work and getting home to Ballarat late (and cold). Continue reading →
Paul Kelly – How to Make Gravy
In his book In Sunshine or in Shadow, Martin Flanagan says of Paul Kelly:
The generation of singer-songwriters of which he is the best known member are to the 1980s and ‘90s what the Bulletin poets were a century before, the people who travelled this land, collecting its stories, and singing them into the consciousness of the people.
This comparison resonates with me, but I would go one step further. Continue reading →
More than football – Melbourne’s History
This week I went to the book launch of Lisa Lang’s Utopian Man. It is a fictional re-imagining of the life of E.W. Cole, the creator of the wonderful Cole’s Book Arcade. The arcade began as a small second-hand book stall in the Eastern Market in 1865 and eventually became an Arcade from Bourke Street through to Collins Street, closing in 1931. Within that time the arcade included its own press, which produced the famous Cole’s Funny Picture Books, its own set of coins, a cage of monkeys and a Chinese tea salon to name just a few of wild and wonderful things. Continue reading →
Melissa Watts 