Izzy Gacusan’s short story ‘Fight or Flight’ was Highly Commended in the 2016 Marjorie Graber-McInnis Short Story Award. Here it is for your late-summer reading pleasure. He’d been here before. He was familiar with the peculiarity of this place, but found no solace in this. He awoke just minutes ago, stiff bed sheets poking at … Continue reading
Category Archives: Writing
Writing games: A Q&A with Maurice Suckling
By Hannah Egan Have you ever thought about writing games? Maurice Suckling has worked on over 40 published video games, and answered some questions about how to get started, the industry, and how games writing varies from other forms of writing. HANNAH: How did you first break into writing games? MAURICE: I was writing – … Continue reading
Translator, Traitor
By Rosalind Moran To translate written work, especially colourful prose or poetry, is an exercise both punctuated by glee and fraught with anxiety. The ethical pitfalls of translation are many, and synonyms somehow never quite enough. If one resignedly steamrolls alliteration and meter, the yells they emit could be transliterated as anything from “ouch”, to … Continue reading
Editing and Writing with Irma Gold
Learn how to self-edit fiction like an editor. Irma Gold is an both an author and an editor, with four picture books and 18 years of editing experience under her belt, both as a freelance editor and in-house. This weekend, she’ll be teaching a session on how to structurally self-edit your manuscript at the upcoming … Continue reading
The Process of Playwriting with Greg Gould
Greg Gould is a writer of plays, short films, short stories and poetry, and the co-founder and editor of Canberra-based publisher Blemish Books. His latest adventure is The Inheritance, a play produced by Budding Theatre to be presented at Belconnen Community Theatre on 16-19 August. We caught up with Greg to talk about the writing process, and … Continue reading
Creating Picture Books with Aleesah Darlison
Do you dream of publishing a picture book? Need help perfecting your story for submission? Aleesah Darlison is an award-winning writer for picture books, chapter books, and novels for children. We asked Aleesah five questions in the lead up to her workshop, Creating Perfect Picture Books, at the ACT Writers Centre on Saturday May 27th. … Continue reading
A Writer’s Tips for Surviving the Daily Grind
By: Sophie Constable Sometimes it seems that the only part of my writing brain that is exercised at my desk job is that concerned with grammar and punctuation. Sure, all those hours fund my writing courses and book habit, but meanwhile I can only sit at my desk waving goodbye to fabulous plot bunnies speeding … Continue reading
Sarah Ayoub on The Year Book Committee, Writing and Diversity
Stella Schools Ambassador, Sarah Ayoub, chats with Blogger in Residence, Nalini Haynes, about writing, diversity and representation. Can you tell us a little bit about your novel The Yearbook Committee? In an inner-western Sydney private school, five students work on the school’s yearbook; most come from wealthy families except one scholarship student. It kicks off … Continue reading
Frozen Stiff by Elizabeth Egan
Elizabeth Egan’s short story ‘Frozen Stiff’ was highly commended in the 2015 Marjorie Graber-McInnis Short Story Award. Frozen Stiff by Elizabeth Egan —- It was a dark and stormy night . . . When my brother was young he began every story with these words. A teacher once told him it was an attention-grabbing opening—very atmospheric. He … Continue reading
Writing Beyond the Self
By: Sophie Constable, Blogger in Residence Writing outside your own experience has received a lot of heat recently. This has been both distressing and compulsive viewing for me, because I find imagining the human experience in different contexts as an important way of reaching out and understanding each other, and humanity as whole. I am … Continue reading