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Talya Rubin and The Pandemic Poetry Project
Welcome to a New Day If the cherry tree were in blossom like this always, maybe we would not weep at the losses the silences. How a boat moored in the harbour is quiet now. A friend inside it, or not inside it eats dumplings, sips soup, sleeps away from the people she loves in case by breathing too closely on their soft skin, too near to be safe she kills them. A white bloom is sudden, a shock of life, like birth, like the birth of a little girl in my arms, something uncertain and beautiful as a cloud or the sun triumphant from behind a cloud. “Welcome…
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REPOST: Emma Young: Journalist and Author of The Last Bookshop
I’ve been so busy in 2020 that I haven’t had much time to update this blog so please enjoy a conversation I had with Emma Young back in late 2019. Emma’s debut novel The Last Bookshop will be released this month. ** Emma Young is an award-winning journalist at WAtoday by day and a novelist before sunrise. I met Emma, at Laurie Steed’s KSP 1st Edition fellowship in 2018 where she inspired me with her commitment to her craft. I learnt so much from her about how to ‘own it’ as a writer and my writing practice has changed because of Emma. I already a big fan of her work at the…
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Famous Adopted People: a Novel – by Alice Stephens
I saw Famous Adopted People at my local library and picked it up for a friend who has an adopted child. I was in a hurry so I didn’t see the words ‘a novel’ and thought it was a non-fiction book about famous adopted people. It is not. The book is best described as a rollicking read that explores a range of salient issues around transnational adoption and one that exemplifies how some truths are best told through fiction. At the start of the novel, we meet two young women who are negotiating the complexities of their transnational and racialized identities. At the center of the story is Lisa Pearl, a Korean-America adoptee who isn’t…
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Conversations with Marianna Shek
Marianna Shek was one of the writers I approached when I decided to profile writers on (or should the preposition be ‘in’? Do you appear in or on…) this blog because I really wanted to continue the conversation that we started in Melbourne. I was immediately drawn to Marianna’s creative passion and energy. When you read this profile, you’ll find out just how multi-talented Marianna is. We could have easily ended up with a novella-length interview if we’d allowed ourselves, but we decided to leave that for another day. Marianna has no immediate plans to travel to Perth, nor I to Brisbane, so we will have to make do with Skype…
