#uqp

[auswomenwriters]

Sunday Spotlight with Sally Piper

Sunday Spotlight with Sally Piper

Welcome to Sunday Spotlight. Our guest today is Sally Piper, author of the recently released The Geography of Friendship, published by UQP.

What is it about women’s friendship that inspired you to write a novel about it?

I was interested in looking at female friendships from their earliest beginnings – why and how certain girls “find” one another, most often in school, and the intimacy of that…

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[queenboxi]

Local author Nikki McWatters is launching her new book Madness, Mayhem and Motherhood at Erina Fair 14 July, 4pm at the Bookface store. #uqp #australianauthors #nswauthors #womeninliterature #newrelease #bookfaceerina (at Erina Fair)

[wordsreadandwritten]

Author Interview: Kathryn Lomer

Author Interview: Kathryn Lomer

Today I’m featuring Kathryn Lomer on my blog. A big thanks to UQP for setting up the interview, and to Kathryn for answering all my questions. Title: Talk Under Water Author: Kathryn Lomer Publisher: UQP Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary Links: GoodReads Blurb: Will and Summer meet online and strike up a friendship based on coincidence. Summer lives in Will’s old hometown, Kettering, a small…

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[pomelo-and-pilcrow-blog]

A review of Josephine Rowe's Tarcutta Wake

Short stories generally appeal to me. It’s not that I find it difficult to read longer prose. It’s because I want to be thrown into the thick of things to get hooked. More often than not, short stories are forced by their very nature to get to the point. So for me, the idea of a book of vignettes and other short stories sounded great. I would be able to dip in and out of evocative moments, have something to contemplate, and then move onto the next world, the next situation, the next adventure. When given a choice between reviewing a novel and Tarcutta Wake, I chose the latter. In hindsight, I wonder if I should have chosen the former. Sure, in the beginning, I was engaged. Melbourne author Josephine Rowe writes well, and started the collection powerfully with “Brisbane”. But If you read the book cover to cover with very few breaks, which I did, you get the impression that Rowe is straddling a fine line between evocative moment and pointless (albeit well-written) piece of prose. “Vending Machine at the End of the World” was a great example of the former; “Dixieland”, however, felt like an example of the latter. However, this is starting to sound like a totally unfair assessment of Rowe’s ability to write. Let me make it clear that I’m not questioning her talent. I enjoyed her work on the whole, especially “Suitable for a Lampshade” and “In the Mornings We Would Sometimes Hear Him Singing”. Rowe has a wonderful way with words, including this gem on page 40: “…the kitchen cupboards were stacked with […] these anodised aluminium cups that reminded me of the photographic version of my childhood, which is really nothing like the childhood I can actually remember” and many more. I’m questioning the ratio of vignettes to short stories in this book. I would have much preferred it if it were a collection of short stories dotted with two or three inspired vignettes (“Treacherous” was a tiny paragraph but struck a chord with me with its quirky twist at the end). It sounds like a small thing to debate about, but back-to-back vignettes made me feel like I was reading too many moments that were so brief it was at the point of incompletion. I started thinking, “What was the point of that?”, especially about “Swan Dive”, “Heart of Gold”, “Repairs”, and “House”. I genuinely believe that the moments Rowe paints could really be worth hanging onto and contemplating further, but the magic is lost when so many are put together. I think that it would be difficult for anyone to write 25 punchy, back-to-back vignettes and not lose their audience. This could also be because, despite what was promised on the cover, I did not find that this collection represented an exploration of “the idea of things that are left behind: souvenirs, scars, and prejudice”. I actually ended up wishing she’d tied the vignettes and stories together in a Crash or Love Actually kind of way, not for its Hollywood qualities, but for something to unite such fleeting, disparate moments. Of course, if I’d read this at a more leisurely pace over a few months, my opinion might be completely different. I’d definitely be interested in reading more of Rowe’s work.

[pomelo-and-pear-blog]

A review of Josephine Rowe's Tarcutta Wake

Short stories generally appeal to me. It's not that I find it difficult to read longer prose. It's because I want to be thrown into the thick of things to get hooked. More often than not, short stories are forced by their very nature to get to the point. So for me, the idea of a book of vignettes and other short stories sounded great. I would be able to dip in and out of evocative moments, have something to contemplate, and then move onto the next world, the next situation, the next adventure. When given a choice between reviewing a novel and Tarcutta Wake, I chose the latter. In hindsight, I wonder if I should have chosen the former. Sure, in the beginning, I was engaged. Melbourne author Josephine Rowe writes well, and started the collection powerfully with "Brisbane". But If you read the book cover to cover with very few breaks, which I did, you get the impression that Rowe is straddling a fine line between evocative moment and pointless (albeit well-written) piece of prose. "Vending Machine at the End of the World" was a great example of the former; "Dixieland", however, felt like an example of the latter. However, this is starting to sound like a totally unfair assessment of Rowe's ability to write. Let me make it clear that I'm not questioning her talent. I enjoyed her work on the whole, especially "Suitable for a Lampshade" and "In the Mornings We Would Sometimes Hear Him Singing". Rowe has a wonderful way with words, including this gem on page 40: "...the kitchen cupboards were stacked with [...] these anodised aluminium cups that reminded me of the photographic version of my childhood, which is really nothing like the childhood I can actually remember" and many more. I'm questioning the ratio of vignettes to short stories in this book. I would have much preferred it if it were a collection of short stories dotted with two or three inspired vignettes ("Treacherous" was a tiny paragraph but struck a chord with me with its quirky twist at the end). It sounds like a small thing to debate about, but back-to-back vignettes made me feel like I was reading too many moments that were so brief it was at the point of incompletion. I started thinking, "What was the point of that?", especially about "Swan Dive", "Heart of Gold", "Repairs", and "House". I genuinely believe that the moments Rowe paints could really be worth hanging onto and contemplating further, but the magic is lost when so many are put together. I think that it would be difficult for anyone to write 25 punchy, back-to-back vignettes and not lose their audience. This could also be because, despite what was promised on the cover, I did not find that this collection represented an exploration of "the idea of things that are left behind: souvenirs, scars, and prejudice". I actually ended up wishing she'd tied the vignettes and stories together in a Crash or Love Actually kind of way, not for its Hollywood qualities, but for something to unite such fleeting, disparate moments. Of course, if I’d read this at a more leisurely pace over a few months, my opinion might be completely different. I’d definitely be interested in reading more of Rowe’s work.