by Emma McEwin Creative non fiction is an exciting genre. I love finding creative and interesting ways to write stories about real people and things. Like the mystery box challenge on Masterchef, your task is to combine a jumble of seemingly unrelated ingredients to make a meaningful dish. The ingredients are like the facts of […]

Clare Forster from Curtis Brown Australia brings us an inspiring summer reading list of some of her favourite works of life writing as we edge towards the warmer months… Some of Australia’s most remarkable and inspiring stories stem from true life. Told in voices plain, ornate, and everything in between, first-person accounts serve many purposes […]

Q and A with David Carlin about Contemporary Creative Nonfiction (in which he does both the Q and the A) Q: So what exactly is creative nonfiction, David? A: Creative nonfiction is a relatively new term for something that has a long tradition: nonfiction that is beautiful and artful and powerfully engaging for readers, just […]

By Paul Greenway I always open my Travel Writing Workshop with this first rule of travel writing (although I ignored it myself).  While it is possible to make money writing travel articles for magazines and websites, it is unlikely – but certainly not impossible – that you’ll earn a decent living. But you can at […]

Recently, we held a Life Writing/Memoir Bootcamp. We offered participants an opportunity to showcase a snippet of their work on our blog. Here are some pieces from some very brave souls. Biographical Achilles in Fearful Momentum by Terissa Sheperd Memories may be selective, heart driven, sense driven, ego driven.  There is a natural ‘papering over’ […]

By Walter Mason  I’ve never really been much of a one for big things. Even though I come from Queensland, the lure of big things, grand vistas and sublime moments has never really been felt. I have always focused firmly on the small, the domestic. It is this perspective which grounds me, and which I […]

This is a snippet from a brief talk I’ll be giving at the SA Writers Centre this Thursday on the subject of what editors do.  Whenever I tell people I’m a book editor, and the conversation doesn’t swiftly move on, their first question is usually, ‘So what do editors do?’ Their tone is that of […]

Book reviewing is a tricky business. As Kerryn Goldsworthy’s recent extended essay in Australian Book Review shows, knowing what a review’s purpose is (or should be), who it serves (or should serve), what its value is (or should be), are complicated and contested questions. I approach book reviewing with several anchoring principles, although these principles […]