Repositioning Lolita: Martha Schabas’ Various Positions
It’s difficult to know what position to take with Martha Schabas’ debut novel, Various Positions.  On one hand, the plot is fraught with clichés connected to ballet and to ‘coming of age’ plotlines. On the other, it’s an ambitious homage to Nabokov’s Lolita that questions the nature of truth and responsibility. Either way, Schabas’ prose is beautiful, detailed and engrossing, and Various Positions is worth reading for this alone. Read article, published by Crikey’s literary blog, Liticism, on 19 March 2012.

 

Unearthing Herstory: Courtney Collins’ The Burial
“If the dirt could speak, whose story would it tell?”
In her debut novel The Burial, Courtney Collins supposes that the earth would favour the stories of those who are furthest from it, ‘the ones who are suspended in flight’. The dirt must long for these distant stories the way a child yearns for an absent mother. Collins chooses to literalise this longing; her fictional tale about the historical Jessie Hickman, Australia’s last bushranger, is told through the dead eyes of Jessie’s newborn child.
Read article, published by Crikey’s literary blog, Liticism, on 27 February 2013.

 

A Call to Disarm
Gun violence is seemingly far removed from Australia. Since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre and the ensuing gun reform laws, Australians have dwelt in the smug knowledge that we could teach the US a thing or two about weapons. News of the drug wars in Mexico occasionally ripples to our shores, only to be washed over in the next news cycle.
Read article, published by Right Now on 31 October 2013. 

 

A Woman of Many Parts
The latest project from playwright and director Hunter Tremayne, generously lathers intrigue upon plot twists. It’s a humorous and daring piece of theatre that throws bizarre characters together and doesn’t shy away from absurdity.
Read article, published by Barcelona Metropolitan on 27 June 2013.

 

 

One of Dickens’ Women: “I’ve had a passion for Dickens all my life. I learnt from him that literature is not peripheral to life; it is the stuff of life itself.” Miriam Margolyes spoke these words in her astounding one-woman performance of Dickens’ Women, which recently finished in Melbourne and will continue to tour Australia until May. The 2012 world tour aligns with Dickens’ 200th birthday. Read article, published in Farrago 24 March 2012.