Author Archives:
From the Editors
Keeping the Future Bright: Kill Your Darlings and New Writing
It’s hard to believe, but a little over two years ago Kill Your Darlings – pale and naive – had the audacity to launch into the Australian literary community. It wasn’t our first issue that marked this date, but our first Melbourne fundraiser, a literary trivia night, at … Read more
From the Editors
The pesky thing called marketing: book trailers
How can you best market a book these days? This is a question I’m increasingly asking myself. With the advent of the internet, marketing has undergone a transformation. Gone are the days of the aggressive print-advertising campaigns: readerships are dwindling, the cachet of print is dying. Now, … Read more
Art, Books, Issue Six
Judging a book by its cover: Noir narratives in Kill Your Darlings
When we first dreamed up the concept of Kill Your Darlings, we had a clear vision for the aesthetic – film noir. Svelte, shadowy, 1940s kitsch and costume, the hint of danger. A story was integral to the covers – the characters tell their own story, and it was narrative that progressed with the changing season. Read more
From the Editors
The Year It Was for Kill Your Darlings
It’s hard to believe 2010 is nearing an end – it’s been quite a year for Kill Your Darlings. Back in March, we launched our first issue at Adelaide Writers’ Week and in Melbourne. Issue One, which kicked off with Gideon Haigh’s controversial article ‘Feeding the Hand … Read more
From the Editors
Failing Critical Failure: The problem with engaging in real conversation about literary criticism
It was a great privilege to be invited on the panel for ‘Critical Failure: Books’ at the Wheeler Centre on Tuesday evening. The session – which was one of four discussions on the state of critical writing in Australia – originated, according to the Wheeler Centre, from … Read more
Issue One
The Kill Your Darlings launches
It’s been a controlled sort of chaos for the Kill Your Darlings team for the last couple of weeks. Not only have we published and distributed our inaugural issue, but we have launched it in both Adelaide (as part of the Adelaide Writers’ Week program) and in … Read more
News
‘You may be a precious snowflake, but if you can't express your individuality in sterling prose, I don't want to read about it’: The ‘death of fiction’ in the US?
There was a fascinating post on Mother Jones website last week about the state of literary magazine culture in the United States. Ted Genoways, editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, wrote on what he views as the demise of the publication – and appreciation – of short … Read more
Interviews
Interview with Marc Trabsky, installation artist
‘Finding Space’ Exhibition – The Carlton Hotel Studios Curated by Jason Lingard Open for viewing Wednesday to Saturday, 4pm to 7pm (20 January to 6 February) Presented by the Midsumma Visual Arts Program, ‘Finding Space’ showcases fourteen artists’ work in photography, video and installation, exploring a symbiotic dialogue … Read more
News
Diary from Antarctica Part 3
Day Eleven: Thursday 24 September It was slow getting away in the morning, with a few dawdling over breakfast. I got very frustrated, probably more than I should, but I hated wasting daylight hours when we faced uncertain conditions. It was the coldest morning of the trip: … Read more
News
Diary from Antarctica Part 2 by Peter Hackworth
Day Five: Friday 18 September I slept badly, my mind racing with all that happened. The wind didn’t help, tents flapping madly but very secure. By mid-morning the blizz was right on us with winds gusting to more than 100kph. Advised at 0900 sked that forecast was for … Read more
News
Diary from Antarctica by Peter Hackworth
In 2009, Peter Hackworth was the Station Leader at Mawson Station in Antarctica. From March to November each year, the station is completely isolated from the outside world. It is subject to extreme cold, high winds, frequent blizzards and, for several months, minimal sunlight. Peter led a … Read more
News
Making up for a bad year? I think not.
It’s not just me, is it? This advertisement, promoting Bigpond’s free music downloads, is extremely offensive. It’s been half a year or so since the ‘Chickengate’ scandal, and it appears some lessons still haven’t been learnt. ‘Chickengate’, a notorious incident involving North Melbourne Football Club players, brought … Read more
News
The Indian Ark
Prithvi Varatharajan reviews The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Indian poet and candidate for the 2009 professional poetry role at Oxford University, once wrote that ‘anthologies are graveyards, and the anthologist’s job is to see only the best corpses get in’. He reckoned that … Read more
News
Claude Levi-Strauss dies at 100
French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, whose work deeply influenced Western thinking about civilisation, has died at the age of 100. Levi-Strauss was one of the dominating postwar influences in French intellectual life. His work inspired a school of academic followers in the 1960s and 1970s, in disciplines ranging … Read more
News
‘Wuthering Heights’
Did you watch Wuthering Heights on the ABC last night? Naively, I was excited about the new two-part BBC adaption. I blame those well-edited promos – they deceptively intimated that the series would be a dark, affecting retelling. Alas, like most of the recent filmic adaptations, … Read more
News
Melbourne Prize for Literature 2009
Finalists Announced Five authors have been shortlisted for the Melbourne Prize for Literature, an award worth a whopping $60,000. This year Barry Hill, Hannie Rayson, Shane Maloney, Alex Miller and Gerald Murnane make up the famous five. The Prize, which is offered every three years, is awarded … Read more
Film
The Fetishisation of God-Awfulness?: Ana Kokkinos and Blessed
Was anyone lucky enough to see the preview screening of Ana Kokkinos’s new film, Blessed, at the Cinema Nova on Sunday? I use ‘lucky enough’ broadly – I was certainly excited to watch the new film, her follow-up to The Book of Revelation, a confronting and thoroughly … Read more
