Category Archives: From the Editors
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
From the Editors
Surprising dilemmas: on being pigeonholed as a writer
It’s interesting, after days of listening to various writers talk, to watch certain themes emerge – particularly the ones you’d least expect. One surprising thread of conversation across the Melbourne and Brisbane Writers’ Festivals was the mixed blessing of finding a niche as a writer. Kathy Charles, … Read more
From the Editors
Five Things I Learned at MWF This Weekend
1. Keep your notebook within arm’s reach at all times On Saturday, KYD were hosting an afternoon of 15-minute events at Magazine – a Yarra-side shipping container, done up like a Fitzroy bar. One of those events featured Estelle Tang (our online editor) interviewing Ben Law and … Read more
From the Editors
Parties, interviews and the gift of the surprising conversation
The Melbourne Writers Festival kicks off today. And if you see an author or publisher looking grey this morning, it’s likely because they stayed too late, drank too much or both at last night’s Text Publishing party, an annual pre-MWF tradition. KYD editor Rebecca Starford left early … Read more
From the Editors
Why the internet turned me on (to creative writing)
In the current Overland, Cate Kennedy has published a fascinating essay on the distractions of the internet – and the various ways it impedes creative writing. It encourages a lack of inhibition – and worse, a lack of reflection and analysis. It privileges currency over depth. The … Read more
From the Editors
Impressive angles: Authors’ other lives
Over the weekend, I was lucky enough to have dinner chez Rachael Kendrick, blogger and cook extraordinaire. (I’ve also interviewed her for the Killings podcast, which you can find here.) We were chatting about her varied extracurricular activities – I feel like I can say ‘extracurricular’ about … Read more
From the Editors
“Here we go again”: The fiction magazine sausage-fest
‘I’m just being a bitch again’, wrote Amy King, in response to a post by Blake Butler at the HTMLGIANT blog announcing the contributors for issue #2 of We Are Champion magazine. None of the ten writers is female. King originally posted a comment at the original … Read more
From the Editors
On women’s writing 2: Miles Franklin, Orange, sausage fests and ‘grimness’
The Miles Franklin longlist for 2010 has been announced – and with only three of the 12 writers women, the signs are ominous that there may be another sausage fest (aka all-male shortlist) this year. In strictly objective alphabetical order, the longlist is: Patrick Allington, Figurehead Peter … Read more
From the Editors
On “Women’s” Writing
International Women’s Day is celebrated this month (8 March). Recently, there have been some really interesting discussions and debates about the gender divisions between male and female writers: whether they in fact exist in this ‘post-feminist’ world and if so, how they present and what those divides … Read more
From the Editors, Issue One
‘It’s one thing to kill your darlings, quite another to throw the baby out with the bathwater’ – Martin Shaw’s response to Gideon Haigh
It would appear that Gideon Haigh found it irresistible – when invited to write a piece for a new magazine called Kill Your Darlings – to mount a wholesale assault not just on his putative target, (alleged) hack reviewers, but the wider Oz literary culture itself – … Read more
