By next Tuesday you must send us the topics you would like to cover. Please write them in the comments below this post. …
This is an opportunity to put yourselves to the test, also to become our freelance contributors and to begin a relationship with the magazine. Others amongst you began in this manner, and now work with us on a regular basis…

Readers have responded in force to this seductive call, with 72 pages worth of comments from aspiring Vogue regulars now cramming the bottom of the post.

This idea left me aghast. Though it’s a great idea that has certainly inspired a lot of writers, who might otherwise feel that they mightn’t have a chance in hell of getting the attention of a Vogue editor, the idea of pitching in public makes me feel like I’m in that dream where I’ve forgotten to put my clothes on, and everyone is looking at me.

What about you? Would you pitch ideas on a blog? Would you feel comfortable pitching in plain sight?

[via The Cut]

Are you an avid blogger who likes to write about books, reading and writing? Melbourne Writers Festival is looking for five UNbloggers. Successful applicants will get free access to the 2011 Melbourne Writers Festival plus the opportunity to have their work promoted through the festival’s networks.

Interested? Find out more here.

Simon and his parents are on a family holiday and land in a small town called Reception. The town both lives up to its name and makes a mockery of it; the young boy finds new friends, but his parents go missing. The smaller a town, the more you have to bury your secrets – but not your stories.

Christopher Currie is one of those people you get the sense has always had stories to tell. His novella Dearly Departed was published in 2007, and in March 2008 he started a blog called Furious Horses, where he posted a new short story every day. We spoke with Currie about his debut novel The Ottoman Motel, small towns, what part emotion plays in writing, and balancing poetry and story.

About 20 minutes. Produced by Sam Szoke-Burke.

Kill Your Darlings podcasts appear monthly. Music is Pompey and Sam Szoke-Burke. Download the podcast here. Subscribe via iTunes or the podcast feed.

I won’t rehash Gideon’s argument (you can read the article in full here) – but needless to say, it has generated much debate on this site, and others, about the state of critical writing in this country. Many people have objected to Gideon’s ‘bilious attack’; others have asked him to name names. Others have called the Kill Your Darlings team mediocre critics – and I’m happy to entertain these views in the context of the discussion. The main initiative behind Kill Your Darlings is, after all, to publish new writing that provokes thought, challenges readers and generates lively and original debate.

And so I had been looking forward to a nuanced conversation with Peter Craven, Hilary McPhee and Gideon Haigh about the traditional modes of Australian literary criticism, the problems they encounter (shrinking editorial space, dwindling readerships, erosion of critical authorities, among others), how the digital world destabilises/complements this forum, and where Australian literary criticism is – if indeed it is – moving forward.

Unfortunately, I (and I suspect many of the audience) came away from ‘Critical Failure: Books’ frustrated and disappointed (in myself, it must be said). The panel had failed in its intentions: to generate a rigorous, considerate, balanced discussion about Australian book criticism in all its forms and the changing shape of critical thinking.

I think the problem of the panel was its make-up – and perhaps the fact that there were two strands of conversation at work. Peter Craven, a traditionalist and one of the country’s finest and long-standing critics, was reluctant to validate ideas about the changing forums for critical ideas (he joked about not even bothering to read Gideon’s article). But then, why would he? It is in his interest for these traditional forums to be perpetuated, and he is one of the few critics afforded the kind of editorial space for which we were all opining, where he can write, as he boasted, about books as broad-ranging as Hamlet and Harry Potter. Diminishing space may not, therefore, be a problem for him, but for us more humble critics it is – and that is hardly conducive to healthy critical culture.

Hilary McPhee comes from a different background: that of a publisher, McPhee Gribble, which was responsible for introducing us to the works of literary giants Helen Garner and Tim Winton, to name a few. Hilary spoke about her voracious appetite for criticism – but finds inspiration in our pages, in comparison to the likes of the Times Literary Supplement and the New York Review of Books, lacking.

Gideon Haigh is a journalist of twenty-six years experience; he has seen the shape of critical writing in the broadsheets change. He is, of his own admission, only a newbie reader of literary blogs, but still felt the debate at the Wheeler Centre should be focused around print reviewing.

And myself? I felt strangely conflicted in my position. On the one hand, I had been invited very much as a ‘new voice’ – and a reactionary one, presumably, due to my role as publisher and editor at Kill Your Darlings. But I also came into the debate as associate publisher at Affirm Press, a Melbourne-based independent publisher whose books – like that of many small independent presses – sometimes struggle to gain the critical attention they deserve in mainstream media outlets.

As rightfully highlighted by an audience member, the question of ‘what makes good criticism good’ wasn’t really properly answered. I am as guilty as the others on this score – apart from Gideon, who went some way to answering the question. But as I alluded in my introduction on Tuesday, the notion of contemporary criticism is problematic, because there is very much a schism between what we are defining as traditional literary criticism – which you see published in places like ALR, ABR, The Monthly and by notable print critics, like James Bradley and Kerryn Goldsworthy, who also operate their own blogs – and the ‘review pages’ in our national broadsheets, where content ranges anywhere from 100 words to 1000 words.

I think we’re all now at the point where we can cease bemoaning this situation – and it seems that there are needless blame games operating in some strands of this argument. The fact is that these pages are under increasing strain for a number of reasons (economic rationing, dwindling readership, publishing and publicity pressures, general changes to the way readers consume newspapers). This is not to say that they are not important, not serving a purpose and promoting new writing – they are. But their influence – in a critical sense – has changed. And the value we attribute to critical writing has changed with it.

And this is the rub. Traditional forms of literary criticism are failing in this country not because critical authority is lacking, but because this critical authority is increasingly high-minded and ostentatious; it is criticism that does not reflect the diversity and richness of our national literature. For this reason, it is failing our writers and readers.

When, for example, do you ever see a lengthy review – steeped in the style and technique of the work, the complexity of its narrative, the socio-historic content – of a first-time, unknown novelist? An emerging poet? When do anthologies (outside the annual ‘Best of…’) receive sustained evaluation? What of genre fiction? Graphic novels? Counter-cultural tracts? Gay and lesbian writing? Literature in translation?

As an associate publisher of a small, independent press, I cannot see the necessity in reading five or so reviews of the latest Peter Carey novel – each written in the same cautious vein, with the same summary of plot, with the same reference to past works, each as fearful as the next lest the reviewer draw notoriety for being ‘that girl’ who ‘trashed’ Peter Carey.

My argument, as I tried to make during the discussion on Tuesday, will always be for diversity on our review pages, for fresh approaches and bold content. It was in fact Gideon who made the point about the value of such criticism for new Australian writers, as it in turn shapes their own process of re-crafting, evaluating their finished work, building their oeuvre and helping them – and of course us – better understand their place and value in our collective literature.

And this is where I see the divide. Many readers are turning from the books pages because they aren’t reading about books they are interested in; they are simply not being engaged by a voice that speaks to them. And increasingly, these same readers are turning to the more interactive, democratic and discursive online realm.

Geordie Williamson’s recent article in the ALR, provocatively entitled ‘Bugger the Bloggers: Old-World Critics Still Count’, was a curious addition to the common misrepresentation of the blogging phenomenon by traditional critics. Williamson, who has written respectfully on the nature of blogging, and acknowledged its importance in literary conversation, had this to say in his article about ‘criticism’ in blog form:

However marvellous it may be, the web is no more than a medium: its content is not more virtuous, intelligent or correct for appearing in a novel space […] Also, in a world characterised by a hyper-abundance of media, where bandwidths are filled with a ceaseless flow of chatter and governments drown real information in large-scale data dumps, it is the sceptical, nimble-minded, old-fashioned literary critic, trained to thresh narrative grain from word chaff, who is best situated to gather something like truth from the digital realm.

It’s this exact type of literary fundamentalism that has engendered this problem in the first place, as if there was a distinct divide between ‘us’ – another species of reader and writer, less discerning and by implication lazier – and ‘them’. And who is this ‘old-fashioned critic’, anyway? Someone who doesn’t use the internet? Someone who doesn’t type his reviews for himself? Someone who deliberately obfuscates every kind of critical discourse?

There is no ‘pack’ mentality to blogging, as so described in Williamson’s article – some of the liveliest and most entertaining dissension is published on literary blogs. And surely he can’t be arguing that print reviewing is free from critical unanimity? Blogging is, by its very nature, a collective, communal space that is devoted to the transmission of ideas. Much of it is not criticism, but it mostly doesn’t suppose itself to be. It is simply an open and democratic forum where diverse people can come together and comment on literature, which is in its own way culture-building. After all, everyday communication – for better or worse – is growing daily online, and such writing is merely an extension of that.

I’m encouraged to see the number of literary blogs popping up. I certainly don’t read all of them – and my own tastes very much lead me to the sites of writers and critics like Mark Mordue, for example. But that is exactly what this debate relates to – taste and values, and how they are changing. Now, we can see the multifariousness of these tastes articulated: some readers look for more generalist conversations on texts; others like to read more critically and analytically about a book.

There are those who view the proliferation of voices on the web as somehow eroding clear and distinct critical authority. I think it’s important here to calibrate your argument. For me, in my capacity as a publisher and editor, and occasional reviewer, I see these changes as not restrictive or problematic, but merely a sign of progress and positive change. The creation of Kill Your Darlings was in response to a desire to see more intelligent and critical responses to all kinds of writing (more of the writing, frankly, that we wanted to read); to provide a platform for new voices that build and enrich our collective culture – many of which, I’m proud to note, have been discovered online. I look forward to continuing that tradition.

There’s nothing like the hospitality of a food blogger on an autumn eve. Cradling a little glass bottle of chinotto in my gloved hands, I spoke to Rachael Kendrick of Thus Bakes Zarathustra, Motor Coconut, The Vine (click on that last one for sure – I ate of that cake, people) about blogging and social media. We leapfrogged from how blogging and her PhD research on obesity interact to the ethical concerns of Twitter, how to manage attention with all the stimulation that social media offers us, Masterchef (of course) and the wild and woolly issue of how to monetise a blog.

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Music is by Pompey.