Despite its rather grandiose title, Alice Garner’s The Student Chronicles is a friendly, unpretentious book. It is a coming-of-age story, set mostly in libraries – an anti-Monkey Grip, or a love letter to geekdom. The only sex happens behind closed doors; the real romance is with the library. ‘I loved the Baillieu Library so much I wrote a really bad poem about it,’ Garner confesses, with ... (read more)
Anna Goldsworthy
Anna Goldsworthy is an Australian classical pianist and writer. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Best Australian Essays 2007, 2008, and 2009, The Monthly, The Australian, Australian Book Review and The Australian Literary Review. Her musical memoir, Piano Lessons, was released in Australia by Black Inc. in October 2009, and won 'Newcomer of the Year' at the 2010 Australian Book Industry Awards. Anna is a Board Member of ABR.
Several years ago, I was privy to a breakfast conversation with one of our venerable literary critics, in which he lamented the proliferation of novels in Australia by young women. Of particular concern, he announced, was the tendency of said young women to construct ‘itsy-bitsy sentences from itsy-bitsy words’. And he smiled around the table warmly, secure in venerable male polysyllabic verbo ... (read more)
In his ‘mongrel memoir’, How to Make Gravy, singer–songwriter Paul Kelly describes the ‘pretendies’ that can ambush a musician on stage: ‘One minute you’re putting a song over to the crowd, totally inside what you’re doing, everything meshing, then suddenly you’re adrift, floating above yourself and wondering what on earth you’re doing there.’
... (read more)