Emily Paull

The Trouble with Flying and Other Stories Margaret River Short Story Competition Anthology 2014, edited by Richard Rossiter with Susan Midalia Margaret River Press 9780987561527 In a short space of time, the Margaret River anthology has gained a reputation for finding and nurturing talented Australian writers and bringing them together.  This year's anthology is the third that the small press has put out.  In their first collection, Things that are Found in Trees and other stories , Margaret River Press included a story by this year's Vogel Winner, Christine Piper, and judging by the breadth of talent in this year's collection, she won't be their last connection to big time publishing. This collection of 24 stories represents less than half of all the submissions sent in by new and established short story writers.  It begins with the winning story, Ruth Wyer's "The Trouble with Flying", a story about a girl named Rita who develops a stress-reaction ...

My Salinger Year Joanna Rakoff Bloomsbury, June 2014 9781408855508 In the mid-1990s, Joanna Rakoff was an aspiring poet and recent arts graduate with very little idea about what direction to take in her life.  (A familiar position for some of us, perhaps?  Anyone nodding out there?)  Through serendipity, and a little bit of help from her friends, she lands herself a job at The Agency, one of New York's most well known literary firms.  The Agency's hallowed halls are lined with books by the likes of Judy Blume, all represented by legendary agents of days gone by, such as Dorothy, Claire, and the woman Joanna has come to work for, referred to only as 'my boss'.  But by 1996, the industry has already begun to change rapidly, and as the newcomer, Joanna watches and learns as the younger, more innovative agents begin to surpass her typewriter and dictaphone loving boss, entering the world of multiple submissions, rights auctions, and contracts involving electron...

Lately I've been getting asked the same question a lot.  I don't mind, really; it's a fairly obvious question when I tell people what I do, but I find it really hard to answer.  Or answer succinctly.  When I say that I'm a writer, and that I write historical fiction, the response seems to be to wonder why someone "so young" (their words, not mine) wants to write about history.  And the really short answer is, I don't know.  Artists of any kind out there will know what I mean when I say that when an idea takes hold, you don't sit down and analyse why ; you take hold of it and you run like hell.   But seeing as they've asked.   I started composing this response the other day in my head.  It was swirling around in my mind as I woke and started to prepare myself for work.  Later, I stopped and jotted down a few notes.   It seems to be a combination of factors in my case, including but not limited to:  * Years of studying Aust...

Despite the fact that my mother was born there, and I have lived in this beautiful state my entire life, I have never been to Margaret River before this weekend.  For those of you not from Western Australia, Margaret River is a beautiful town in the wine growing region which is about three hours drive South of Perth.  It is home to a burgeoning publishing house, Margaret River Press run by the lovely and talented Caroline Wood and her husband John, who publish a yearly anthology of creative writing as well as numerous other titles.  For the last five or so years, Margaret River has also played host to its very own Writers Festival, and this year I was lucky enough to take a road trip down there with my beautiful writing group ladies, Kristen and Louise.   On the drive down, we talked about all and sundry, and listened to a podcast of Margaret Throsby interviewing Richard Flanagan, who is one of my favourite writers.  As the urban landscape gave way to green and ...

The Blue Mile Kim Kelly Pan Macmillan 9781742613918 We all know by now that I am a huge fan of historical fiction, and if it's Australian history then I am a happy reader indeed.  I'd never heard of Kim Kelly before, but she's written a few historical novels before this one, called Black Diamonds  and This Red Earth.   As she says in the author's notes, her work uses history as a set piece, and occasionally her novels do feature real people from history, but they are works of fiction primarily and need to be viewed as such. This novel takes place in a fairly under-represented time period in fiction, at least of late, the Depression years.  It is set in Sydney, and the major event of the time is the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  The bridge works also stand in as a metaphor for the instability of Sydney at the time, with the trade labour shortage and the political tensions between State and Federal Labor governments.  It is told in the vo...

May's Book is:   The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath 1) We have a beautiful beach house just south of Mandurah which is a summer library of sorts.  It's where books that no longer fit on the shelf at home go to live when our family just can't bear to part with them.  We are big readers on Mum's side of the family, and so we have a lot of books there!   The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is a book that I found on the shelf down there when I was at a loss for what to read and I adored it!  I'm going to link The Bell Jar  to Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds , because I have vivid memories of reading both of these books during trips to our beach house. 2)   The Thorn Birds  is a big book; a romance novel that is also a sort of family saga.  The first book that springs to mind for me when I think of similar books is Kate Morton's  The Shifting Fog (Also called The House at Riverton ).  It's thanks to these two books that I have a lot ...

If you've never heard of the Australian Women Writers Challenge , then you have probably been living under a rock.  (You know, or you don't spend as much time on the internet as I do...)  Started a few years back in response to the shocking lack of media/ review coverage for books written by Australian Women, the challenge has attracted the attention of readers, bloggers and writers alike, and is well and truly answering the call to fix this imbalance. I think this is the second year I have participated in the challenge, and I have definitely been slower off the rank this year than I was last year.  While the majority of the books I read are by women, as my Honours project (on Western Australian Creative Writing) fades into the background, my interests have begun to take me to places I can only imagine; places like Nigeria and Mexico.  Every time I do sit down to read a book by an Australian woman, I am reminded of why I love this country... more specifically, ...