Emily Paull

I'm having a good reading year.   I've read about 70 books so far in 2017 , and I am on track to meet my Goodreads target of reading 101 books in the year.  It's the same target I set myself last year, but last year I almost didn't make it because it took me almost three whole weeks to read A Little Life-- yeah, thanks for that Hanya Yanagihara.  (In all seriousness though, that book was a dark masterpiece but it should come with a box of tissues, a hot water bottle and some gin.) This year, though I'm trying to revise Between the Sleepers and therefore writing after work most days, I'm also trying to read a lot more.  I have a lot of books that I 'need' to read, whether it be for Book Club, The Short Story Book Club that I run, for reviews, or for interviews I'm doing.  And because of all that, my TBR pile at the moment looks like this: That's right.  It's pretty much two piles. For those of you who can't see what's on there...

This week, the Perth Writers Festival program was launched, which for me, was like the Myer Christmas Catalogue being put out. In previous years, heading along to the Writers Festival has represented various degrees of my involvement with the writing community.  The very first time that I went along, I was invited by a writing mentor of mine and her daughter, and we got on a bus to get there (which was also a new experience for me).  I thought it was amazing.  I had never known that such a thing as a writers festival existed.  It was like going to classes, but fun.  All that separated me from writers I loved and ones I would love was a few rows of chairs.  The next year (at least I think it was the next year), Craig Silvey was a guest, and I got my mum to drop me off for his session.  The room was long and flat and there were so many plastic chairs in the room that it was hard to move or see, but there he was, my favourite writer!  Afterwards, I...