books

  • American Writers Review 2022 is here!

    My contributor copy of the latest American Writers Review arrived yesterday. San Fedele Press has done it again, and produced a beautiful piece of art – a treasure trove of writing and images. I can’t wait to delve in. To find out how you can lay your hands on a copy of this terrific literary

    Read more →

  • The story behind ‘Twitch’

    In December 2013, London’s Dazed magazine launched a competition calling for short stories ‘based on surveillance culture’. I’d long been a fan of the magazine, and was drawn to the theme, so thought I’d give it a whirl. I wanted to look at online surveillance, privacy and metadata, and concerns around the trails and traces

    Read more →

  • The story behind ‘The Ministry Man’

    I grew up in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, where the government pursued and actively encouraged intolerance and hostility towards same-sex attraction. A culmination of the Tories’ damaging agenda was Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, which forbade local authorities from promoting homosexuality, or from teaching its acceptability in maintained schools. The clause wasn’t repealed until

    Read more →

  • The story behind ‘Their Cruel Routines’

    There are two mother-son relationships within ‘Their Cruel Routines’, the opening story in Broken Rules and Other Stories: that between the fictional mother and her adult son, and that between my own mother and myself. The latter was the spark or inspiration for the story. A few years ago, I went to stay with my

    Read more →

  • Double the cheer

    Congratulations to Transit Lounge on two of their titles making the shortlists for this year’s Queensland Literary Awards. Details here. A doubly good reason to celebrate!

    Read more →

Designed with WordPress