In the second year of my Arts degree at the University of Queensland, I took a critical theory course from which I remember only two details (I did not do well). The first is the lecturer gesturing towards an image of a glaring, turtlenecked Foucault and describing the philosopher as being present ‘in all his sartorial glory’. The second is a piece of wisdom delivered by my tutor, a perpetually beleaguered wild-bearded PhD candidate who, at the time, seemed sagaciously ageless but, looking back, was probably 24. Responding to a student who had asked what he liked to read, the […]

When I was a child, I would read the comic strips in the paper as a daily ritual. The subtleties of Cathy, Hagar the Horrible and Wizard of Id were perhaps lost on my tiny self, but I was thrilled by the meticulous minutiae of these characters’ actions—three or four small squares telling a little story, a snippet of a life, their movements represented so precisely. I devoured Peanuts and Far Side books at my cousin’s house, but at some point I stopped reading comics. They were for kids or men or nerds who liked superheroes—they weren’t really for me. […]

I’ve been reading a lot of nonfiction about smells. Or smell perception, to be exact. How people experience smells, through their bodies, socially or emotionally, is the focus of some fascinating nonfiction. Nonfiction offers a unique opportunity to tell vivid stories that weave together a scientific understanding of smells, scents, odours, fragrances and aromas with unexpected insights into everyday life. Stories about smells are not just scratch and sniff books—although these are not without their olfactory charm. Rather, nonfiction that explores the ephemeral and often powerful experiences of smell can help to re-imagine our relationship to the world, and each […]

A few weeks ago I bought an autographed 1960 paperback edition of Myra Morris’ The Wind on the Water, which was originally published in 1937. When I unwrapped the parcel a small cream Christmas card fell out.  I immediately noticed this handwritten inscription on the back:   Dear Eleanor, I’ve had this for a couple of weeks to send you. You’ve been so kind and so sweet and the rotten luck is that you discover me at a time when everything is glum and screwy. However—’tout passé’. Have a lovely Christmas all of you. Myra   Reading this card gave […]

I read every night before I sleep, so there is always a small pile of books and comics on my bedside table. I have made a selection of these, which follows, omitting certain things that I am just not so fussed over, and will probably abandon before long. As well as those which will potentially do further harm to any already-tenuous allusions I may have to literary coolness or sophistication.   The Secret History of Wonder Woman/Jill Lepore I’ve enjoyed this immensely. Not necessarily for Lepore’s writing so much as her attention to detail. Like many of the early superheroes, […]

Did you ever have to do that thing at school, in biology, where you went down to some previously overlooked dribble of water just beyond out-of-bounds to scoop up a sample of pond into tiny glass beacons whose contents soon revealed themselves to be complex, alive and varied, often pathogenic (Faecal coliform *snicker*)? I raise this memory because it offers a good, overwrought metaphor for what a scoop of my reading brain would give up these days, vestibule that it is for the various interconnected ponds of reading that I must wade into for my writing, my book editing, my […]

Learning from Garlic: My Name is Lucy Barton   When I was twenty-one, that giant of literary criticism, Roland Barthes, helped me divide the books on my shelf in a new way: into those that are writerly, and those that are readerly. He did so via an undergraduate literary theory course, which opened my eyes to how language works and allowed me to grasp some of the meanings of Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, for which I will forever be grateful. I say ‘grasp some’, because Nelson’s text contains the potential for a multitude of readings and I am only equipped […]

It’s day one of a new storytelling project in the Darwin prison and the woman in front of me is gesturing at the thin shelf of books in front of us. Why do the men get to read true crime and all we get is this romantic shit? I look at the shelf. The tatty novel closest to us has a Mills and Boon style cover with a man and a woman embracing. We know this story. It’s a narrative we’ve all read. I’m relieved when another woman speaks up. What we need round here is some real stories she […]

I have a friend who is a dancer. I remember her talking about what it was like to go back to dancing after having a child. It felt completely different, she said. Being in her body felt different, physically and emotionally. I don’t know if there is any similarity between that and what I am experiencing now, but since writing my first novel my reading life has changed. I am finding myself trying to remember how I used to read. I birthed a book and now reading feels different. A while ago I found a couple of plastic crates in […]

Leesa Cross-Smith writes about love like no-one else. Cross-Smith is the co-editor of WhiskeyPaper, a leading online flash fiction journal in the US. Her first book, a collection of flash fiction and short stories, Every Kiss a War, is bliss and made me swoon, over and over. Her debut novel, Whiskey & Ribbons, shows Cross-Smith is a master. Whiskey & Ribbons is the story of a young black woman, Evangeline (Evi), in present day Louisville, United States, following the death of her husband, Eamon. Evi was widowed just prior to the birth of their baby, Noah. The story is told […]

I must admit, I usually avoid answering queries about what I’m reading. It seems a question so embroiled in judgement. Is what I read a judgment of what I do not? Will my taste as a writer be judged by my choice—is it too populist, too literary, too genre? Part of me knows that this is absurd, a fear brought on by imposter syndrome or some other unnamed paranoid condition that infects those who write. Even so, the self-consciousness is there and hard to shake. The reality is that I rarely choose my own list anymore—especially where fiction is concerned. […]

I’ve been reading the face of the woman on her knees on Platform Four with her shopping bags spilled around her like a sandcastle ruined by the tide. I’ve been reading the uncertain angle of her head as she gazes into space, blonde hair spilling loose, mouth slack and smeared red. I’ve been reading her enormously vacant eyes: some small madness at the gates. Or perhaps she can see some larger madness approaching that we can’t. Perhaps it’s the rising sea. I’ve been reading a draft of a musical novel by Kirsten Krauth which pulses and roars with the sound […]