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This is from writer Sonia Orchard, who might have gone to RMIT when I ran the writing programs. There were plenty of young women like Orchard, who, in another time, would have made solid cadres for the Cultural Revolution. Looks like Orchard, who reminds me of an over-educated Madame Defarge, has just read The Knowledge Gene and…

Can creative writing programs turn a crap writer into a professional, publishable writer? No. Surely if they are willing to learn, they may graduate to competent writers but most writers, who think they can string a sentence together, don’t want to learn. Creative writing programs will molly coddle you along because the middle class PC…

I edited this rather spineless bit of commentary. Typical of writers with marshmellow spines. He could have chosen not to sign Black Inc’s pact with the devil. Black Inc has asked consent from its authors to train AI models on their work and then share the revenue with those authors. I have published four books…

Australian writers and literary agents are worried after Black Books asked its authors to consent to their work being used to train artificial intelligence, according to The Guardian. I have made a few editorial comments in the text. This story should come under the heading of What the Fuck! But that’s too crude. Black Books…

Popular UK speculative fiction writer Neil Gaiman has been ‘cancelled’ following allegations of sexual assault. Eight women have accused Gaiman of sexual assault. The allegations first surfaced when two of the accusers spoke out on the British podcast Master: The Allegations Against Neil Gaiman in July 2024. The women have not gone to the police and charges…

I like little bookshops. It reminds me of the old world and there’s something comforting about that except for the war in Algeria, Vietnam, the Cambodian genocide, Iraq, etc, etc. You know what I mean. The comfort of crawling up on mummy’s lap as a child. But independent bookshops are done like a dogs dinner….

Dickens, Orwell and Plath have been dumped from HSC English lists starting on 2027. The woke nightmare continues to roll through HSC English with the greatest writer in the English language, Charles Dickens gone, George Orwell axed and the film, Good Night and Good Luck cut. Female authors, poets and directors make up 49 per cent of creative…

This story was in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday and it gave me a chuckle. Helen Garner is an Australian writer who turned female middle class naval-gazing in to an art form. She makes Joan Didion look like a stand-up comic. Now at 81 she has written a ‘happy book’ about Australian Rules Football. Fuck…

OK. Let me make a generalisation about the themes in about 80 per cent of young (and not so young) women writers. Trauma is sensationalised, there’s a host of damaged characters predictably in their late 20s or early 30s who are seething with self-doubt. The lead character is disaffected, cynical and irreverent to the point…

Far be it from me to pollute this aspirational blog with reality but capping international students, a major slowdown in job ads, and a contraction in company profits, means we are in a recession when population growth is taken into account. I know you literary types study the finance pages but on a per capita basis,…