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And now for state of the nation … The Australian Robo-debt scheme pursued the poorest of the poor for welfare debt and in some cases, hounded them to death. Sounds like something Asimov or Heinlein would have written. Artificial intelligence gone mad and the middle class let it happen. Robo-debt was abandoned three years ago…

Don’t get me wrong. I love bookshops but with more than 100 books published in Australia every week, it’s hard not to get the impression that books are to be sold rather than read. The publishing industry submits literature to the same market forces and homogenising values as movies, TV, streaming platforms and video games….

The Australian media is not alone in publishing the more bonkers essays, reviews and opinions, such as Jacqueline Malley’s article today from the Sydney Morning Herald. She’s having a crack at Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. It’s the story of Figaro and his fiancée Susanna and two servants of the Count Almaviva, who live in the…

If you blinked you would have missed that one of Australia’s greatest writers passed away recently. Frank Morehouse was top of the heap in the 1970s. I thought him a better writer than that bitter old crone, Patrick White. Morehouse was eclipsed by the rise of Peter Carey, Tim Winton and what I euphemistically call…

About 1000 years ago, I was a professional and creative writing programs director at RMIT. I had around 1500 students and 50 staff. I’d inherited the job from a woman who was ‘gung ho’ over all things warm and fuzzy about creative writing but left her program, Professional Writing & Editing, $250k in the red…

I sometimes use Adelaide (South Australia), as a backdrop to my stories. It is one of the weirdest and scariest places on earth. It’s known for sex crimes and where ideas go to die. The story below is par for the course. “Former Disability Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes says he was left feeling distressed and…

The real cost of launching a literary career? Imprisoning the wrong man for 16 years. A rape conviction at the centre of a memoir by award-winning author Alice Sebold has been overturned because of serious flaws with the 1982 prosecution. Anthony Broadwater, who spent 16 years in prison, was cleared on Monday by a judge…

To balance my relatively negative perceptions and experience of creative writing programs, I should cite someone who think’s they’re fab. The link below is from Griffith Review. The writer makes some good points although I disagree with many of them.

I’m a big fan of Haruki Murakami. He released a collection of short stories called First Person Singular a few months ago and I couldn’t put it down. These are masterful stories all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator, who may or may not be the author. Some of them such…