Category: Writing
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Alone not lonely in Apartheid South Africa
Alone not lonely is Maureen Mendelowitz’s second novella to be published by Ginninderra Press (2018). See my post about her first book on this site. I attended the successful launch of the 2nd book at JewishCare Centre in Woollahra recently. The date coincided with public awareness of domestic violence issues against women, including in Australia,…
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Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now
First a note about the painting, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, that serves here as a symbol for Joni Mitchell’s song. Both speak of life, love and beauty. For Plato – and so for the members of the Florentine Platonic Academy – Venus had two aspects: she was an earthly goddess who aroused humans to physical…
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the personas behind narration
View Post Definitions of Narrative Personas According to Ernest Hemingway, the writer’s job is “to sit in front of the page and bleed”. But it’s not the person in flesh-and-blood who is there in the page, but a persona called the narrator, who steps in for him or her. I’m the one who signs the…
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a funny thing happened …
Cargoes by John Mansfield I woke up the other morning with an old verse I’d learnt at school — not sure which year, but it was at least half a century ago — playing in my head like on a tape recorder. And the rhythm was still there! I’m sure some of my readers will…
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Moree and Insistent Voices
Moree, with a population of about 8,000, is situated in the north-west of NSW on the Mehi River and at the junction of the Gwydir and Newell Highways. It is famous for its Artesian Spa waters, which were discovered accidentally in 1895 when a bore was sunk in search of irrigation waters. Instead, mineral water…
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The Source of “Voice” in Fiction
My Writer’s Voice: A Childhood Spent on the North Coast of NSW The historical photograph of my hometown, with the Clarence River and Susan Island across the water, brings me back to long-forgotten memories of childhood evenings underneath a balmy, star-spangled sky in South Grafton next to the water’s edge. I wonder now whether this…