Category Archives: Uncategorized

January 16, 2014 · 10:34 pm

Get ready for the 2014 Perth Writers Festival!

Last night was the launch of the Perth Writers Festival program. For three days next month, 21–23 February, Perth audiences will have the opportunity to see more than a hundred local writers, as well as a wonderful lineup of visitors including Eleanor Catton, Lionel Shriver, Margaret Drabble, Martin Amis, Richard Flanagan, Hannah Kent, Debra Adelaide, Min Anchee, Andrea Goldsmith, Chris Womersley, Thomas Kenneally, Carrie Tiffany, Jeet Thayil, Angela Meyer and David Vann—and that’s just scratching the surface.

The festival is always one of the highlights of my calendar, and I’m very happy to be participating this year. Here are my sessions:

Friday, 21 February, 1–2pm, Romeo Tent: THE INNER LIFE OF OTHERS, chairing this panel comprising Chris Womersley, Debra Adelaide and Andrea Goldsmith. Free event

Saturday, 22 February, 1–2pm, Tropical Grove: LYREBIRDS, panel with Jo Baker and Catherine Jinks. Chair: Rose Michael. Free event

Saturday, 22 February, 5.30–6.30pm, Tropical Grove: TILLING THE SOIL, with Yvette Walker. Chair: Nicole Sinclair. Free event

Sunday, 23 February, 10am–1pm, Arts Lecture Room 4: Workshop: WRITING THE PAST. Bookings essential

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May 6, 2013 · 9:01 am

What I’m reading: a guest post at Meanjin

When I think of all the voices in all the novels populating this house and studio—narrators lofty or confessional, intrusive or seductive, the sly unreliables, the ominiscients, the limiteds, the multiples—I know there has never been a voice like the one in the novel lying on my sofa right now.

Today I’m guest blogging at Meanjin, in its ‘What I’m reading’ series. Click here to read more about Courtney Collins’s debut novel, The Burial—and to find out why my idiosyncratic book-shelving habits do not impress my librarian sister.

Look both ways, Charlotte

Welcome to Looking up/looking down—an occasional blog about writing, reading and watching the world.

Why looking up/looking down? Well, it’s something I like to do when I take photographs—and when I write, too. It reminds me that the world can’t be framed, that we can only ever see fragments, that there are infinitely more views to be seen and heard than we imagine.

I’m currently writing a novella, and I found my main character, an ageing expatriate Australian living in Paris, thinking this:

When you reach an age—you’ll know it when it comes—looking forward won’t do. Looking back, if you let it, can consume every breath you take. But looking up, looking down … it’s here, in these oblique moments, that we truly live, where it’s possible to find joy.

Stop and smell the roses? Live in the present? Yes, I need to be reminded of that, even if it does come from someone who, at the moment, doesn’t live anywhere except in my head!

Charlotte Brontë put it more simply: