The Sir Duncan Rice Library appears as an intrusion in the landscape, or at least as an intrusion on my imagining of what the landscape of Old Aberdeen is meant to be: all ornate medieval monuments with parapets and belfries and buttresses carved from granite. Eight storeys high, the building sits on its own, on the western edge of King’s College, and appears to be constructed entirely of glass.
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If you’re interested in hearing more about What Will Be Worn: A McWhirters Story come along to one of these author talks. So far in 2019, I’ve spoken about What Will be Worn at events in Brisbane, Maleny, Maryborough, and …
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‘The longest road out is the shortest road home.’ The message came to me in a fortune cookie last July, and though I did not really grasp its meaning, I pinned it to the wall next to my front door, …
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Throughout September, October and November, I will be out and about in Queensland and New South Wales doing some What Will Be Worn events. Join me in Sydney, the Sunshine Coast, Mount Tamborine, Ispwich or Brisbane! I’ll be discussing McWhirters, …
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I am thrilled to be appearing at three events at the 2018 Brisbane Writers Festival. The festival is being held 6–9 September in the Cultural precinct at South Bank, with events over the three days at the Queensland Art Gallery, …
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In early 2016 I went to Bali for a friend’s 40th birthday. I was to meet a group of friends from all over the world for a week of sun, sea, seafood and Bintang. I went over early, renting an …
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Part elegy, part bildungsroman, Patti Smith’s Just Kids, winner of the National Book Award for Non-Fiction in 2010, recounts the formative years in the lives of Patti and Robert Mapplethorpe, lovers and friends, muses and makers. In 1966, while studying …
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In May 1990, after graduating from Emory University, 22-year-old Chris McCandless told his parents he was taking a road trip. ‘I think I’m going to disappear for a while,’ he said. Over the next few months he abandoned his car …
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I want to talk about Mad Men and its Didionesque gaze. The gaze has always been there, most obviously in the series’ sidelong glances at California, where the warm golden light and desert haze renders everything hyperreal. And critics have, …
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The Ghost at the Wedding, Shirley Walker’s 2010 memoir of her mother-in-law Jessie, explores the devastating impact the First and Second World Wars had on the soldiers themselves, as well as the women left at home. She does so with …
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