Outside the Net

Australian Catholics Magazine invited me to contribute a personal story to their current issue which focuses on technology and social justice. This was a chance to reflect on my experiences working with the Sudanese, Vietnamese and Samoan communities in Melbourne’s west, and some of the discoveries I made about the way they interact with digital technology. I enjoy writing short, sharp pieces. It’s only five hundred words, but canvases some of the issues I address through my Post Doctoral research at Victoria University.

Flickr Photos

I’ve set up a Flickr account to publish a series of photos taken as part of my various writing projects and also the research I have performed at Victoria University. They include images I shot while working in Fiji, South Africa and Italy, and also my general wanderings around my home town Footscray in Melbourne’s west.

Most of these photos have been taken using a Canon Digital SLR camera. I’m certainly not a professional, and am learning as I go along.

This Is Not A Hobby

The Emerging Writers Festival was held in Melbourne last month. They ran some great sessions about opportunities, challenges, tips and tricks for writing and publishing in Australia. Being a writer is tough. Support networks do exist, however, and it’s refreshing to feel more connected in real world spaces when writing can be such a solitary pursuit. I only went to the festival’s opening night (which was very cool), but I did write an article about writing, rejection and uncertainty as my contribution to dialogue around young people and creativity. The piece was published by Meanjin in this month’s issue:

Meanjin is an important literary journal and it feels great to have my first story for this publication – plus Sophie Cunningham’s editorial about feminism really nailed how I and others feel about negative reactions to women in various cultural spheres:

“I’ll just say this: either women can’t sing, paint, write or think as well as they used to—certainly not well enough to offset their tendency to become less beautiful with age—or we live in a culture that does not like the things women say or does not know how to hear them when they say it.”

Perfect Gift For A Man

One of my stories that originally appeared  in the Herald Sun, ‘Grandad Still Worth Gold To Me’,  has been published in the book The Perfect Gift For A Man. This collection features 30 stories about reinventing manhood – very cool.

This book came together after an online campaign (Manweek) by Reachout and Triple J to encourage men to speak about their experiences.

All proceeds go to Inspire (www.inspire.org.au), an organisation dedicated to helping Australians lead happier lives.

A free version is available but please also consider buying a copy for friends and family.

Family memories for sale

The Herald Sun published a personal piece I wrote about my family’s beach house at Sandy Point.  My grandparents built their little shack in the early 60s and spent all those summers in the backyard with the kids, baking under the sun on brightly coloured banana lounges and smoking cigarettes. I used to go tree surfing down there – this involved jumping off the beach lookout (in some spots a three metre drop) into the tea trees on the dunes below.