Watching the party through the window

This is the first post of my new newsletter on Substack. Please check it out here. For a long time, the story I’ve told most often to define who I am — or who I think I am — is the account of a cliff collapse in the southwest of Western Australia, back when I was a newspaper editor …

Time to reevaluate the prominence trauma has in our stories

There’s an excellent article on the prevalence of the trauma plot in contemporary literature in the January 3-10 issue of The New Yorker, which grabbed my attention for two reasons: first, as a writer wanting to understand more about the craft (and which types of stories are currently popular and why) but secondly, as someone …

Elliptical faith: Religion in the dots and thin spaces

On Saturdays, I do a few hours of subediting work on the News Corp Australia metro newspapers, such as the Sunday Telegraph in Sydney and the Herald Sun in Melbourne. This weekend I subbed a couple of stories that contained some bad language; the conventions we follow on the newspapers to deal with such words …

Beauty and the beast: Some thoughts about Jacinda Ardern

You should never trust a person wearing a mask ... unless you’re in the middle of a pandemic and that person is Jacinda Ardern. I interviewed Jacinda Ardern in Crave cafe last Thursday in what was a surreal and somewhat discomfiting experience. Surreal because after two years of trying to get this interview, and after …

COVID-19: Should we be fearful of the coming dystopia?

My daughter (the second of four) asked me today whether I was afraid—of the coronavirus and the devastating implications of the current pandemic. My answer was no. I don't feel afraid—but it was only later that I was able to think about why not. Here are some of my reasons. I remember the GFC in …

Looking at Buellton Sideways

A throwback article about one of my favourite trips ... tracing the drunken footsteps of Paul Giamatti

‘I will be known’: A treasured conversation

Our last coffee was had beneath the gaze of Mary, mother of Jesus, on December 17, 2018, some months before she left. I didn’t know it would be our last one-on-one conversation. Neither did she. That’s the point—we rarely know. It’s only afterwards, in retrospect, that these final conversations find their light. Fortuitously, the conversation …

FML17: A person in all but name

I need to know the identity of FML17. Not for any particular reason. He’s nothing to me. Not now anyway. He’s dead. Died on Friday, after falling from his bunk bed. Who does that? Falls from a bunk bed and dies? My daughter fell from a bunk bed once. We were watching a movie in …

Crave: Where everybody knows your name

I was conducting an interview recently with a couple of guys I think the world of. But it wasn't going so well. In fact, it was going horribly. Ten minutes into the conversation, they started to argue. Not with me but with each other. I realised later, listening back to the tape, that I had …