If you’re in Melbourne, come along to the launch of The Sleepers Almanac No. 9 on Monday 7 April. The anthology will be launched by Jess McGuire and I’ll be reading from my short story, ‘Civility Place’, which is about a guy who works as a lawyer in a 1,200-storey glass tower. There will also be readings from […]

When I decided, almost two years ago, to pioneer the career move of corporate lawyer to lollipop lady, I became acutely aware that people around me had conflicting opinions as to whether or not I was wasting my potential. As a twentysomething lawyer in a top-tier Australian firm, I worked in an air-conditioned glass tower […]

My short story, ‘The Three-Dimensional Yellow Man’ is out today in the 3D Yellow Man Edition of The Lifted Brow (Digital Edition Volume 5 Issue 1).   It’s about a one-dimensional yellow ninja who steps out of a 3D film and into a plush red theatre on George Street, to the bemusement of local cinemagoers. The story was […]

  It was only when a one-dimensional yellow man stepped out of a cinema screen and into a plush red theatre on George Street that audience members began to blink rapidly behind their 3D glasses. The film from which the man had emerged was Return of the White Ninja 3D.  Although the film was in 3D, […]

‘As we count up from one, three is the first most interesting number.’ — Michael Cunningham   Nothing is known of Ralph’s childhood except that he once dived between the legs of a monk, trying to see if there was orange underwear under those orange robes. The monk, laughing, had scooped the little boy up […]

As family lore later recalls, you arrive from the womb with not even a peep. The midwife gives you a vigorous shake, as if the customary, inaugural wail she is looking for just happens to be stuck in there, rolling around in some hidden cavity like a loose marble. She shakes you again. Nothing. ‘SOMETHING […]

So I see this pair of Fantastic Breasts one day. I’m at a conference, in the foyer, pinning on my name tag. A hundred plain-looking, spotty breasts are milling about, sipping chamomile tea from styrofoam cups. They’re all wearing farsighted spectacles that magnify their nipples. The topic of the next session is The Difficulties of […]

“Encompassing the complexity of existence in the modern world demands a technique of ellipsis, of condensation. Otherwise you fall into the trap of endless length. The Man Without Qualities is one of the two or three novels I love most, but don’t ask me to admire its enormous unfinished size. Imagine a castle so big that it can’t all be seen at once. Imagine a string quartet that goes on for nine hours. There are anthropological limits—the limits of memory, for instance—that ought not to be exceeded. When you reach the end of a book you should still find it possible to remember the beginning.”

— Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel, Faber and Faber, London, 2005, pp.71-72.

It’s tough being stuck in Friendsville.  You once took a wrong turn with a girl and ended up in this town. A rabid networker, she took to playing social tennis in a dress that covered her only as far as her liver, or perhaps, when stretched, her small intestine. “It’s very short,” you remarked as […]