A Reflection on the Joy of Swimming

https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-morning-thalassa-the-calm-salt-therapy-of-sydneys-womens-pool-171386 This beautifully written article by Jane Messer encapsulates the liberation and delight felt by a woman in immersing her body in the women’s pool at Coogee. I love Jane’s use of humour, and the poetic language in this piece of creative non-fiction. Jane is a fellow Varuna alumni who I keep in touch with. We are part of a […]

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Balcony Fever

The following is a short piece I contributed to the Covid19 Blog “Balcony Fever” https://balconyfever.com/author/pjn1920/page/2/ Balcony Fever Only a week into my fellowship at Cité Internationale des Arts and we’re in lockdown. Just my luck. Who would’ve thought this virus could attack Paris, of all places? The City of Love, where people entwined in the street, or on the Métro, […]

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The Three Plagues Down Under

So far we’ve had fire, flood and now pestilence in Australia. What will be next? “Summer arrives, and the ancient forests that ring Sydney burn, and, above the steady rain of falling cinders, the sun is hidden behind [angry grey] clouds.” Extract from ‘Autumns of Change’ by Liam Pieper, SMH 1/3/2020. Since late Spring 2019 the tragic loss of human […]

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This Writing Life

Lately I’ve been reworking my novel, A Dangerous Daughter – hence you haven’t heard from me for quite a while. It’s a never-ending, always changing process of trial and error, good days and bad. Starting a new draft requires courage, determination and a belief that you can do this thing, killing your darlings as you go, silencing your inner critic […]

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Can we separate Art from Life?

‘To value a piece of work does not require us to applaud its creator.” (Ashleigh Wilson, On Artists, MUP, 2019) Or does it? Do we have to love the artist to love the work? Think of Pablo Picasso, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen. All can be judged as having questionable morals. If, like me, you’ve always enjoyed movies such as Allen’s […]

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RIP Anita Shreve

Dina Davis’s Reviews > The Stars Are Fire “https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/41784640-dina-davis” The Stars Are Fire by Anita Shreve Dina Davis‘s review I am sad to learn of Anita Shreve’s death. I have read every one of her novels and enjoyed them. They are accessible, easy reads with good pace and well-drawn characters. Sadly The Stars are Fire did not come up to the standard of her previous novels. There were some undeveloped characters, and it was hard to feel sympathy for Grace as she displayed the typical subservience of a woman in an abusive marriage. The plot was a little disjointed and difficult to follow. I wanted to know more about Grace’s relationship with the doctor she worked for. On the whole I was disappointed, but still appreciated Shreve’s use of language, and her obvious love of the Maine coastline always shines through. Requiescat in Pace. Excerpt from Anita Shreve’s Obituary, copyright Washington Post Ms. Shreve was a teacher, journalist and nonfiction author before she began to focus on fiction in her early 40s. She went on to publish 18 novels, which became fixtures of countless book groups and attracted a large and loyal following. Many of Ms. Shreve’s novels were set in New England and touched on subjects as diverse as airplane crashes, textile mills and World War II. Her books seldom had happy endings, but all of them shared an irresistible page-turning quality, with a strong emotional undercurrent, often colored […]

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