lizabelle

I'm currently working my way through volume one of Lucy Maud Montgomery's journals. Most of you will know her as the author of the Anne books, some of my most beloved childhood reads.

Maud herself is a delight - full of the passion for life and stories that shine through in Anne. Here she is on 4 April 1899, talking about stories:

"I have no doubt that it is a wise ordinance of date - or Providence? - that I cannot get all the books I want or I should certainly never accomplish much. I am simply a "book drunkard"...the first new story I read in '99 was "Phroso" by Anthony Hope. I...sat up in bed until two o'clock, shivering and freezing but quite indifferent to it, and finished the book before I could sleep. It was a glorious yarn - full of life and "go". It was romance pure and simple, without any alloy of realism or philosophy. I like realistic and philosophical novels in spells,but for pure, joyous, undiluted delight give me romance. I always revelled in fairytales."

Sound familiar to anyone? :)

It's also fascinating to see how she takes her own experiences and remodels them for her stories. A description of her thoughts on hearing of the death of a would-be lover (dated 24 July 1899) could come straight from the end of Anne of the Island:

"There would be no answering smile on his pale cold lips, no tender light in the dark blue eyes whose flash used to stir my heart into stinging life. Oh,kneeling there I thought it all over - that winter in Bedeque with its passion and suffering, all its hours of happiness and sorrow. I lived again in thought every incident of my acquaintance with Herman Leard from first to last - all those mad sweet hours and those sad bitter hours."

For me, the Anne books were as much about Prince Edward Island as they were about Anne. Here is LM Montgomery letting the words flow in another entry from 1899, describing what would become Lover's Lane in the Anne books:

( The old spring, deep and clear and icy cold, is on our path. The brook purls softly by and the old firs whisper over it as of yore.... )

Highly recommended!

I wrote this non-spoilery review a while ago for Meet at the Gate, website of the excellent Canongate Books. I'm reposting it (finally) in case anyone still needs persuading to read this book, which is one of my all-time favourites.

The Book Thief is set in Molching, a small town in Nazi Germany that is far enough from Munich to avoid political significance, but close enough to Dachau that Jewish prisoners are occasionally marched through there. It's a town full of ordinary people who are struggling to survive a war - like the mayor's wife, who might almost seem to have given up on life...except for one small act of rebellion. Like Rosa Hubermann, who insults everyone impartially but loves warmly. Like Rudy Steiner, a boy trapped in a world he can make little sense of. Like Hans Hubermann, impoverished house-painter and accordionist, caught out by an old promise and his own sense of honour. And at their heart is Liesel: fierce, passionate, a lover of words and stealer of books.

When we first meet Liesel, she is nine and reeling from the loss of her family. Delivered to the fostering authorities, Liesel is thrown into a new life which, while poverty-stricken and plagued by Hitler's apparently arbitrary edicts, is a step up from her old one. At a funeral she steals a book, which turns out to be a handbook for gravediggers. It is the beginning of a journey in which Liesel, and eventually many other characters, find power through the written word while the world collapses around them.

Given the setting, it is perhaps appropriate that the narrator of The Book Thief is Death. Zusak isn't the first writer to make use of Death as a character, but he puts this narrative twist to excellent use here. To Death, humans are objects of curiosity, to be viewed (but not always kept) at a distance. Because Death is in turn relating Liesel's tale, it's hard to know from whom the descriptions originate, but they are always memorable: Rudy has hair the colour of lemons; Hans has eyes made of silver and kindness; Rosa is wardrobe-shaped. Words have power: they literally tap people on the shoulder, or even slap them across the face.

This is a story about death and about Death. But it is also a love letter to the human spirit: to the individual heroism that makes us human in the face of mindless mob brutality.

Are you wondering where to get your literary fix now that the Sydney Writers' Festival is over for another year? Never fear; there are loads of events to choose from, and I've listed as many as I could find below.

I did this last year as part of my post-writers' festival comedown and it seemed fairly popular; I may even try to keep the list updated this time.

Upcoming literary events in Sydney:

08 June: Paul McGeough talks about his book, Infernal Triangle at Gleebooks; arrive 6 pm for 6.30 pm. Details and bookings here.

09 June: Samantha Brett and Donna Sozio at Dymocks George St, 6 pm. Info here.

09 June: Dominic Smith talks about his book, The Bright and Distant Shores at Gleebooks; arrive 6 pm for 6.30 pm. Details and bookings here.

09 June: Betty Churcher and her Notebooks at Berkelouw Mona Vale, 6.30 pm. More info here.

10 June: Launch: Sex, Genes and Rock and Roll by Robert Brooks at Gleebooks; arrive 6 pm for 6.30 pm. Details and bookings here.

14 June: Nick Dyrenfurth and Frank Bongiorno on the Australian Labor Party at Gleebooks; arrive 6 pm for 6.30 pm. Details and bookings here.

( Lots more under here )

Did I miss anything? Let me know by leaving a comment - or catch me @liza_belle on twitter.

I was a starry-eyed, unquestioning reader growing up, always ready to absorb suggestions for my next read. I read books because my teachers told me to, because my parents loved them, because professors told me they were great works of literature. Obviously, like any kid whose happiest moments were spent sitting in front of the shelves in her local WH Smith, I also read plenty of books that I found without guidance. But that was different - those were the books I adored, books that I reread until they fell apart. They were the kinds of books I stayed up late writing sequels to in my imagination; the kinds of books for which I rewrote the ending so that a certain character didn't die*. In this post, I want to talk about the other kind: the kind of book you read because someone - a teacher, a parent, a mentor, a cute girl or guy - tells you it's great.

I read a lot of those books, too, and often, my mentors were right. Some of my favourite pieces of literature are those I studied for A-level English: Mrs Dalloway, Bleak House, Antony and Cleopatra, Thomas Hardy's poetry. The best book I read last year was Wolf Hall, which everyone from my friend's mum to the Booker judges told me I should read, and yeah, I loved it.

But sometimes, also, I read these books and did not get them. They didn't do anything for me, and yet for a long time I slogged on, because this was literature, and I wanted to be literary. I wanted to be the kind of girl who could converse with the literati without looking silly or naive. Let's face it, I wanted to write literature, and so surely I had to understand the literary canon, didn't I? Because if I couldn't read, digest and discuss every single book that the (until recently, primarily privileged, white and male) establishment has decided is literature, it meant I wasn't intelligent enough; the problem wasn't with the books, it was with me.

That's changed lately. I'm not entirely sure why, but it probably has something to do with my ever-growing to-read pile, and also with the fact that I've done a lot of writing myself recently. I know how I look on a reader's interpretation of my writing: if they didn't get it, it's not their fault. Maybe they weren't in the right space to read it; maybe they need a little time; maybe I didn't communicate as effectively as I'd hoped to; maybe they're just never going to like the kind of writing that I produce - but if it's anyone's fault, it is mine, not theirs.

At any rate, several times in the past year, I've found myself realising early on in a book that it is not working for me. Perhaps some day in the future it will work for me as a reader, but right now it does not. So I put the book away and pick up another that appeals to me, rather than bemoan the hours lost to a book I didn't enjoy. It doesn't matter what the book is; if I'm not getting anything out of it, away it goes.

There are many ways to write a sentence, and to read it. It feels liberating to realise that.

*Dear LM Montgomery: My heart is still broken. Yours, etc.

My last day at the Sydney Writers' Festival began with AC Grayling, who spoke without notes for an hour on the origins of his The Good Book and its reception. His intent was to create a kind of humanist equivalent of the King James bible which, instead of telling people how to live in order to succeed in the hereafter, would offer up thinking material so that they could decide how to live in the here and now.

Living in this way entails a responsibility to own our decisions. Grayling quoted Socrates, who said that "The unexamined life is not worth living." Each individual is capable of doing the thinking and making the choices which, when acted upon, will add up to a well-lived life.

I have often said that I try to treat others the way I would like to be treated - to be honest, this is pretty much my mantra for living. According to Grayling, however, George Bernard Shaw said that this was a bad idea, because others may not like being treated in that way. It's a joke, but there's a serious point to it, which is that making oneself (or one anything: you as a person, a single religion, a totalitarian ideology) the benchmark of how you like to be treated, is a very distorting, one-sided view. We need to respect difference, not try to suppress it. Grayling expressed this as the need to "be generous and capacious in our understanding of human variety."

Proving this point later that day was Mardi McConnochie, who cited a lack of empathy with the boat people around whom so much Australian political debate is centred as one of her reasons for writing The Voyagers. She asked herself when "nice, ordinary white people" were last displaced on a large scale, and came up with the Second World War. Her novel is in part an attempt to comment on the effects of war and suffering on those who live through it.

McConnochie set out to write a love story that was both satisfying and literary, using the theme of music to represent a kind of order in the face of war as a chaotic, destructive force. Music is a "heart" form of art, she said (as opposed to writing, which is more cerebral). Music is the language that the characters speak; it is their common currency. As someone who has always loved music, perhaps too much in some ways, I really enjoyed this part of the conversation.

Music allows the characters of Mandy Sayer's latest novel to connect and break out of their assigned roles - roles assigned both by the war and by society. Love in the Years of Lunacy also deals with the effects of the Second World War on ordinary people, this time in Sydney. The setting allows for another theme to emerge: the fact that US military is fighting fascism overseas while practising its own form of fascism in the form of racial segregation - segregation that Australia was required to enforce by, for example, providing separate bars for Black and white Americans.

Obviously, Australia has its own murky race issues. Nicole Watson turned to writing after being frustrated by her work as a case manager on the Native Title Tribunal. She felt that the process was not an empowering one for Aboriginal people, and imagined a situation in which the tables were turned. With her book, The Boundary, she wanted to write a story in which the Aboriginal characters had agency.

PM Newton's The Old School also features a non-white protagonist, half-Vietnamese Nhu (inevitably nicknamed Ned) Kelly. While Nhu's heritage was a conscious choice on Newton's part, she also pointed out that it is dangerous to envisage characters purely as symbols. The character has to live, breathe and speak as well as represent something. Similarly, place can play a major factor in many crime novels, but this isn't (or shouldn't be) just about the scenery. For true resonance, you need to tie the sense of place to a period in time and the issues relevant to people at that time. Her own novel is set in 1992, when the New South Wales police force was facing a major corruption inquiry, and the characters' awareness of that investigation and its implications underpins the entire story. Newton cited Michael Dibdin as a good example of this kind of crime writing, saying that the crimes in his stories could only happen in that place, to those people, at that particular time.

Shamini Flint commented that Asian novels tend to be sweeping, exotic epics covering several generations in a manner that she dubbed the "over-exoticisation of Asia for western audiences". She is more interested in the way historical strands play out in contemporary society in Asia. Each of her "Inspector Singh Investigates" novels is set in a different place (so far all in Asia), and she roots at least one motive for the crime in the society about which she is writing.

I've already read (and highly recommend) PM Newton's The Old School. After Sunday's festival sessions, I added books by Mardi McConnochie, Mandy Sayer, Nicole Watson and Shamini Flint to my to-read list; it was great to see so many articulate, entertaining women committed to using their writing to say something about the world in which we live.

And that was my last day of the writers' festival. Sixteen events and many inspiring, impassioned speakers on writing, beauty, politics, the environment and the future of humanity. Time to get out there and live. :)

I've finished all of the big write-ups I'm going to manage for the Sydney Writers' Festival, so this post and the following one will attempt to summarise some of the other sessions I attended.

That means I'm not going to say much about David Mitchell and Michael Cunningham, but that's all right, because if you're interested you can read LiteraryMinded's gorgeous post entitled The epic qualities of outwardly ordinary lives: By Nightfall and Michael Cunningham in Australia, and watch the entire David Mitchell session I attended, The Thousand Styles of David Mitchell, thanks to SlowTV*.

Onto things I actually am going to talk about. One of the best things about the festival, for me, is seeing writers engaging with one another's work. One reason the Jennifer Mills and Lyn Hughes panel worked so well was that each writer seemed to genuinely love the other's work and be interested in discussing it. The two novels (Flock, about a group of conservators restoring a historic house, and Gone, about a man released from prison who hitchikes across Australia) are ostensibly very different, but they both comment on the theme of memory: how our mind suppresses things, and what happens when those things come back to haunt us.

Writing is a lonely business; Hughes described writers as moving in parallel worlds, obsessed with a story that (while unpublished) no one else is interested in. On another level, this story also contains characters who have their own obsessions and parallel worlds. Added to this is the effect of the human memory, which is ever unreliable. As humans, we confabulate; we reconstruct our past in our present mind, but it is never quite accurate; it always contains an element of story. It is only natural for characters to do this, as well.

David Mitchell described the process of absorbing "stuff" from your immediate surroundings - "found stuff", he said, is the best stuff to use as a writer. He quoted (paraphrased?) Picasso, who said "First I find something, then I go looking for what it is" as a good way of figuring out writing - which also ties back to something Lyn Hughes said: "Write in wilful ignorance, and then ask why."

Michael Cunningham wins my prize for most beautiful use of words when talking about writing as art. His latest book, By Nightfall, begins with a Rilke quotation: "Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror." In the panel, "On Beauty", at which he appeared with art critic and gallery director Betty Churcher, he described his fascination with "annihilating beauty - a sort of miraculous, terrible angel that swoops on us with a sword of light and leaves us ravaged and altered forever."

Someone in the audience asked whether beauty was dependent on craftsmanship. Michael Cunningham said that he sees beauty in the gap between what the artist set out to do and what he/she achieved. As a novelist, he describes an idea for a novel as "a cathedral made of light and fire" hovering above his mind; what he gets down on paper becomes "just that book". But to him, that's part of what makes any work of art interesting - what it says about human limitation.

This, for me, was the heart of the festival: the intersection between what we are (human beings) and what we can achieve with that humanity.

*SlowTV will be uploading other videos from the festival, so keep an eye on the site if you're interested.
** If you want to melt, watch 9:00-9:20 of the David Mitchell video.

This event was the highlight of the festival for me: three intelligent, strong, compassionate women all speaking eloquently and movingly on subjects close to their hearts. It's another long post, because almost everything they said felt important to me.

Maxine McKew kicked off proceedings by asking all three panellists to give their reactions to the death of Osama Bin Laden. Ingrid Betancourt said that she did not feel Bin Laden's death should be celebrated, with which the other panellists agreed. Aminatta Forna contrasted this case with that of Charles Taylor, who in 2006 was flown into Sierra Leone to face war crimes charges in the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The people came out onto the streets to watch, Forna said, because this was a time when you could literally see that justice was being done. That court was funded by the US, and yet it seems the US did not want to take the justice route with Bin Laden.

Fatima Bhutto agreed with Betancourt and Forna, and observed that she is more concerned about the current violence in Pakistan than with Bin Laden's death. People are shot every day, and the situation is exacerbated by US drone strikes - she alleged that these have killed over two thousand people in Pakistan, largely civilians, since 2006.

The conversation moved onto the personal tragedies that the three women have experienced. In captivity, Betancourt felt that she had a responsibility as well as a right to be free. Even though she knew that any rescue attempt might mean her death, she preferred to die in the struggle for freedom rather than remaining a captive for, say, another twenty years.

She also praised the courage of her rescuers, who pretended they were working with the FARQ in order to gain access to her, and were completely unarmed when they executed their plan. They are the true heroes, she said.

( More under here )

Hope, she said, comes from ordinary people. And in these three extraordinary women, ordinary people like me can certainly find plenty of inspiration and hope.

I have more to post (David Mitchell! Fatima Bhutto! Michael Cunningham!), but I wanted to post a bit of a round-up while everything's still fresh in my mind. Take all of this with a pinch of salt. :)

Number of events attended: 16 (out of 330)

Number of events I queued for and failed to get into: 2 (The Fascinator - Delia Falconer, Ashley Hay and Gail Jones sharing their fascination with Sydney and Desert Flowers - Indigenous writers talking about and reading from their poetry)

Number of bookloving friends and acquaintances bumped into: 8 (seriously, how does this happen among so many thousands of people?)

Number of David Mitchell events attended: 2

Number of David Mitchell events that the boyfriend attended on my behalf: 1

Most mind-blowing moment: Fatima Bhutto, Ingrid Betancourt and Aminatta Forna talking about power, politics and personal responsibility. Their standing ovation was much-deserved.

Number of books bought: 6* (1 as a gift)

Number of books added to to-read list: 34 (I wish I was joking)

Favourite new discovery: Kei Miller - self-deprecating, quietly intelligent, hilarious and lovely.

Biggest fangirl moment: The Big Reading - Kei Miller reading from his first novel (he's a wonderful reader - if there are any audiobooks of his work, he needs to read them, please); David Mitchell reading from his work-in-progress; Téa Obreht reading from The Tiger's Wife; Kader Abdolah telling a heartfelt story of giving up the language of his birth (at least for writing purposes); and Michael Cunningham reading from his work-in-progress. Five wonderful writers, and I came out completely starry-eyed.

Number of awesome women spotted on various panels: Too many to count, but a few that spring to mind are Fatima Bhutto, Ingrid Betancourt, Aminatta Forna, Amanda McKenzie, Kirsten Tranter, Sophie Cunningham, Sonya Hartnett, Anna Perera, Kelly-lee Hickey, Mardi McConnochie, Mandy Sayer and Elizabeth Stead.

Favourite evening event: Spoken Four - inspiring performers telling it like it is.

Panellist with most enthusiastic, delighted audience: David Mitchell (although Kei Miller comes a close second).

Favourite random panellist: Steven Gale, who offered a lovely foil to Kei Miller in the first session I attended, and whom I lated spotted on several occasions browsing the books and looking like any other festival-goer.

Number of worlds ended: None

Number of glasses of red wine drunk: 4 (pretty restrained, I feel).

Number of hours spent queueing: About four.

Saddest moment: Ingrid Betancourt talking about learning of her father's death while she was in captivity.

Most inspiring moment: Amanda McKenzie explaining clearly and calmly how we can help to save the environment.

Funniest moment: Pretty much anything Shamini Flint said.

Sweetest moment: David Mitchell telling the "small person" in the audience to make as much noise as he liked.

Happiest moment: The general realisation that there are many people out there (in Sydney, even) who think the way I do about many things, and who, when they do not agree, are willing to enter into thoughtful, respectful discussions.

Most memorable moment: Aminatta Forna, Fatima Bhutto and Ingrid Betancourt in one room talking about power, politics and our personal responsibility to stand up to oppression. Unforgettable and important.

* The Last Warner Woman by Kei Miller, The Diamond Anchor by Jennifer Mills, The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna, The Old School by PM Newton, Family Album by Penelope Lively and A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley.

I'd love to hear from others: what were your memorable festival moments?

Friday at the Writers' Festival started with Markus Zusak and Sonya Hartnett, two precocious Australian writers who also have a considerable international following. Jill Eddington began by asking them how they came to writing, at which point it transpired that Hartnett wrote her first novel aged thirteen, and got it published. When asked how, she basically thanked the arrogance of youth; she "didn't know she couldn't".

Zusak also began writing young (age sixteen), but it wasn't until his fourth novel that he achieved publication. He said he felt lucky not to have been published earlier, and that he rather pitied some writers who achieve instant success at a young age, because some of them then feel no need to keep growing and improving, whereas he had to constantly push himself to get better.

When asked about why his books are so successful, ( Read more... )

*If you want to know which character this was, comment and I'll tell you. I just didn't want to spoil anyone.

In The Count, Kirsten Tranter, Sophie Cunningham and Stephen Romei discussed why articles by and about men dominate our book pages, when so many women write and buy books and work in the publishing industry.

Kirsten started us off with some figures, including the fact that the Times Literary Supplement reviewed works by 330 women in 2010, as compared with 1036 men. The Paris Review published interviews with one woman author and seven men. The New York Review of Books reviewed works by 59 women and 462 men. The figures vary, but they are consistent in one respect: women writers are under-represented in these pages, in terms of both the reviews that are written and the books that are reviewed.

( More under here. )

So what to do about all of this? Part of the task is simply to raise awareness of the problem, which events such as The Count are doing. It does seem that people are increasingly conscious of the issues, particularly since VIDA's figures made such a splash earlier this year - and yet, that almost makes the Miles Franklin all-male shortlist feel more like a slap in the face than ever.

Work is also underway on the development of a literary prize for women writers in Australia, along the lines of the Orange Prize in the UK. Tentatively named the Stella Prize (Miles Franklin's real name was Stella), its stated goal is the recognition and representation of writing by women. You can keep track of developments by "liking" the prize's facebook page.

Further links for the curious:

New Australian fiction prize for women - Meanjin interview with Sophie Cunningham.
The Miles Franklin: another "Sausagefest" - Stephen Romei's reaction to the recent shortlist announcement, plus some pithy comments.
Is it a man's world, literally? - Alison Croggon on the implications of the shortlist.
A prize of one's own: the case for an Aussie Orange - Benjamin Law.
The Stella Prize on facebook.

I ended up taking quite a few notes today, so I thought I might as well blog about them!

The first session I attended this morning was The Last Warner Woman with Kei Miller. This is one of the few sessions where I knew nothing about the writer or his work beforehand - I picked it because the subject matter sounded interesting, and I'm very glad I did. Miller was charming, thoughtful and an excellent (and hilarious) reader, and I'd be surprised if he didn't sell quite a few books based on his performance.

Stephen Gale kicked off the session by asking Miller about the genesis of the novel, and Miller immediately disarmed his audience by warning them that he was about to lie, because like all writers, he gets carried away by a good story, and like all books, The Last Warner Woman has various origins.

The one he chose to share with us was a vivid account of a Jamaican woman in Manchester who reminded him of the warner women he'd seen in Jamaica - a warner woman being a kind of prophetess of doom.

Next, he read two excerpts from the novel which, with their different narrators, expressed a similar duality: the "writer man" providing a writerly description, and then the "warner woman", who spends the novel critiquing the writer man's words. In the section Miller read, the warner woman was also critiquing her own storytelling, as if realising that the truth perhaps lies somewhere between the two accounts.

The point of the novel seems (caveat: I haven't read it yet) to be to move beyond "the facts" to "the truth". Miller seems to see dualities in many things: he talked about how Jamaica can be both beautiful and ugly at the same time, and also about the nature of the warner woman herself - the fact that as a traditional figure in Jamaican culture she is accepted as normal, but that when taken out of this context she can seem very odd. Again, what is real; what is true?

Perhaps reading The Last Warner Woman will give me some clues.

I picked up this book on a whim after seeing it recommended by James Bradley on twitter. Well, I say "on a whim", but it was a bit more than, really, since James is also the person upon whose recommendation I read Justin Cronin's The Passage, aka my latest obsession.

In The Magicians, we meet Quentin, a geeky, unhappy teenager who is bounced out of his normal existence (finishing high school, going to Princeton) when he discovers that magic exists - and he can do it. Enrolled at Brakebills, the only college for magicians in North America, he falls in with the cool set - languid Eliot, drama-queen Janet, good-natured-yet-tortured Josh and clever Alice. At this point, I wondered if I was going to read The Secret History with added wizards, but Grossman has more up his sleeve than that.

Quentin has never quite let go of his favourite childhood books - a trait that many fannish people will recognise - in which a family of children are sent to live with an eccentric aunt and discover another, magical world. In this world, called Fillory, the children have various adventures and excitements, until (usually at the end of the school holidays) they are ejected by the godlike figures of Umber and Ember. If you're getting Narnia vibes now, you'd be right.

So magic, for Quentin, is almost like discovering that Fillory exists - like fulfilling his childhood dream of escape into this magical world where he can be a hero, and where he doesn't have to deal with the real world. Except that the real world refuses to go away, however hard he tries to forget his former life and however hard he works at magic. And when his time at Brakebills is up, he has to face the real world for, er, real.

The Magicians is what happens when you take the set-up of Harry Potter and stuff it, kicking and screaming, into our world. Don't get me wrong - I love the Harry Potter books, and part of their allure is the magical world that exists alongside our own. But Harry Potter approaches difficult moral questions with a battering ram rather than, say, a fountain pen. Harry has had a difficult - horrible - life, but he never struggles with his own self-worth; never really has to deal with anything beyond his willingness to risk his life for the forces of good. Which of course is a huge issue in itself, and part of what makes the Harry Potter books such a compelling and (for me) emotionally satisfying read.

Grossman's approach is different. For me, The Magicians is about happiness and where we can find it. The book is chock full of life lessons in a manner that sometimes threatens to become heavy-handed but never quite does so because the story is so damn enjoyable. It's wrapped up in tight but evocative writing and, if I didn't like everything about the way events played out, I can forgive that for the sheer pleasure that reading it gave me. Highly recommended for anyone who can take even a smidgeon of fantasy with their reading.

I spent Saturday at Skepticamp Sydney, an "unconference" in which participants could speak on any subject for fifteen minutes. There were some great topics, including skepticism and the Middle East, the importance of words, why Dr Google is a bad idea, and how to make skepticism entertaining. I came away feeling inspired and happy to have met so many people who are passionate about improving the world we live in.

The most interesting topic for me personally was an open discussion on how to attract more women into the skeptical movement. It was a great improvement in several ways from the panel discussed by PZ Myers in this post. Firstly, it was instigated and hosted by a woman (thank you, Lauren!). Secondly, it was an open debate, which allowed everyone to contribute. Thirdly, while there was plenty of discussion from both men and women, all the men in the room appeared willing to listen to what the women present had to say.

One topic that was raised was the lack of high-profile women in the skeptical movement, and tangentially the conflict between the need to have the "best" speakers at an event and the need to ensure that women are well represented.

Firstly, let me stress here that I am not an expert (in, well, anything except being a woman), and don't pretend to know what it takes to put on an event. I am also pretty new to activism in general, and to the skeptical movement in particular; this is my personal viewpoint, and I am not trying to tell anyone else what they should and shouldn't do.

With that out of the way, of course I don't expect event organisers to have a 50/50 spread if that means putting on substandard events. But there are plenty of women out there who are experts in their field and also good speakers. If they are never given a chance to speak because organisers don't know who they are, how can we expect their profiles, and the profile of women in the skeptical movement in general, to be raised?

No Chicks No Excuses, an initiative by Leslie Cannold, Jane Caro and Catherine Deveny, is a resource listing inspirational women "to enliven your next conference, panel, board, think tank, article, broadcast, programme or lecture". It is not an exhaustive list of experts (listing is at the discretion of the owners), but it is certainly an excellent starting point for anyone looking for speakers and participants in events. A quick scan of the people on there brought up several familiar names, including Kylie Sturgess and Chrys Stevenson. Deveny herself is a high-profile atheist.

Since one list obviously cannot be exhaustive, I'd love to hear suggestions for other places to look for female speakers! My own suggestion would be podcasts - there are loads of skeptic-related podcasts out there, many of which are hosted by or feature interviews with women.

If you are reading this and think you belong on No Chicks No Excuses, please consider following this link and applying to be listed.

If you are reading this and organising an event, please consider looking through that list as you plan the event. :)

Finally, I'm not sure of the breakdown of male/female attendees at Skepticamp, but to my unscientific eye there was a good proportion of women there, which was encouraging to see! Many thanks to Jason and all the other unorganisers and speakers for putting on such a fab event, and a special thank you to Esther for ensuring that vegan food was available! Roll on Skepticamp Melbourne. :)

I've just returned from the UK (where I celebrated a fantastic Christmas and New Year with many much-missed friends and family), and was once again astounded by the failure of the airline to provide me with food in line with my prebooked request.

Before I go into details, let me say that although I'm talking here about Etihad, I have had similar experiences with Emirates, British Airways, Qantas and Virgin over the past few years. Never once have I travelled between the UK and Australia without being served something that contravened my request for a vegan meal, although this is almost invariably offered as an option.

So yes, this time we flew with Etihad. As always, I was careful to request a special meal with my booking, in this case the "VGML - VEGETARIAN MEAL". Etihad states that this option Does not contain any meat, fish or animal by-products e.g. animal fat in biscuits etc.

( My experiences eating Etihad's 'vegan' food, cut for length )

On the way home, I didn't say anything because by this time I was convinced I must have somehow made a mistake and the VGML meal (I carefully checked the label each time I was handed a meal tray) wasn't intended to be vegan. On the way out, I did ask the flight attendants a couple of times about whether something was vegan or whether they had any soy creamer (I was given some once, so surely they had more somewhere, right?), and they were very nice, but clueless. They seemed to have no idea what the VGML description signified or what a vegan meal involved.

All of this was annoying and frustrating, but ultimately not fatal. But what about people with food allergies? If an attendant makes a mistake and hands me some yoghurt (and I'm stupid enough to eat it, which I wasn't), then there's no real harm done. If they do the same to someone with a nut or dairy allergy, the results could be very different.

Conclusion: airlines are increasingly offering a range of special meal options for people with a variety of dietary requirements based on health, ethics and lifestyle choices. If they are going to do this efficiently, they need to do their research and train their staff properly, so that passengers can feel assured that they are actually being fed in accordance with their requirements.

I will be contacting Etihad to let them know how disappointed I was with their service in this respect. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what else I could do to counteract this widespread problem?

In case anyone wondered what I thought of Stephen Fry's latest ramble, in which he gently scolds all those silly people who believed something they read on the internet, and explains that he avoids giving print interviews the way most people avoid being raped (because those two situations are totally comparable):

Pickled Think has said it all for me.

Additional links:

Queen of Thorns: Nothing says I don't care like 2,872 words

Helen: Why I'm not sorry for Stephen Fry

This Stephen Fry situation seems to have hit a few of my buttons.

Let's get some labels out of the way. I'm a heterosexual woman. Stephen Fry is a gay man, whom I mostly adore. He's erudite and funny and makes being a slightly geeky would-be writer feel just a tiny bit more fun.

I'm not going to go into what he said. Published in Attitude Magazine, the quotes made their way via Pink News and thence to the internet and news sites in general. Who knows how accurate or out of context the quotes are? Only Stephen Fry and Paul Flynn, the person who interviewed him.

Clearly, Stephen Fry is as entitled to an opinion about anything he likes. But if those opinions seem rather...odd or offensive, aren't people who find them odd or offensive entitled to question them?

When a twitter user linked him to what he was quoted as saying and asked if it was true, he merely passed on the link. There are many reasons why he could have done that - perhaps it was late; perhaps he didn't read the link and just thought he'd pass it on to his fans; perhaps he read it and saw nothing wrong with it. Nobody knows. But Fry's action was unfortunate, especially given his later assertion that he was misquoted.

While Britain (and presumably Fry) slept, people in other parts of the world started questioning what he'd said. By the time the British media woke up to it, there were various blog posts and the ball was already rolling. Next came an Observer article, and off we went.

Stephen Fry's only public reaction so far has been one tweet: So some fucking paper misquotes a humorous interview I gave, which itself misquoted me and now I'm the Antichrist. I give up., followed by a flounce: Bye bye. His twitter account is now marked "No longer in service".

Again, let me stress that Fry is entitled to react in any way he wishes. That's his prerogative. But my prerogative, and that of anyone else, is to question things that I disagree with. I can do this by talking with friends, by blogging, by reading and commenting on other social media sites and, thanks to the magic of twitter, by asking @stephenfry directly (although I haven't and don't intend to do that last).

Except that apparently I can't and mustn't do these things. Stephen Fry, according to the #welovestephenfry twitter hashtag, must not be questioned or upset. Anyone who says his views are wrong without waiting for confirmation of them is silly/a bra-burning feminist/secretly hates sex. Women who take issue with his remarks are just spoiling the fun/taking offence too easily/silencing him because he's gay. The Stephen Fry situation is "as upsetting" as the fact that Danny Baker has cancer, apparently. People are calling for apologies from The Observer, Paul Flynn, BoganetteNZ and anyone else who might have upset Fry.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I mostly love Stephen Fry. But being popular and funny and loved and a spokesperson for mental health issues and rich and witty and clever and gay and kind and loving and a wonderful writer and speaker does not mean that he is infallible or should never be questioned. He's not a saint. Part of his appeal - part of anyone's appeal - is that he is not perfect.

Treating him like a special snowflake who must be carefully tended and wooed back to twitter is disrespectful to him, as well as to all the people who have taken issue with his remarks. Stephen Fry may be gay and bipolar, but he also has a hell of a lot of privelege to fall back on - much more, we can assume, than many of the people who are taking heat for questioning what he said. He can look after himself...and if he can't, it is not twitter's responsibility to do it for him.

Sydney's coolest bookshop has opened another outlet in the Inner West, and this weekend the city's literati turned out to celebrate. Booker winner Thomas Keneally was among the authors appearing at Gleebooks in Dulwich Hill on Saturday. He was joined by Miles Franklin-shortlisted (and local) Charlotte Wood, Commonwealth Writers' Prize-shortlisted Michelle de Kretser and young adult author Georgia Blain, before the day was wrapped up with a serving of poetry.

Party time on Marrickville Road

( More under the cut: Garth Nix, Irfan Yusuf and PM Newton... )

There's so much on in Sydney at the moment, I'm finding it hard to keep track. Hence, a non-exhaustive list of upcoming literary and writing-related events: July only so far, but I'll update with August dates in the next week. Please follow the links for details, prices and so on.

15-16 July - The Wired Scribe: Telling Digital Stories. Two-day introduction to the benefits of digital media and the power of social networking. Location: Media Alliance Training Centre, Redfern. Cost: $350/$500. More information: http://www.walkleys.com/training

16 July - [sold out] Giant Steps: Pitching, Negotiation and Promotion with Sophie Hamley, Angelo Loukakis and Charlotte Wood. More information: http://www.asauthors.org/scripts/cgiip.exe/WService=ASP0016/ccms.r?PageId=10294

16 July - New Creative Writing Stage 1 course starts at the Sydney Writers' Centre (five-week course). Cost: $395. See http://sydneywriterscentre.com.au/creativewriting.htm for details and to enrol.

17-18 July - Gleebooks are having a mini writers' fest to celebrate the opening of their new store in Dulwich Hill. Authors include Garth Nix, Michelle de Kretser, Thomas Keneally, Charlotte Wood, David Marr, Irfan Yusuf and Emily Maguire. All events are free (bookings not required, standing room only); see http://gleebooks.com.au/default.asp?p=events/welcome4_htm for specifics.

( Lots more under here. )

Am I missing anything? Let me know!

Brothers and Sisters is an anthology of Australian short stories on the theme of siblings. It was my first purchase at the Sydney Writers' Festival, and perfect for reading in short bursts while waiting for a session to begin or to calm down at the end of each day.

I have two sisters, and anyone who has siblings will tell you that whether you're the eldest, youngest or middle matters. These stories made me think a lot about my relationships with my own sisters: the way we used to compete for attention and/or approval, but also the way our bonds could never be broken. The way we support (and sometimes fail to support) one another in adulthood, and the ways in which, perhaps, competition still lurks under the surface. The power to hurt: rarely used, even in childhood, but when it was employed, oh, how effective it was. As Charlotte Wood says in her introduction, "Your brother or sister, it might be said, is your other self - your grander, sadder, braver, shrewder, uglier, slenderer self."

The twelve stories in this anthology explore many facets of the sibling relationship. In Robert Drewe's "Paleface and the Panther", a man reflects rather patronisingly on his wayward young step-brother - who, it turns out, knows plenty that he doesn't. In Cate Kennedy's "Beads and Shells and Teeth", two little girls compete for their absent father's approval. Charlotte Wood's "The Cricket Palace" takes a different approach when two elderly sisters discover that the dynamics of their relationship have changed yet again.

I enjoyed Ashley Hay's exploration of being an only child (probably because I'm not) in "The Singular Animal: on Being and Having". Nam Le's "The Yarra" depicts two brothers, one a jailbird, one who has "made good" - but the author deftly overtuns any assumptions that the reader might like to make about their relationship. And in Christos Tsolkias's "The Disco at the End of Communism", a man finally makes a kind of peace with his dead brother.

I highly recommend this anthology, both for anyone interested in the subject of siblings (which probably includes anyone with brothers or sisters, right?), and for those looking for an introduction to contemporary Australian writing.

For the past few days, I've been at the Sydney Writers' Festival, which is based in one of the most beautiful areas of the city, with extra events all over town and further afield as far as the Blue Mountains.

The tag line this year was Read, Rethink, Respond, and there were plenty of topics up for discussion, including freedom of speech at home and abroad, how to save the world, whether we can actually save the world, political intervention in the Northern Territory, as well as lots and lots of talk about literature in its myriad forms.

My personal highlights were: Lydia Cacho and Eric Lax talking about journalism on the front line and how PEN can help; Raj Patel completely living up to his wonderful writing; slam poets Sarah Taylor, Charlie Dark and Emily Zoey Baker at Spoken Four; and Emily Maguire being so fantastically articulate in No Country for Young Women.

I spent Thursday morning volunteering. I enjoyed the experience, but also found it quite stressful: no matter how often you are told that as a volunteer you have no responsibility and you are to contact a member of the festival staff if there are any problems, it's difficult to remain calm in the face of a demanding publisher or a member of the public giving you a sob story about why they need to get into a session that's already full. I have so much more respect now for the amount of organisation that goes into the festival. I only saw the very end of it, but people work really hard to make sure that everything goes smoothly.

I do wonder about venues, though. In many cases, punters had to queue half an hour in advance to be sure of getting into the free events. I know the organisers will say that if people are willing to queue for that long, then of course it's fair...but perhaps bigger venues or more listening/broadcast opportunities might be called for in some cases?

Once I'd finished my volunteer shift, I swapped my bright yellow t-shirt for incognito (it was a real relief to feel invisible again) and immediately found myself at the wrong end of a queue, so failed to get into The Lost Father.

Undaunted, I hung around for What Pen Means To Me: Stories from the Frontline. Lydia Cacho's bravery astounds me; I have no conception of how it must feel to stand up to the very highest levels of power knowing that you are putting your life in danger. Eric Lax gave the other side of the story, ie the work that International Pen does to raise the profile of writers imprisoned for their work. Like many people, I have signed petitions like those put out by PEN, and it's great to know that campaigns like these really do have an impact.

The PEN/human rights theme continued on Friday with the excellent PEN gives voice. Introduced by John Ralston Saul, Colm Tóibín, Eric Lax, Yiyun Li, Thomas Keneally, Frank Moorhouse, Larissa Behrendt and Peter Carey (what a line-up!) read from the work of imprisoned writers in China, Tibet and Burma. Ralston Saul's dryly witty commentary glued everything together, and it was sobering to hear how minor some of the "offences" committed were. One blogger was imprisoned for posting a cartoon on his blog; his very affecting poem was read beautifully by Yiyun Li.

While I'm on the subject of human rights, I was a little surprised that so few panellists and moderators acknowledged that they were on Aboriginal land. My memory may be deceiving me, but I thought that was standard practice for the past few years, and I missed it this year.

Similarly, while I liked the fact that we were given more details than previously about the writers represented by the empty chair at each of the free events, I was sorry to see this feature missing from so many events.

This is getting long, so I'm going to take a break here, and will try to post part 2 of my recap tomorrow.

The joys of LM Montgomery's journals

Book review: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Upcoming literary events in Sydney

When not to read

Sydney Writers' Festival 2011: writing and living

Sydney Writers' Festival 2011: writing, memory, beauty and humanity

Family Politics: Fatima Bhutto, Ingrid Betancourt and Aminatta Forna

Sydney Writers' Festival 2011: Round-up

Sydney Writers' Festival 2011: Bright Sparks

Sydney Writers' Festival 2011: The Count

Sydney Writers' Festival 2011 - Thursday

Book review: The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Skepticamp and skeptical women

When will airlines sort out their meal options?

Postscript

Stephen Fry and you and me and everyone we know

Mini writers' fest in Dulwich Hill

Upcoming literary and writing-related events in Sydney

Book review: Brothers and Sisters, edited by Charlotte Wood

Sydney Writers' Festival recap, part 1

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August 2011

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