Two weekends ago, I found myself with a few other Hoydenizens and friends at the first Sydney Cherchez La Femme, a Q&A-style panel event with only female panelists, hosted by Karen Pickering.

During the night, there was a musical intermission. One of the acts was Lady Sings it Better, a group of women who, to quote them, take songs written by men and, well, sing them better.

Lady Sings It Better

Turns out, they were playing two gigs as part of the 9th Annual Sydney Comedy Festival at the Seymour Centre. So a few days later, I was back on a bus from Central to City Road to meet up with a slightly different set of Hoydenizens and friends for more feminist entertainment.

It was, in a word, fabulous.

First and foremost, this group is musically excellent. These ladies really do sing it all better, and the band is well suited to them in this regard.

But there’s more to it than that. You won’t leave one of their shows without a new appreciation of the creepiness, misogyny and good old objectification of women in many of your favourite mainstream songs.

From the obvious (for example, Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me”, Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer”) to the slightly less-obvious-until-you-really-listen (The Knack’s “My Sharona”), the stalkeriffic (the Lady Sings It Better stalker medly includes The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” and “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”, Lionel Richie’s “Hello” and the old Aussie classic, Hunters & Collectors’ “Throw Your Arms Around Me”) to the blatant (AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” and Bob Marley/Inner Circle’s “Sweat (A La La La La Long)”), with a few tributes thrown in (to MJ, the booty and horses), nothing is sacred.

The set list allows the singers to demonstrate their range and their talents, especially in terms of their truly complementary voices and vocal styles. They also throw in a little dancing and acting which adds to the feminist commentary on the songs they are singing. There is also a ukelele (for Usher’s “Yeah”).

All in all, I had a great night. I did notice, however, that the audience had a little less energy than during the short set at Cherchez La Femme. This may be because, as they commented during that set, the Cherchez La Femme audience was basically Lady Sings it Better’s target market. But I also wonder if the slightly less formal format (tables and standing room rather than tiered seating in a black-box theatre) suits the show a bit better. Maybe we can see you at The Basement, Lady?

In summary: if you like a little feminist critique with your cover versions, plus a whole lot of laughs and some damn good singing, I cannot recommend Lady Sings it Better highly enough.

They are having a break for the next month, but they are hugely active on social media (especially on facebook and twitter – @lady_sings_it), so it will be quite easy to keep up with their gigs. You have no excuse!

Related posts:

1. Reminder: Cherchez La Femme comes to Sydney this Sunday night (April 21)
2. Signal boost: Cherchez la Femme comes to Sydney!
3. Sunday Singalong: Nina Simone

Science Magazine explains the competition (links omitted):

The competition challenges scientists around the world to explain their research through the most jargon-free medium available: interpretive dance. The 36 Ph.D. dances submitted this year include techniques such as ballet, break dancing, and flaming hula hoops. Those were whittled down to 12 finalists by the past winners of the contest. Those finalists were then scored by a panel of judges that included scientists, educators, and dancers.

Cool!

The winner has now been announced – it is a materials scientist at the University of Sydney, Peter Liddicoat.

Follow the link for more of an explanation, and links to Peter’s video and others.

Please share links to anything that has recently surprised, delighted, intrigued or otherwise positively engaged you.

Caramel coloured boxer dog curled around a white cat, both fast asleep.

Related posts:

1. Whimsy: Flashmob Moscow edition
2. Whimsy
3. Wednesday I-wish-it-was-merely Whimsy: Renegade Raging Grannies

The Sisters Antipodes by Jane Alison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Blurb from Goodreads

A gorgeous and deeply intimate memoir about families breaking apart When Jane Alison was a child, her family met another that seemed like its mirror: a father in the Foreign Service, a beautiful mother, and two little girls, the younger two (one of them Jane) sharing a birthday. The families became inseparable almost instantly. Within months, however, affairs ignited between the adults, and before long the parents exchanged partners, then divorced, remarried, and moved on. Two pairs of girls were left in shock, a “silent, numb shock, like a crack inside stone, not enough to split it but inside, silently fissuring” that would prove tragic.

My review

I loved this book.

To put this in context, neither non-fiction generally, nor memoir specifically, are among my favourite genres. But this book is so well-crafted, so compelling, I was drawn in from the start.

Alison describes the trauma of her childhood, caused by her parents switching marriages with another couple, combined with both families travelling for diplomatic purposes, with incredible clarity and emotional truth. She goes on to discuss the fall-out for herself and one of her step-sisters – both developed substance abuse problems – and the later relationships with her parents and step-parents.

At several points in the book, she questions whether her parents should have dealt with the situation differently, and what it might have meant to her life had they done so. Every time the question arises, she asserts that she is, ultimately, glad it was done the way it was done. I’m not sure I believe her.

And yet, the honesty – both the emotional honesty, and her attempt to tell the true story (and her acknowledgement that she does not know the whole story, and can only tell the truth from her own perspective) – is, again, compelling. That this was combined with the excellent writing meant I was drawn in, utterly reluctant to put the book down.

In addition, I had clear pictures of most scenes. Alison is also an artist and illustrator, and I suspect this is behind her ability to create such vivid images in her writing.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

This is an extra review for the 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge. You can see my full list of books here. You can find a full list of my reviews, and other posts relevant to the challenge, here.

Cross-posted.

Related posts:

1. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review: Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
2. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review: Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung
3. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review: We of the Never Never by Mrs Aeneas Gunn

Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Blurb from Goodreads

In “Monkey Grip”, Helen Garner charts the lives of a generation. Her characters are exploring new ways of loving and living – and nothing is harder than learning to love lightly. Nora and Javo are trapped in a desperate relationship. Nora’s addiction is romantic love; Javo’s is hard drugs. The harder they pull away, the tighter the monkey grip. A lyrical, gritty, rough-edged novel that deserves its place as a classic of Australian fiction.

My review

I got a lot out of this book – and there’s a lot to get, for a patient reader. It’s a book about Melbourne in the mid-1970s, about community, about love, about addiction, about love as addiction, and about how you can only live your own life.

This is not a gentle or easy book. It is narrated in first person by the main character, Nora, and the reader is thrown in the deep end, only ever given as much about Nora’s external life and circumstances as is absolutely necessary (and this is usually divulged with great subtlety). Nora is (in no particular order) an actor, a woman in love, a mother, a some-time drug taker, a part of a hippie community/commune, a feminist, a writer for a feminist magazine. We are taken through the year or so of Nora’s relationship with Javo, a junkie, during 1975 (and a bit on either side).

What one learns from this book is up to the reader. If you trust to Ms Garner, you will be lifted by the current and brought safely to the end of the book.

This is an extra review for the 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge. You can see my full list of books here. You can find a full list of my reviews, and other posts relevant to the challenge, here.

Cross-posted.

Related posts:

1. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review: The Sisters Antipodes by Jane Alison
2. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review: Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung
3. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review: We of the Never Never by Mrs Aeneas Gunn

I have completed the 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge!

This post is to record how I went compared to my challenge criteria, and to give a very short overview of each book.

First, the books. They were:

(1) Jessica Au: Cargo (Genre: YA)
This book is an excellent portrayal of adolescence (and adolescents), by way of three teenagers living in a coastal holiday town. (Full review here.)

(2) Kerry Greenwood: Cooking the Books (Genre: Crime/Mystery)
The sixth Corinna Chapman mystery. While a fun read, I did not enjoy this quite as much as earlier books in the series. From a mystery point of view, I was unsatisfied with parts of the ending. From a social point of view, there was a problematic approach to a trans* character, including transphobia expressed by a couple of characters with whom the reader is intended to sympathise, and whom the main character likes.

(3) Mrs Aeneas Gunn: We of the Never Never (Genre: Memoir/Australian Classic)
A book of its time, worth reading to understand ideas of the time, but beware of a modern reaction to such ideas (especially in relation to race). (Full review here.)

(4) Anita Heiss: Manhattan Dreaming (Genre: Chicklit)
I did not particularly enjoy this book. While the plot and story were pretty good, I found the main character irritating much of the time, the dialogue clunky, and the ending both entirely predictable and too rushed when it happened.

(5) Alice Pung: Unpolished Gem (Genre: Autobiography)
A great book, not only a good story told well, but one which may help build insight and understanding between different parts of the Australian community. (Full review here.)

(6) Henry Handel Richardson: The Getting of Wisdom (Genre: Literature)
An enjoyable read, and a good way to learn about some parts of Australian society around the turn of the twentieth century, but without a lot of depth for a modern reader.

(7) Christine Wallace: Greer – Untamed Shrew (Genre: Biography)
A valuable background to Germaine Greer and her writing; especially useful in light of the contemporary media’s habit of asking Dr Greer for “feminist” commentary.

(8) Kim Westwood: The Courier’s New Bicycle (Genre: Sci Fi/Fantasy/Spec Fic)
I enjoyed this book greatly, for Ms Westwood’s solid writing, her well-imagined dystopian near-future Melbourne and her use of trans* and genderqueer characters. However, as a mystery, it is a touch too predictable with a few too many coincidences. Many readers, like myself, will thoroughly enjoy it despite this, but mystery-lovers should be warned!

(9) Alexis Wright: Carpentaria (Genre: Modern Literature/Award Winners)
A brilliant novel about Culture, Country and Dreaming. Some effort required due to the often non-linear story, but well worth that effort. Everyone should read it. (Full review here.)

(10) Judith Wright: Selected Poems (Genre: Poetry)
Sublime. I should read more poetry more often, especially when it is this good.

Here are my criteria again:

I was a Franklin-fantastic Devoted Eclectic. This means I committed to read at least 10 books, in as many different genres as possible, and to write at least 4 reviews, including at least one substantial one.

To this, I added the following criteria:

(1) No repeat authors.
(2) No books I have already read (although I am allowed to read books by authors whose other books I have read before).
(3) No repeat genres (sub-genres count as separate genres for this purpose).
(4) At least three substantial reviews.
(5) At least two Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander authors (h/t lauredhel for this idea).
(6) At least one immigrant (or first-generation-Australian) author (in practice, it may well be more than this, given Australia’s immigrant history).
(7) At least one book set in a rural setting.
(8) I’m not starting until 1 January 2012 (this is a real challenge – I always do a lot of reading between Christmas and New Year, and this year has been no exception – and so I have held off reading some books I really want to read for the purpose of the challenge).
(9) I aim to finish the challenge by the end of February.

I posted a precis of how I met most of those criteria when I posted my list of books. Here is the updated precis:

First: as you can see, there are 10 books, from different genres, and I posted four substantive reviews (linked above, also see my series page for a full list of my reviews). In addition, I wrote at least a one sentence review for each of the books.

As for the additional criteria:

(1) There were no repeat authors.
(2) I had not read any of the books before. In fact, Kerry Greenwood and (a few poems by) Judith Wright are the only authors on this list whose work I had read before. There were a few books I have been meaning to read for years, so I was happy to have the incentive to read them, and kind of glad I hadn’t read them before so I could read them for the challenge. Win-win-win!
(3) No repeat genres. I know I’m cutting it fine with a couple, but I think I’ve done pretty well here.
(4) Four substantial reviews.
(5) Anita Heiss and Alexis Wright are Indigenous Australians. Dr Anita Heiss is a member of the Wiradjuri nation and Alexis Wright is member of the Waanyi nation.
(6) Alice Pung is a first generation Australian. Some of the others might be, but I’m not sure. The aim of this criterion is for cultural diversity, and so I was also on the lookout for non-Anglo names generally (which is how I found Jessica Au). I found it much harder than I had assumed I would to find any Australian women writers with non-Anglo names. This is telling.
(7) We of the Never Never, Carpentaria and Cargo are set in rural settings, as are some of Judith Wright’s poems. The Getting of Wisdom is partly set in a rural setting, but it’s not really the point of the book.
(8) & (9) both done.

Thanks again to all those who set up this challenge, especially Elizabeth Lhuede and Shelleyrae of Book’d Out.

The fact that I finished the challenge well before the end of January confirms what I said in my sign-up post: this was not a big challenge for me. I already read a lot of books by Australian women writers, I read fast, reading is my favourite way to relax, and, as I am on holidays at the moment, I have had a lot of reading time.

That is why I added the extra criteria, and I’m glad I did. The extra criteria meant that I did something other than simply read the books I would otherwise have been reading. In fact, just about every book I read for the challenge was one I specifically bought for the challenge. In the end, I read much more non-fiction than usual (I do not usually read much – I need a good story, and too much non-fiction spends too much time “telling the truth” (ha!) rather than “telling the story”), and I read a number of books I have been intending to read for a while.

Further, the biggest aspect of the challenge for me was, and was always going to be, writing reviews. This is not something I normally do, and not something I consider myself very good at. However, not only did I write the four substantial reviews which have been posted here at Hoyden About Town (and cross-posted at Wallaby), but I also wrote a brief review for every book, which you can find at my Goodreads page.

In keeping with all this, and the purpose of the 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge in general, during the rest of 2012, I intend to continue to read books by Australian women writers (well, I would anyway), to continue to seek out books that I would not normally read, and to write reviews – and I will aim for a proportionate number of substantial reviews (ie around 40%). Once again, the last part of that will be the most challenging.

Substantial reviews will continue to be posted here and at Wallaby, and all reviews will be accessible via my Goodreads page.

Let the challenge continue!

You can see my full list of books here. You can find a full list of my reviews, and other posts relevant to the challenge, here.

Cross-posted.

Related posts:

1. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review: Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
2. Australian Women Writers 2012 Reading and Reviewing Challenge
3. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review: Cargo by Jessica Au

Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Blurb from Goodreads

This is an original take on a classic story – how a child of immigrants moves between two cultures. In place of piety and predictability, however, Unpolished Gem offers a vivid and ironic sense of both worlds. It combines the story of Pung’s life growing up in suburban Footscray with the inherited stories of the women in her family – stories of madness, survival and heartbreak. Original and brave, this is a girl’s own story that introduces an unforgettable voice and captures the experience of Asian immigrants to Australia.

My review

First, a bit of background to my reading of this book. I grew up in a part of Sydney where there were many people of Asian descent. Those who were my age had often either been born in Australia to parents who were recent immigrants, or had come to Australia as children. Many of my friends were of Asian descent, from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. I tended to see the similarities between my friends and me – they were, after all, my friends – and I often did not understand why they reacted to certain things so differently, especially in relation to their interactions and relationships with their families.

In the years since high school, I have grown to understand much more. Unpolished Gem allowed me to take another leap in my understanding of some of my friends. At the very least, this means that if Ms Pung is writing for the wider Australian audience, to give them an insight into the life of a certain section of the Australian community, she has nailed it. (I am quite curious to know if she has nailed the audience within the section of the Australian community she is writing about.)

Ms Pung’s writing is impeccable. By this I mean not that her sentences and paragraphs are well-structured and grammatically correct, although they are that, too, but that Ms Pung’s narrative allows the reader to step inside the book and, to a significant extent, empathise with her. The reader is, accordingly, able to understand Ms Pung’s emotional reactions to the situations she describes. It was this which allowed me to come to a much better understanding about my friends than I had before. It is not that I think all – or, even, any – of my friends had precisely the same experiences as Ms Pung, but that, by understanding the background in Ms Pung’s story, I was able to better imagine what might have been happening for my friends in similar situations.

Such an understanding is important to me personally, and may be important personally to many others. It is also important socially. Ms Pung’s family has much in common, in terms of experiences and background, with many other Australians and their families – not only those who came to Australia at around the same time as, and in similar circumstances to, Ms Pung’s family, but those who are coming to Australia now. In order to ensure that we can be an Australian community, as many of us as possible from as many parts of Australian society need to have some insight into other parts of our society. Unpolished Gem will help to increase the level of insight between communities.

Finally, this book is also an excellent story, rather than merely a piece of writing about what happened. As a result, this book is likely to be quite an enjoyable read for those who, like me, do not normally enjoy non-fiction and memoir writing as much as fiction.

This is a review for the 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge. You can see my full list of books here. You can find a full list of my reviews, and other posts relevant to the challenge, here.

Cross-posted.

Related posts:

1. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review: The Sisters Antipodes by Jane Alison
2. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review: Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
3. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review: We of the Never Never by Mrs Aeneas Gunn

We of the Never Never by Jeannie Gunn
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Blurb from Goodreads

An Australian classic. Depicts the enduring hardships of life in the Australian outback and the battles against sexist and racial prejudices.

My review

One of the things I tried to do for this challenge was to read a number of books I have been meaning to read for some time. We of the Never Never was one such book. Because it is an Australian classic from the early 20th century, I expected to find parts of it confronting, and in that, I was not disappointed.

A quick precis: the book is a memoir of the author’s first year on the Elsey, a station in the Northern Territory, several days’ journey (by the modes of transport then available) from Katherine. She is there because she has just married the Elsey’s manager, referred to in the book as “the Maluka” (this is later explained to be a name given to him by the Aboriginal people they have contact with and is, at least, so the author tells us, untranslateable). She is the only non-Aboriginal woman on the Elsey. She tells the story of her journey from Darwin to the Elsey early in the Wet season, and goes on to narrate other episodes, including staffing difficulties, the completion of the homestead and trips out on the station.

The book is a product of its time, and much of what I expected to, and did, find confronting is a reflection of that. The best example of this is the author’s attitude towards race and class. She – or, at least, her persona as narrator – for the most part likes the people she finds on the Elsey, whether they are Black, white or Chinese (the cooks), but her attitude towards all of them is very plainly that of the lady of the manor towards the peasants in the village. Even when describing situations in which another person knows more than she does, her tone is patronising and condescending. This is most obvious in relation to her attitude towards the Aboriginal people she describes. There is no acknowledgement that she is discussing people who come from a cultural background entirely unlike hers, who have a different set of values to hers. Rather, she judges them as if her values are the only possible standard, and finds them lacking and childlike. There is a considerable degree of the “noble savage” myth in her perception of them, and a total lack of understanding of the great injustice that had already been done to them, which was continuing, and to which she contributed. I found this jarring and insulting.

I also found the author’s attitude to gender roles troubling, although once again, I can understand it to be a product of the time. She readily accepts her position as the (relatively) cosseted sole white woman, and all that goes with that. That said, she shows a willingness to chip in that belies her princess-like status to some extent, and one might wonder how much of the avowed compliance with gender roles was exaggerated for the audience.

Finally, while the author acknowledges many of the hardships, difficulties and dangers faced by people living on a remote station in the early twentieth century, the book as a whole still seems to me to romanticise that life to a significant extent.

Despite my criticisms, Mrs Gunn wrote clearly and in a manner generally easy to follow, although, because of the pseudonyms she uses for many characters (particularly the white stockmen), it can be easy to get them confused. This perhaps contributes to the classist overtones of the book. Similarly, she refers to her husband as “the Maluka” from the beginning of the book, but the explanation does not come until about a third of the way in.

We of the Never Never is worth reading for two reasons. First, it is a book by a woman about a woman’s life in a situation about which we know comparatively little (especially as it applied to women). Secondly, and more importantly, it gives some insight (although not, perhaps, the insight the author intended) into attitudes of the day in relation to race and gender, especially the former, and the atrocities committed under the guiding light of those attitudes. This helps us to understand how far we have to go in trying to redress those wrongs.

This is a review for the 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge. You can see my full list of books here. You can find a full list of my reviews, and other posts relevant to the challenge, here.

Cross-posted.

Related posts:

1. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review: The Sisters Antipodes by Jane Alison
2. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review: Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
3. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review: Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung

Cargo by Jessica Au
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Blurb from Goodreads (NB: edited for ableist language)

Gillian is fifteen, [disabled] by [an] accident but dreams of swimming across oceans.

Jacob is fourteen and yearns for his brother’s life.

Frankie is fifteen and in love with the new deckhand on her father’s boat.

As the story of these three desires intertwine over the course of one lazy summer in a small coastal town, Cargo is by turns heart-wrenching, beautiful and explosive.

In a simple time of truth and change, these are characters who do not know themselves, yet through their innocence we come to understand what it means to be young, and have all the troubles in the world.

My review

Cargo is a beautiful, moving book. Ms Au has captured the insecurities of adolescence brilliantly.

Set in a coastal town in around the late 1990s or early 2000s, Cargo follows three teenagers over a period of several summer and autumn months: Frankie, Gillian and Jacob. Frankie is the daughter of a local entrepreneur, Gillian is rediscovering herself after a serious accident a year or two previously, and Jacob is trying to get out of the shadow of his older brother.

The novel explores friendships, family, sexuality and a growing awareness of what adulthood will mean for each of the three characters.

All characters are apparently heterosexual and white, but some class issues are explored, as are some issues relating to people with disabilities.

This is the kind of YA book which adults will also find it very easy to enjoy (and quick to read). In the first place, the writing is excellent. Secondly, Ms Au’s characters are not only well-written and believable, but easy to sympathise with. The thoughts and emotions of each main character are drawn rather than described, so the reader thinks and feels along with the characters without even trying, and with understanding rather than a feeling of being told.

I put the book down feeling hope for each character, looking forward to their futures in much the same way I looked forward to my own when I was an adolescent.

This is a review for the 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge. You can see my full list of books here. You can find a full list of my reviews, and other posts relevant to the challenge, here.

Cross-posted.

Related posts:

1. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review: Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
2. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge in summary
3. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review: Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung

Blurb from Goodreads

Carpentaria is Alexis Wright’s second novel, an epic set in the Gulf country of northwestern Queensland.

The novel’s portrait of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance centres on the powerful Phantom family, leader of the Westend Pricklebush people, and its battles with old Joseph Midnight’s renegade Eastend mob on the one hand, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine on the other.

Wright’s storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, politics and farce. The novel teems with extraordinary characters – the outcast saviour Elias Smith, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, the murderous mayor Bruiser, the moth-ridden Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist Will Phantom, and above all, the rulers of the family, the queen of the rubbish-dump and the fish-embalming king of time, Angel Day and Normal Phantom – figures of such an intense imagining, they stand like giants in this storm-swept world….

My review

I can see why Carpentaria won a Miles Franklin Award. It is a big book which tells an important story in a manner likely to be novel to many readers.

On its face, Carpentaria is the story of a town, Desperance, on the Gulf of Carpentaria, giving the reader an insight into tensions within the Aboriginal communities on the outskirts of the town and between them and the white people who live in the town itself. Underneath that, and far more importantly, it is a story about family, Country and Culture.

It was at first difficult for me to follow, as the first few chapters take an entirely non-linear path and at times appear somewhat unrelated. However, if the reader simply reads and accepts these chapters as separate stories, it soon becomes clear that they set the scene for the main events of the novel, as well as introducing many of the characters. Nothing is there by accident and no reading is wasted. The book is never entirely linear, but does become easier to follow, and the story easier to comprehend, as the reader learns more.

To try to explain more would give too much away. Let it suffice to say that Ms Wright’s work is meticulous, and I suspect each word was placed with care. The reader is in safe hands.

This is a review for the 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge. You can see my full list of books here. You can find a full list of my reviews, and other posts relevant to the challenge, here.

Cross-posted.

Related posts:

1. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review: Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
2. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge in summary
3. 2012 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review: Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung

"Edinburgh Knowledge Cafes, February 2011" - David Gurteen's Flickr stream. Image description: A group of statues of swans, in various poses, gathered around two flat wooden benches. Used under a Creative Commons licence.

ETA: confirmed venue and time:
Sunday 8 Jan
From 11.30 am (late arrivals fine!)

Portland Hotel, 127 Russell St
(cnr Lt Collins – NW corner)

We will be in the casual bar area.

See bottom of the post for accessibility etc info

Anyone in Melbourne and up for a meet-up some time between 6 and 10 January (inclusive)?

Now calling for suggestions as to time and location! bluebec has suggested around the Fairfield Boathouse for a picnic, or, alternatively, The Great Northern Hotel in Carlton for dinner.

If you’re interested, please let me know your thoughts, either by commenting here, emailing me at tamar [dot] jo [at] gmail (you know the rest) or on twitter, where I am @jotamarwallaby.

As always, there’s no level of existing involvement required, whether here at Hoyden About Town or in the femmosphere generally. Creators, commenters, lurkers, newcomers and familiar faces all welcome, as are friends, partners and children.

ETA: Accessibility and other info

Please let me know if you think you might come along, as well as any extras
you might bring (all are welcome ).

Related posts:

1. Sydney Hoydenizen/femmoblog meetup March: planning thread
2. Sydney Summery Femmosphere Meetup: Sunday December 18 in Manly, come one, come all
3. Sydney Summery Femmosphere Meetup: Sunday December 18 in Manly