Nine young people were invited to Story Factory in September for the Novella Kitchen, a two-day, bite-sized, book-writing bootcamp that gave them a taste of Story Factory’s Year of the Novella program – and the challenge of writing an entire novella in a single weekend.
Since emigrating from Lebanon to Western Sydney when she was 12 years old, Noura Hijazi has always found writing to be an outlet for her thoughts and feelings, and a way of adjusting to a new environment in Australia.
When it comes to naming extinct animals, most of us would probably know the dodo and the woolly mammoth. But how many of the over 900 species classified as extinct since 1500, and the over 44,000 species threatened with extinction, could we actually name?
One Another contains two parallel and interrelated stories – one about Joseph Conrad, his life and writing, and the other about Helen, Tasmanian student of literature in Cambridge, who is writing a thesis about him.
Miranda Darling has created a distinctive character who walks a fine line between agency and lunacy, filled with interesting observations and personal reflections upon her life and the lives of others.
Brooklyn, published in 2009, sees central character Eilis Lacey leave 1950s Ireland for a new life in America, propelled by the tragic and unforeseen death of her beloved sister, Rose. Long Island takes up Eilis’ story 20 years later ...
When Lucinda Davies walked through the doors of Story Factory in 2018, it was as a student in Story Factory’s Year of the Novella, a year-long program where students commit to writing a novella for professional publication at the end of the year.
Louise Milligan has spent most of her writing life as a journalist and her debut novel describes the life of Kate Delaney, well-known around Melbourne for her insightful, compassionate reporting from a range of crime scenes.
Reading and writing have been a lifelong love for 17-year-old Lizzy Cilla. When she was just 7 years old, she dreamed of writing her own book, so it’s no surprise she’s found her community at Story Factory.
From a family of passionate poets, Brendan King is carrying on a tradition started by his Pop. He loves all things poetry and has been involved in the creative writing programs run by Story Factory over the last few years.
Sarah Dizon is a 17-year-old student from Sarah Redfern High School who has been attending Story Factory’s Year of Poetry program for the last three years. In that time, she’s published two collections of poetry, i baked you a cake and you are the star. She is currently working on a third.
Salman Rushdie is someone who has famously lived a significant portion of his life under the threat of death and, through his writing, the powerful insistence upon life in all its glorious variations.
The eponymous green dot of this novel has a very significant role in the relationship of the two central characters of this text, it being the green dot that tells others that you're online when you’re on Instagram.
The premise of Bright Shining is both profound and simple – grace is everywhere and we are enriched by it as individuals and as a community when we are receptive to its power and beauty.
I declare my not very remarkable prejudices. I like poetry that, audibly or not, involves a voice, a created tone or timbre that seems the authentic expression of a particular consciousness. What is expressed, those ideas, attitudes or sentiments with which are revealed or intimated livingness that has ideas, attitudes and sentiments and whose utterance of them said, or sung I am made to feel genuine, true and thereby beautiful.
Hayden Field describes his life as plot twist after plot twist. So it’s not surprising that, in his final year of school, he went to Story Factory to write his own book, a novella called Bus of ’96.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold is one of a series of four novels by Japanese author Toshikazu Kawaguchi, whose previous work was as playwright, director and producer for theatrical group Sonic Snail.
Mim’s tantalising tale of transformation set on the shallow, sandy seabed is another fine picture book to add to Sandra Severgnini’s captivating titles
To write Frank Moorhouse: A Life Catherine Lumby dug deep into Moorhouse’s life and relationships for this sparkling biography – and it is rich territory.
Immaculate is a captivating and unusual novel. It is also a nuanced examination of how faith grasped hungrily but imposed narrowly can segue into a slipperier sense of becoming, a wild tributary pulsing with possibility and sorrow.
While, overall, this is a poetry of a confrontation with that which does not resolve easily into words – of a silence listening to a silence – it always has a sense of a positive ground.
If you are interested in music new and old, read this book, listen to Coupe on FBi and 2SER, and follow him on Facebook. Jump aboard his long, strange trip.
‘My grandfather was the best grandfather a child could wish for. He … was also a Nazi.’ So begins Opi: The Two Lives of My Grandfather by Andreas Pohl.
Elyse John has reinvented this classic tale to consider ideas about gender, identity and sexuality and how ideas about love, heroism and virtue derived from mythology need to be overturned.
On the surface, Peta seems like your typical pirate with his wooden leg, parrot on his shoulder, eye patch, Jolly Roger and propensity for exclaiming AAARRrgggh ...
“One of my big fears about getting old”, Bill Hayes writes in the opening chapter of Sweat: A History of Exercise, “is that I won’t be able to get any exercise at all ... Please, shoot me first. No, wait. Throw me into a lake. I want to go out swimming ...”
This inspiring volume of liturgies and reflections comes from Women and the Australian Church (WATAC), one of the cofounders of the Australian Women Preach project.
We Come with This Place won an unprecedented four prizes in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, an achievement even more impressive for a first-time author.
In his short and cogent book, An Indigenous Voice to Parliament, Frank Brennan aims to chart the development of the Voice initiative and present the views of a range of people, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, both for and against.
The two companion novels of Cormac McCarthy’s latest writings follow the lives of brother and sister Bobby and Alicia Western, focused on their mutual devastation at the hands of their father’s involvement in Robert Oppenheimer’s atomic project and how to come to terms with the scale of such violence.
