This article almost didn’t happen. The initial brief was simple: write a story about an issue affecting young people. My mind swam with ideas—the housing market, climate change, an acquaintance of mine who recently joined a cult. Yet every time I sat down to write, I couldn’t. I would sit and stare, then despair, and … Continue reading Like Drawing Blood: Writing in 2019
‘Abbu, I saw a counsellor today,’ I said, clutching the corner of the kitchen counter top. I waited for my dad’s response, feeling a little too hopeful. How could I think telling my dad I was having mental health issues would evoke the sensitivity I deserve? It was nothing against him personally, he is my … Continue reading Unmuting Mental Health: Breaking the Taboo at Home
The Grattan Street Press was excited to hear of Vicki Laveau-Harvie's novel, The Erratics, winning the 2019 Stella Prize. Our own Meg Kerr attended the Wheeler Centre's event to discuss the novel, and the prize, with the author.
Last year, author Robert Hassan gave up his connection to social media and embarked on a journey to find himself. He shares that journey in his new memoir.
‘I’ll still be at home when I’m 30.’ My friend and I both chuckled over our smashed avocados, light-heartedly lamenting our stereotypical spending choices: ‘If only brunch wasn’t so expensive!’ Yet we laughed because we were joking; eventually we’d curb our brunch habits and start paying rent, because neither of us actually planned on living … Continue reading TO SHARE OR NOT TO SHARE
My professional work is in teaching and about media and communications. But for a long time, I didn’t reflect upon my own relationship with digital technology and digital networks. The idea of chronic distraction is a pathology that I know a lot about. I understand how the connected life is, or very easily can be, … Continue reading Excerpts from Robert Hassan’s new release Uncontained: Digital Disconnection and the Experience of Time
We sit in the middle of Carlton Gardens. The Royal Exhibition Building looms in front of us, the sky blue behind it. I can hear rushing cars, rushing trams, rushing water from the fountain. Everything moving around us. It’s nice to be slow. He unpacks a feast between us––chunks of feta, slices of bread, sundried … Continue reading Love in the Time of Cancer
Dolly is an eight-year-old Pug rescued from Lort Smith Animal Hospital. She only has four teeth, but she won’t let that stop her from eating anything and everything she can get her paws on. Which isn’t much, to be honest. She’s pretty small and far too lazy to get creative in seeking out food. She … Continue reading To All the Jobs I’ve Had Before
Seth Robinson is a Melbourne based writer with a love for the spooky, surreal, and magical. The following is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of his debut novel The Observatory.
The owner of Melbourne’s soon-to-be erstwhile Cherry Bar is hard to miss: after all, he wears a big hat. (Indoors? Indoors.) Although one doesn’t really make out faces from any stage, anywhere–unless there aren’t any faces all, delivering you from the challenge–trademark silhouettes travel well, in spite of distance or dazzling lighting. Impossibly, some manner … Continue reading A Lament to Cherry
Robyn Stern investigates why the search for and republication of out-of-print colonial fiction is worthwhile in contemporary publishing, and why this material should matter to modern readers.
It’s 6:15 on a Saturday morning. The alarm is a cruel reminder of my agreeing to go to a football game. He offers to make breakfast and leaves me to sleep another 15 minutes. But I’m awake now, alone with my thoughts, dream recollections and mental to-do lists of things I should be doing instead … Continue reading Tales of the Terminally Distracted
