The writer Lynnda Wardle

LW: Books about finding long-lost family on a leper colony in Crete, designer baby hospitals for rich women on fancy ocean liners with a searingly handsome gynaecologists, Books with pastel covers, aggressive marketed as 'women's fiction' or the 'Holiday Read'. You get the picture ... click here to read more

Allan Cameron of Vagabond Voices

AC: She is part of an unusual story of an unjust world, which doesn't work out well. Sought-after marriages are unhappy, and perhaps the unhappiness teaches the victims something ... click here to read more

Samina Chaudhry
(of Ten Writers Telling Lies)

SC: This style comes from a certain segment of Nigerian society linked to the socio-economic and educational background of the speakers. Heartfelt and timeless, the destruction of war is reflected poignantly ... click here to read more

Pat Byrne
(of Ten Writers Telling Lies)

PB: I love everything about this story. The vivid imagery, fantastic dialogue and the richness of the emo-tions felt by the characters. The revelation of a disturbing memory ... click here to read more

Litstack's Lauren Alwan

LA: I was angered and disappointed by Terrorist by John Updike, a book the author confessed having researched by reading 'Islam for Dummies', which tells you all you need to know. The novel employs some of the worst and most ignorant stereotypes imaginable ... click here to read more

The novelist Dr Rodge Glass

RG: It’s about the power of language and corruption of language. There are two poets, ripped from their families as children, imprisoned by a regime that tasks them with waiting a lifetime to write a single poem ... click here to read more

Professor Simon Kövesi

SK: .. What a bag of self-inflationary hot air that book is. Like walking into a gentleman’s club in the 1910s and being shouted at for being in the wrong building. Just odious ... click here to read more

The novelist David Keenan

TCB: The book that most disappointed you?
DK: I Fought The Law: The Life And Strange Death of Bobby Fuller by Miriam Linna and Randell Fuller ... click here to read more

The Common Breath editor Brian Hamill

BH: The beginning strikes me as much more significant. Everything rides on whether you’re going to engage with this writer’s world, or not. I suppose an answer for this depends on what you think of when you think of a brilliant opening to a novel – first line? First paragraph? Page? Chapter? ... click here to read more

fiction & essays

The Nightshift

In the end, it was probably right that the first job I got after uni was a nightshift – I hadn’t slept properly in months. Or longer. My old boy done nightshift his whole life

In The 25th Year Since
How Late It Was, How Late

Any specific memories of the first time I read How Late It Was have faded over time, but the one thing I know is that I read and re-read the opening of the book multiple times...

the works in progress blog

'Holy buttons, sad but dignified'
by Bechaela Walker

She sat at the full-length streaky café window overlooking the carpark and thought of how empty the train had been—how did they keep running such services?

'Jamie' by Jim Gibson

There’s no one else to talk to so I might as well make the most of it. It’s a horrible thought but I can’t help thinking that his life is sort of like an animal’s

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