Write Around the Murray – Albury’s literary festival – kicks off on September 9. It seems like the perfect excuse for a weekend in regional Australia. This year they’re encouraging visitors to ‘take a journey to alternate worlds’, and featuring sessions on fantasy, sci-fi, climate change, astrophotography and illustration. I’m taking part in three events: […]

It’s not that long ago I was feeling glum about ever getting another book published. Look at me, here, in the past, all glum. Now I have two books coming out at the same time. It’s pretty hard to feel glum about that (though knowing me I might try). There’s The Handbook, out in a […]

For the next week we’re giving away copies of The Handbook: surviving and living with climate change on Goodreads. If you’re in Australia, pop over here and fill in your details and you could win.

Want to see me on a stage at Melbourne Writers Festival? I’ll be posing as an author at two Melbourne Writers Festival events, a ‘Silver Screen Science’ session featuring the movie Outbreak, and a session with two of my favourite-ever co-panellists, Michael Green and James Bradley, talking about whether climate change is the new apocalypse […]

A quick thanks and a really great result.

Co-author James Whitmore and I have been blogging away about this and that over on the website for our new book, The Handbook: surviving and living with climate change. He’s been talking about how even laughable heatwaves –  like the one England recently went through – are dangerous under the right circumstances. And I’ve been taking […]

It’s not the end of July, but I’m calling a halt to my sponsored reading and taking a look at what I’ve learned. You may already know that a few months ago I set up a readathon – JustRead – to raise money for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. Reading and sponsoring happens during June and […]

Back in a previous life, when I was environment and energy editor at The Conversation, me and my deputy editor James Whitmore had a brilliant idea. We decided the world needed a book that answered questions like ‘do I need to move to another country if I want to survive climate change?’. No one else seemed […]

I just wanted to share this lovely picture from our ‘Bringing the Outside Inside’ panel about nature writing and the environment, held at Williamtown Literary Festival on the weekend. Willy Lit Fest is a real treat and we (me, Harry Saddler, Claire Dunn and Michael Green) had a great time talking about whether writing can […]

…and it looks pretty damn interesting – loads of great sessions over the weekend of August 7, 8 & 9, including an evening with Nam Le, a great panel on fantasy, writers and philosophers chatting about the ethics of writing and Dani Valent interviewing Matthew Evans about the good life. I’ll be appearing on two […]

Last week I did an event at the Emerging Writers Festival, called Letters to the West, where “The panel will reveal their relationship with the West through their missives. Will it be a love letter, a memory or a complaint? What does the West mean to them? Simply a location or an ideology, even a […]

You might’ve noticed I started up a readathon, Just Read, to raise money for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation (because it irks me there are people in Australia who don’t get the chance to read). You can sign up to read or sponsor an existing reader. You might also know I’ve pursued a few different tactics […]

Festival season is kicking off and I’m celebrating by getting on some stages and saying some stuff. For starters, I’ll be at Emerging Writers Festival, Footscray Edition, on Thursday May 28 reading a ‘Letter to the West’. Then, a little bit later on, I’ll head down to Williamstown for a panel on writing about the […]

If you’ve ever read this blog before you know how much I love reading. In fact, if you read this blog I’m guessing you love reading too. I am incredibly lucky: I was born in a home where books where everywhere and reading was valued. My parents read to me and encouraged me to read […]

Books are consumer goods, just like dresses or DVD box sets or surround sound systems or these things. Making them consumes non-renewable resources, no one ever bothers asking what conditions are like in the places where they’re made, and masses of fossil fuels are used to ship them around the world. And like fashion, books can be […]

My short story, We saw the same sky, published in the current Overland, is now online and free to read. I wrote the first draft of this story in response to a story prompt provided by the gorgeous small publisher, Tiny Owl Workshop. They were sourcing stories for an anthology, Unfettered (which I believe will be published soon), […]

Anzac Day has been bugging me for years. This year I thought instead of annoying my friends with my incoherent ranting, I would try to get my ideas in order and write them down. I did. Then Overland saw fit to publish them, in the form of an article. If you’d like to read it […]

Last year I signed up to do #TBR20, a challenge where you agree to read 20 books you already own before borrowing or buying anything new. I’ve been awful at it, just awful – once I finish my pile of 20 I’ll let you in on all the other books I’ve read since I started […]

A short break for self-promotion: I have a story in the brand new issue of Overland. I’m very proud of this story. If you’d like to read it (there’s also a new story from Wayne Macauley, in case you need another incentive) you can get a single issue or subscribe at the Overland online shop. […]