Happy news!
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As a fairly private person, divulging information about personal doings on the internet isn’t a priority. I do sometimes tap into family stories or write confessional-style pieces, but this doesn’t necessarily come naturally, and I’m very conscious of potential repercussions from commodifying my identity, even in a small capacity. Blogging already feels like the tip of the iceberg – and everybody knows the ice is melting in the 21st century. Who knows what unnatural disaster could unfold?
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In this spirit of paranoia, therefore, I share news of an event I attended, a good two weeks after it happened. (This is the same attitude which keeps me away from Facebook’s check-in function. That, and a capricious phone).
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The literary journal and small press Writer’s Edit recently launched their third and final anthology, Kindling III. It’s full of essays, poems, and short stories – a really fun mixture of fiction and non-fiction which one doesn’t often come across in book form. It also features a short story I wrote back in April this year, around the time I was vacillating over whether or not to seek my fortune via the black hole of internet scribblings (read: debating whether to start a blog).
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The Snake’s Tail is based on a true story from my mother’s childhood in West Africa. My grandmother, a somewhat eccentric author of books on African wildlife, arranged a beautiful specimen of a dead snake in a coil, froze it in the kitchen freezer, and then gave it to my mother to take to her primary school for show-and-tell. Alas, hindsight informs us that this is not really the done thing.
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Anyway, for those who are interested, the anthology is available through the Writer’s Edit website here. By all means check it out, especially if you feel like supporting Australian writing and those of us who still think STEM is part of a tree.
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I’ll end with a couple of bookish photographs from the launch (courtesy of the talented Yasmin Scheuerer). It was a lovely evening up in Sydney, full of excellent people, and all with exciting plans and ambitions. The cupcake art was pretty inspired, too. What more could one want from a party?
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