What Gets Written at a Writers’ Festival?

June 9, 2017 | Posted by Guest Reviewer | Fiction, WRITING & LITERATURE |

Photo at Sydney Writers' Festival 2012 by Tom Worthington

(Posthumous note found in the effects of legendary extrovert and bon vivant, J.D. Salinger) Let me lovingly dedicate this pretty skimpy piece to my fellow authors who loved to schmooze writing festivals and festschrift symposia: Kafka, Celine, Balzac, Gogol. So after managing to fend off my mother and shave, I headed downtown to campus and the common, a safe space bordered by elms and a large shelter shed under eucalypts, next to a service road. Not two weeks before, during a talk by Professor Tupper on Elitism in the Arts, the organised Shout-Down was interrupted by ten men in black jeans and balaclavas,…

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New Australians of the Year

The Council of The Wise has announced a new category of Australian of the Year. Those eligible for “New Australian of the Year” are those great men and women from foreign forebears or other shores, folks whose lives were the template for, and reflect, the current splendid diversity that forms the Australian nation. Nominees can be alive or dead and must embody a facet of the country’s contemporary essence. Categories were submitted to the 2020 Summit (April 2008, which was designed by Prime Minister Rudd to “help shape a long term strategy for the nation’s future.”) Since then, over the last 8 years,…

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Sean’s Kitchen

May 17, 2017 | Posted by Guest Reviewer | FOOD, Restaurants, THUMBNAIL REVIEWS |

(Adelaide, May 2017) This sliver of a dining room just adjacent the Adelaide Casino (and in fact, part of the Skycity complex – on the way to the loo you can peer through a window at the poor wretches playing the pokies) is trendy, at least on current trends. Whilst L thought the refectory-type furniture a tad less than comfortable, there was compensation provided by the confident menu and spot-on service. Our table started with a Waldorf salad ‘Moderne’  à la Sean and the King Crab Cocktail – these saucy homages to the 1970s were adequate, but seasoned by nostalgia rather than hitting us…

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Neil’s Story

May 4, 2017 | Posted by Guest Reviewer | Fiction, LIFE |

Neil’s Story: A Regretful Refugee (ISIS Imprint) (2017) In this haunting, beautifully-written autobiography of one man’s encounter with a strange and hostile culture, the author shows how Australia’s lack of empathy drove him abroad to do good works in the Levant. It’s a unique clash-of-cultures tale, combining the innocence of Australian youth with the intricate and knowing wisdom of an ancient, sacred culture. Neil describes his formative years under the brutal Victorian regime, where he was forced into indentured servitude as an apprentice mechanic. Eventually he escaped this living hell for the promised lands of the Sunni-controlled part of Syria. Prakash was…

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Contempt on Peptides

May 2, 2017 | Posted by Guest Reviewer | AUSTRALIANIA, LIFE |

10 Ways the Australian Football League conglomerate shows its contempt for grass roots football Despite various subterfuges and secretagogues to hide it, the AFL:- 1.Endlessly tinkers (ludicrously) with rules of the game during the summer, abandons them in the regular season, but maintains their imposition on the so-called lower leagues. 2. Sets its competition, not around fairness, but around TV Scheduling. 3. Swamps us with so much advertising (for fast food, beer and gambling) on such a high rotation, that nausea ensues. 4. Provides nil local coverage. 5. Doesn’t bother to provide local scores. 6. Rapes and pillages young talent whilst imposing trickle-down funding of below-subsistence…

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