Blog
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Though railway convention would designate a train travelling from Horsham toward Melbourne as an up train, I have titled this chapter Down Train from Horsham intentionally. The descent invoked here is not geographical but tonal: a movement into rougher country, uncertain fortunes, and subterranean narrative currents. It is, in spirit, a passage downward. Down Train… Read more
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I’d like to share the draft of a novel I’ve been writing – a work in progress that’s quite well underway. I’ll be posting chapters every few weeks as I continue to refine and shape the manuscript. The idea began while I was researching the life of my great-great-grandfather, a Chinese immigrant to Australia during… Read more
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Content warning: This piece discusses domestic violence, mental illness, and historical accounts of murder. I first came across the horrifying case of Jane Gray’s murder by her husband, John Gray, in the Sydney Morning Herald of 1870 . A story of homicidal paranoia rooted in delusions of jealousy, it occurred in the village of Calderwood,… Read more
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This piece of writing of mine first appeared in Hermes: Literary magazine of the University of Sydney in 1987. I structured it upon principles I observed in iconoclastic giants such as James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and Tristan Tsara, who are gestured to throughout, along with all sorts of other allusions. I was completing my PhD… Read more
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Followed by his colleagues from the Peers’ School, Mushanokoji began publishing Shirakaba in 1910, which was to become the most important literary magazine of early twentieth century Japan. He had graduated from the Peers’ School, then withdrawn from Tokyo Imperial University in 1907. Shirakaba means “White Birch,” in reference to the white birches that appear… Read more
