A Little Life update #5

What am I reading/watching/listening to/wearing/going?

Reading:

• The Paperbark Tree Committee by Karys McEwen

Throughout April and May, I’ve been on deadline to finish my new manuscript and get it to my publisher. It’s … well; it was going to be middle-grade, but then for ~reasons~ in the story, it’s sitting more younger-end, young adult.

Regardless; whenever I’m in the thick of my own stories (which are always either MG or YA) I find I can’t read anything within the same readership and genre (contemporary/historical) as I’m writing. Which *sucks* because the whole reason I write these books is because I love reading them too!

Regardless; I’m nearing the time when I need to hand my manuscript in, which means I am preparing to get back to my regularly-scheduled-reading and top of my list is Karys’ second novel, after her wonderful debut MG All the Little Tricky Things.

A very talented school librarian, bookseller, and vice president of the Victorian branch of the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) - Karys has such a tender storytelling style, and her MG books are just wondrous slices of childhood and all the emotional upheavals that come with this precipice age (and she has a Substack!).

I can’t wait to read this new book from her;

The Paperbark Tree Committee is a heartfelt story about growing up and leaving childhood behind; it’s about family and being a good brother, fitting in and finding friends, and about making mistakes and learning from them.

Watching:

• The Artful Dodger on Disney+

Technically this is a re-watch, since I saw this when it first aired in 2023.

An Australian production which imagines what would have happened to Jack Dawkins, better known as the “Artful Dodger,” talented pick-pocket character from Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist - what would have happened after he was sent on a transport to the Australian colonies as a convict …

It's a tale of reinvention, betrayal, redemption, and love with a twist. Jack Dawkins is The Artful Dodger, whose pickpocketing fingers have become the skilled hands of a surgeon. He is torn between an impossible love and the criminal underworld he secretly craves. This will require Artfulness.

And yes, that is Thomas Brodie-Sangster (the lovestruck kid from Love Actually) in the lead, and playing a rather dashing leading-man role (don’t think too much about how old that may make you in the grand scheme of things).

I’m rewatching this, because a Season 2 has just been announced as in-the-works, which is surprising … I wasn’t sure the show did that spectacularly well to warrant a second season (but I’d hoped, because I loved it and the ending of season 1 left a lot of avenues open for possibility!)

It was a really great show, particularly for the love story between Jack and one Lady Belle Fox (played brilliantly by Aussie Maia Mitchell, whom I’ve loved from Good Trouble!)

So if you haven’t already, get onto it so you can get caught-up and duly excited in time for Season 2 to drop! It’s basically Oliver Twist Aussie FanFic, c’mon! Miranda Tapsell plays an Indigenous bushranger! Damon Herriman plays a delicious baddie! What’s not to love?!

Listening:

• Audiobook: Hungerstone by Kat Dunn

Not sure if you know this, but; Bram Stoker did not invent the vampire novel with Dracula (published 1897).

Technically it was The Vampyre that came first - a short work of prose fiction written in 1819 by John William Polidori, taken from the story told by Lord Byron as part of a contest among Polidori, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley (yes, the infamous party where a contest to see who could tell the scariest ghost-story, birthed Mary’s novel - and the first non-religious creationist myth, thus also birthing modern science-fiction - Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.)

THEN, after Polidori’s foundational text came Carmilla, a novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu that predates Bram Stoker's Dracula by 25 years. Carmilla, published in 1872, and is considered one of the earliest works of vampire fiction. Dracula, published in 1897, is arguably the more famous of the three.

BUT, Carmilla slightly pips Drac at the post - in my opinion - because it’s delicious sapphic and narrated by a young woman who is preyed upon by a female vampire named "Carmilla.”

It’s been made into a pretty great web-series, also called Carmilla - co-created by Jordan Hall, Steph Ouaknine, and Jay Bennett. I enjoyed that series so much, that when I heard author Kat Dunn (of YA novel Bitterthorn) had written “a compulsive sapphic reworking of Carmilla” I *ran* to request the audiobook from my local library, and I’ve been blissfully listening on BorrowBox.

It’s *so good*! Not just for the sapphic, gothic lushness - but Dunn’s writing is a feast as she delves into womanhood, horrors of the feminine, and female appetites in a myriad clever and mind-bending ways. Our narrator, for instance, is an aristocratic lady who has been deemed a failure in her marriage because she cannot conceive a child. She describes her body, thus;

I furl myself in the quilt like an oyster in its shell with no pearl to show for the grit that works through it.

Wearing:

• Readers and Writers Against the Genocide, T-shirt

Originally there was ‘Summer Reading for MPs’ (#SR4MPs) campaign - which gave every federal politician five books to encourage nuance in the Middle East debate.

This got great support from many politicians, and lots of interest from others who were keen to receive informative and deeply-researched books on the subject.

Unfortunately there is a lot more to be done, because the genocide that Israel is committing, is ongoing.

The majority of our politicians, along with our media, clearly haven’t yet spent enough time reading up on the Israel-Palestine conflict, given how they continue to ignore or misrepresent the genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.

So the message is being pushed further - and transitioning SR4MPs to Readers and writers against the genocide.

The campaign was put to me thus;

As lovers of books who truly believe (as we know you do) that there is a powerful role for literature in this current moment, and because we are (as we’re sure you are also) finding it hard to continue life as ‘normal’, we once again feel compelled to turn to the tool of literature to raise awareness of the genocide and to encourage more people to speak up.

This time our focus is on the most distilled and powerful form of language – the poem. Therefore, we are purchasing and printing a number of high quality, ethically manufactured t-shirts and, with the permission of Omar Sakr, we are printing one of his genocide poems, Algo in the genocide, on the back. On the front it says: Readers and writers against the genocide.

Hopefully, you’ll start seeing creatives - readers and writers! - that you know, wearing these t-shirts and speaking out against genocide, and for Palestine.

Because if not us; who?

Going:

• Words on the Waves Writers Festival - Ripples, Primary Schools Program 2025 - Thursday 29 May, 2025

I am thrilled and delighted to be attending Words on the Waves Writers Festival, and their Ripples Primary Schools Program!

The 2025 Ripples Schools Program is back for its fifth year of inspiring the next generation of readers, creative artists and storytellers of the Central Coast. Offering engaging, educational and interactive sessions, primary students will explore the world of literature with award-winning children’s authors and illustrators.

Absolutely cannot wait!