Margo Lanagan's Blog, page 10

Brisbane Writers Festival 2011

I did two days on the schools program at the BWF this year, and had a terrific time. I was on 2 panels, one with Peter Stanley, author of Simpson and his Donkey, and Maggie Steifvater, author of the Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy—the third book of which is my commuting book for this week. We talked about writing from animals' points of view, which was a great topic and one I hardly ever get asked

More good reviews for Blood and Other Cravings

including this one from Count Gore (Judy Comeau):I have been reading and enjoying the anthologies edited by multiple award winning editor Ellen Datlow for more decades than I care to confess, and her newest volume is an absolute stunner. These seventeen stories push the boundaries of vampirism to the very edges of contemporary imagination; you'll find no creaking coffin lids or moldering castles

Mulberries in the wild

Ellen Datlow's anthology Blood and other Cravings comes out in less than a fortnight now, but Rich Horton's already onto it in the latest Locus. And he likes my "mulberries".The theme is vampires, but often not traditional vampires: rather they are creatures which feed on or crave a variety of essential substances, not just blood. The mode is generally horror, and as we certainly expect from

Birth of 'The Goosle'

Kaaron Warren is running a great series called 'Sparks' over at her blog, all about how different authors' stories/novels got started, the things that set them off, started them wondering.

She's just now put up my spark, which is the story, simple enough, of how my Hansel-and-Gretel story 'The Goosle' began. How one small dictionary entry could turn into so much unpleasantness...I know, it's

Sound the trumpets! A selkie-novel cover!

As seen on Amazon UK.

Noice, innit. :)

Jhumpa Lahiri says,

in a New Yorker article (from June), 'Trading Stories: Notes from an apprenticeship':It was not in my nature to be an assertive person. I was used to looking to others for guidance, for influence, sometimes for the most basic cues of life. And yet writing stories is one of the most assertive things a person can do. Fiction is an act of willfulness, a deliberate effort to reconceive, to rearrange,

NSW Writers' Centre Members Night panel tonight

If you're a Writers' Centre member, you'll already know about this panel. This is just a nudge to remind you that it's happening tonight, in an hour and a half, in fact. And look, free drinks and light refreshments at the end. So get your skates on.Writing Genre: is it all about the rules?
Thursday 18 August, 6:30pm-8:30pm

After crime writer Peter Temple won the Miles Franklin Award his book,

Brisbane Writers Festival coming up

Because they've sent me some pix and info expressly for this purpose, let me tell you about the Brisbane Writers Festival!

Main news—I'll be there! I'll be there for two days of Word Play with the younger readers of Brisbane and surrounds, talking about how to think like an animal, build a fantasy world and write a short story.

Here's the Festival's text about themselves:

Brisbane Writers

I know, I know.

It's been a long, travelaceous time between blog posts and there is no excuse except that the days are not long enough.I'm home in Sydney now. The US trip was brilliant. The writerly bit with the Clarion West students was inspiring and intense; the touristy bit was also inspiring, awe-inspiring a lot of it (America, you do things so big!), and the meeting-tweeps bit was a whole bunch of fun.Now I

Reading tonight, University Bookstore, Seattle

Come if you can!