Angela Meyer's Blog, page 3

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Hello, old friends. If you would like to read some of my writing before the novel comes out next year, you’ll find short pieces (fiction, poetry, memoir) here.

My debut novel, A Superior Spectre, acquired by Peter Bishop Books

I’m excited, delighted, nervous… It’s been quite a journey to get to this point. If you’ve been reading this blog for the last 10 years – well, you’ve been along for much of the ride (thank you). I hope you’ll enjoy it when it comes out in 2018 (I believe around August).

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Here’s the official press release, via AAPS:

The debut novel by Melbourne writer and Echo commissioning editor Angela Meyer will be the inaugural fiction title of the recently established ‘Peter Bishop Books’ imprint at Vent...

What I’m Reading, for the Meanjin blog

I lost [my enthusiasm] for a while, recently. Another part of me took over, a part that couldn’t make those connections, couldn’t really envision those pathways. Every now and then, a lamp flickered and I caught sight of a few stones. For the most part though, I lost my capacity. It was an effort to believe, to be enthused, to plan. I felt alien to myself. I’ve had symptoms of both anxiety and depression since adolescence, but they have been relatively mild in comparison to what I have seen o...

Wild Gestures by Lucy Durneen

[image error]I launched Lucy Durneen’sWild Gestureson 11 January at Buck Mulligan’s Irish whiskey bar-bookshop. This was my speech.

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Lucy Durneen’s Wild Gestures is a stunning collection of stories, so full of insight on the unconquerable spaces between people, the missed or never possible opportunities, the mistakes that couldn’t be otherwise, the yearning for things we can’t or shouldn’t have, and bearing the weight of it all – of the reaching and yearning and trying to hold and knowing we can’t.

But...

2016 in reading

My favouritereads in 2016 were

The Abyssinian Contortionist by David Carlin

Along with his earlier bookabout his father’s suicide, I think Carlin is one of the warmest experimental (in a creative nonfic sense) writers working in Aus. This book follows the story of – and the story of David’s friendship with – Ethiopian/Australian circus performer Sosina Wogayehu. It’s compelling and beautifully self-aware.

The High Places by Fiona McFarlane

Just a perfect story collection. Stories with depth,...

All the love

What makes two people in a long-term loving relationship decide to let others in? For every couple, the reasons will be entirely different. For my ex-partner and myself, who explored the option of non-monogamy towards the end of our relationship, the reasons were varied. What I’m fascinated by is the amount of people I know and have encountered since then who are in, or have been in, open relationships. For some, it is definitely about sex – one-time encounters with strangers, fulfilling vari...

Burning and pressing

I have not blogged for the longest time since I started LiteraryMinded, in 2007. But I use other forms the way I used to use this, and I write pieces both longer and shorter, both well thought-out (essays) and blasted (mini reviews or moments on Instagram or Twitter).

Like this essay about literary bisexuality forKillings.

Like pieces I have coming up in Antic and Overland.

And then sketches in my notebook. Bad poems in my phone notes.

And I’ve just started oil painting.

I read slower, now, o...

‘Keys to Success’ in Cordite 51.1: Umami

What are my keys to success? Click to find out.

(Am I now a poet? Selected by Luke Davies – woo!)

An unforgettable festival moment

Two days agoI did something that terrified me. I joined the open mic at a reading where everyone in the room was starkers. Krissy Kneen, a friend and an author I’ve long admired, was the feature reader. I was one of the last to get up on the open mic—everyone was being so brave, reading about pain, love, loss, sex, self-harm, sickness, and blue juices (Krissy, there), so I thought: do it. Fuck, why not? As David Stavanger said, standing there in the buff, ‘Look at us, we’re just meat.’ It wa...

‘What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how ...

‘What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an Angel! in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?’

—Hamlet