Monthly Archives: August 2018

Aug23

Twitter Turns to Geek Culture to Deal with #auspol #libspill

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What do we do when political upheaval makes it clear that we’ve reached the darkest possible timeline? We geek out. Check out these tweets of geekle coping with the Australian government going full Mean Girls-

Read more of my heavy hitting political coverage here.

Aug17

Margaret Morgan: #Robinpedia

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Author image found on Google Image Search, Imgflip has watermarked over the photographer’s watermark http://www.virginiaszaraz.com.au

Lawyer, scientist, scriptwriter and now author, Margaret Morgan is conquering the world one profession at a time. When she isn’t writing, and even when she is, Margaret resides in sunny Sydney with her trusted companion, Shadrak. Shadrak is an international scribe of mystery. He enjoys fingering parchment, sitting in comfy chairs, staring into the abyss, and refusing to eat his dinner.

Oh that Shadrak, he really boils my potato.

But enough about that charismatic bag of bones, let’s talk about Margaret’s debut novel, The Second Cure, published through Penguin Random House. Famed literary critic, Kerryn Goldsworthy, says that The Second Cure bleeds across at least five different genres; dystopian, political thriller, satire, domestic realism, and literary fiction. It has cats, a pandemic, some sex, political extremists, cats, a few laughs, lots of science and, most importantly, cats. It uses the idea that toxoplasma gondii has mutated to prefer human hosts and to become deadly to all species of cats. This means not only the end of cute cat videos, but also no lions or tigers or bears (oh my… okay, the bears are fine). At first people don’t seem too bothered by the feline death business, but once the effects on humans become more apparent, people losing their inhibitions and becoming way more into casual sexing up and wot not, political conservatives start clutching at their pearls.

It has been touted to get nods at next year’s Stella Prize, Miles Franklin Award, Aurealis, along with the various Premier’s Literary Awards. Although, Margaret is already no stranger to accolades having received acclaim for her librettos and television scripts, along with winning the 2010 3 Quark’s Daily Charm Quark Prize in Science.

Margaret came to be published after a chance meeting with Lex Hirst at Write NSW‘s Spec Fic Fest. Lex was an editor at Random Penguin House and Margaret took the opportunity to approach her and pitch. The rest, as you say, is history. Margaret went on to be published through Penguin Random House and Lex has recently taken up the role of Publisher at Pantera Press. So next time you see that the Spec Fic Fest is on, book your tickets and get on in there!

Find Margaret Morgan’s website here.

Find Margaret Morgan on Twitter here.

Find Margaret Morgan on Facebook here.

Find The Second Cure here or anywhere.

Find me twinning with Margaret Morgan in this pic taken by Pamela Freeman at the launch of The Second Cure held at Leadbelly through Better Read Than Dead below:

Read more about Robinpedia here.

Read about my experience of being a dyslexic writer here.

Read about my opinion on author brandinghere.

Buy my shit here.

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Aug2

Roanna Gonsalves: #Robinpedia

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Dr Roanna Gonsalves is an Australian author and radio presenter. She was born and brought up in Mumbai and moved to Australia in 1998. When she isn’t winning awards she’s taking selfies.

Dr Roanna is an advocate of literature as a selfie. She has described her short story collection The Permanent Resident as a literary selfie of country and a retweet of homage. She describes it as an empowering act to refocus the gaze of Australiana to more voices. Readers, critics and awards agree that she’s onto something with The Permanent Resident won the NSW Premier’s Literary Award Multicultural Prize and was longlisted for a Dobbie Literary Award.

But enough about Dr Roanna let’s talk about… actually no, not enough! I have so much more to tell you. She has a PhD from UNSW, she has received a Prime Minister’s Australia Asia Endeavour Award is co-founder of Southern Crossings, has a series of radio documentaries through Earshot ABC RN, and is the UNSW Copyright Agency Writer-in-Resident for 2018.

Read Dr Roanna Gonsalves See Me Showing You Me in Overland here.

Find Dr Roanna Gonsalves website here.

Tweet with Dr Roanna Gonsalves here.

Grab her Dr Roanna Gonsalves’ book here.

Read more about Robinpedia here.

Read about my experience of being a dyslexic writer here.

Read about my opinion on author brandinghere.

Buy my shit here.