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From The Desk Of… Emmyrose Hobbs
Sharona
Nov 30, 2011
Hello. I’m Emmyrose Hobbs, Express Media Online Media and Communications Intern. Nice to meet you. I spend some of my week hanging out in Express Media HQ coming up with ways to interact with and let you guys know about our lit journal Voiceworks and other bits and bobs that Express Media do.
Internet Cool
Rosanna Stevens
Oct 11, 2011
A warning: this isn’t a post filled with fantastic links to Youtube phenomenons, like My Drunk Kitchen. This is about the kind of internet cool we all thought we had when we invented our really benign, daggy adolescent email addresses.
The Sketchbook Project
Nikita Vanderbyl
Jun 29, 2010
For those writers and artists who like Moleskines, and I’ve noticed there are a few of you. The Sketchbook Project is an opportunity to take part in a touring exhibition in the US. Sign up by 31 October 2010 and you’ll be sent a Moleskine to transform, return it and it’ll tour the US next year. Sketchbooks specifically tour Brooklyn NY, Austin TX, San Francisco CA, Portland ME, Atlanta GA and Chicago IL. There is a small fee for the Moleskine and the shipping, but it might be a small price to pay for international fame.
Tweeting Work In Progress
Elizabeth Redman
Jun 22, 2010
Sharing your work with others can be a terrifying experience. Readers can be pretty brutal in their criticism, though, so it’s key to workshop and polish your writing as much as possible before publication.
One helpful hint doing the rounds of the internet this week is to share snippets of your work on Twitter. Pick one line and post it with the hashtag #wip, suggests blogger Natania Barron. This will force you to look closely at your writing while easing you into the process of sharing your work, she adds.
Judging a book by its cover… or not?
Nikita Vanderbyl
Jun 15, 2010
I was perusing the shelves of my local op shop this afternoon and in between eyeing a giant poster of a young Brad Pitt and several framed Eschers, I found a colourful novel. I did something that we’re repeatedly told not to do, but which books themselves rely on to be picked up of book shelves – I judged a book by its cover.
The hand drawn illustrations of Tom Adams leaped from the cover of Farewell to the King (1970) by Pierre Schoendoerffer and into my hands. It wasn’t until I was at my keyboard with the official site in my view that I knew I’d seen the colourful hand of this artist somewhere before.
It was at the end of an episode of Doctor Who not less. The Unicorn and the Wasp is among my favourite David Tennant episodes and not just for its 1920s set and costume design. The episode was about Agatha Christie meeting a giant wasp-like alien, which subsequently appeared on the cover of Death in the Clouds. Death in the Clouds, among others of Christie’s novels, was illustrated by Tom Adams. It was the same cover which Tennant held up in the concluding minutes of the Unicorn and the Wasp.
I ended up reading the well preserved jacket of Farewell to the King and discovering a post colonial epic set in war torn Borneo of 1942 which I will now read in my study break. Stay tuned for the possible joys/sorrows of picking a book at random and then reading it… will judging a book by its cover, and running with it, stack up against sticking to the canon?
I hope to answer this question soon. And others, such as should we read what we’re told? I.e. should we follow the big old Harold Bloom cannon? Or should we just jump right in and risk getting bitten by a big alien wasp?
Lend me your ears…
Sam Cooney
Jun 02, 2010
…so I can listen to more literary-based aural magic. Seriously, I can’t get enough of the stuff – my own pair of cranium-based listening protrusions isn’t sufficient.
Seriously, do you guys realise how much amazingness there is out there that you can chuck on your iPod, iPhone or iPad? iPeed with excitement when I found out. Here are some of my favourites, currently using up every speck of space on my iPhone.
'be my pen pal…or else'
Sam Cooney
May 27, 2010
You may remember a few weeks back when Maddie Crofts posted about how much she loves getting mail – how she uses Postcrossing.com to find friends in different countries (God help them).
Anddemonstrating our penchant for all things epistolary, in a different post VW editor Jojo bemoaned the decline of letter writing (due to emailing and other technology) and the difficulty of recording such an intangible medium for future reference.
Well, I have a solution of sorts, and it’s a wonderfully unique one.
Famous Literary Characters: Possible Papparazzi Fodder?
Sam Cooney
Apr 30, 2010
Bailey Kennedy over at FlavorWire has asked the question: how would some of the most famous literary characters fare if they had to exist in today’s real-time pressurised fame container world?
As they say:
“What if your favorite literary characters were subjected to the same level of scrutiny? We have compiled a list of fictional characters that in today’s day and age would be tabloid sensations for their turbulent romances and dramatic downward spirals.”
Please consider the one-fingered typists out there
Johannes Jakob
Apr 21, 2010
As a follow up to the Temporary Tatoo’s post, here are some psychologically foolproof coping mechanisms for everyone who is hot for prescriptivist grammar. These include reasons for people writing ‘u’ instead of ‘you,’ and an equally entertaining self-deception technique to use when people write ‘alot’ instead of ‘a lot,’ which frankly I have never seen anywhere, but facts should never stand in the way of good comedy.
I have been told that Voiceworks’ Raf has argued for the abolishment of the apostrophe altogether, because dumbos out there just can’t get it right. Where are the politicians capturing his vote? Why won’t anyone face the big issues?
It's All Their Fault
Johannes Jakob
Apr 16, 2010
Over at Viceland is the first of five extracts from Neil Boorman’s It’s All Their Fault, as well as an interview with said truth slinger. He drops some brutal statistics about how, financially, past generations have screwed younger generations in a major way.
Every baby in the UK is now born owing £22,500 – his or her share of the £1.4 trillion credit crunch bailout. Added to which the average student graduates owing more than £20,000. Add all this together, and you’re left with a generation owing more than £40,000 before they’ve earned their first pay packet. That’s if you can get a job; there are 2.5 million people unemployed in the UK. One million of them are under 25.
This is a huge issue that doesn’t seem to get the attention it needs, in the same way we did, and still do, repress climate change on both a policy and personal level. For baby boomers it’s not a problem (except ethically, I mean), and for everyone else it’s already a fixed reality. The whole things feels so inevitable that the inequalities and injustices don’t really jump out as such, they just seem like the way the world works now. If you think about, say, feminism, that way of thinking is always the first mental block that needs to be overcome with these things. Here’s hoping the next four extracts of Neil’s book, at some point, deal with how to achieve that, because facts alone don’t really seem to hold much sway anymore. Still, hopefully the whole thing gets plenty of coverage and gets through to the right people.
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