katelarsenkeys

Reading and writing in 2017

Phew. What a readerly/writerly adventure 2017 turned out to be. Thanks to my four-month Reading and Writing Sabbatical, I screamed past my previous personal-best record and ended the year with a whopping 105 books under my belt (averaging just over 2 books each week – not including repeats, journals or children’s books). Huzzah.

Books about modern Australia

As usual, in the lead-up to Invasion / Survival Day, I’ve been revisiting the list of books I recommend that provide a better reflection of life in contemporary Australia (by which I mean the last 20 years) than a national(istic) holiday on the worst possible date.

2016 in reading and writing

OK, the results are in. The spreadsheet has been updated. And just short of last year’s personal best, it looks like I averaged 1.4 books a week over the course of the 2016 reading year, finishing 72 in total (not including repeats or literary journals).

Sticks and Stones @ #EWF16

Are technologies such as Twitter and texting degrading the English language? Does it matter that the 2015 Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year is an emoji?

2015 in reading and writing

So many books, so little time. But over the course of the last reading year, I averaged 1.5 books a week – finishing 79 in total, plus every edition (bar the most recent of each) of Kill Your Darlings, Overland, Meanjin and Poetry magazine. Phew.

One step forward

When I moved back to Melbourne in 2011, I traded my London-based arts and disability job for an almost identical one running Arts Access Australia (AAA).

Read what you know: the comfort of the familiar

At the start of each new year, I look back on all the books that I have read the year before. In 2013, it was a list that spanned a lifetime of reading, with books from all the decades of my life. More than ever, it was also a list full of books that I found myself returning to for a second (or third, or fourth) time.

Publishers, you need to pay the writers

As an organisation that supports, advocates for and employs writers of all shapes and sizes, Writers Victoria [where I am CEO] has been paying close attention to recent discussions about writers being asked to work for free.

A nice hot cup of mediocriTEA

I support the National Disability Insurance Scheme. So I guess that means that I support the Every Australia Counts campaign, because they support the NDIS too.

In fact, so far, they’re the number one advocate for a NDIS. In spite of the organisation that runs it and the campaign itself not being disability-led. In spite of the fact that they seem to focus more on carers than on people with disability themselves. In spite of the fact they’re lobbying for the exact recommendations of the Productivity Commission Report and not what needs to come after that. In spite of the fact that they’re talking about wrapping up the campaign before the NDIS is even a reality. And in spite of their most significant piece of campaign activity being a pleasant sit-down over a nice cup of tea!

Where oh where is the disability rights movement in Australia when you need it? And why aren’t we – as individual disability advocates and allies – demanding more?

Don’t play us, pay us

It’s not been a bad few years for artists with disability in Australia.