Clockwork Jungle and Festival Season!

Subbed a story to Shimmer zine’s special edition last night. It’s a steampunk retelling of Aesop’s ‘The Fox and the Crow’… we’ll see what happens. This one was fully a case of ‘It won’t get published if you keep in on your desktop’ so I decided to send it in…  

In other news, it’s Festival Season in Adelaide! Woo hoo! Writers’ Week begins on Sunday, and since my contract at Flinders has just expired (temporarily – they’re working on resuscitating it as I type this with my fingers crossed…) I intend to spend the whole week lapping up writerly goodness. Draw cards for me are Margo Lanagan, Lian Hearn, Geraldine Brooks, Peter Carey, Ian McEwan, Don Watson, David Malouf, Robert Manne (Germaine Greer, too, but more for the hype than for any real admiration of her work.)

The Fringe is also on – we went to see the ‘Tom Tom Club’ at the Garden of Unearthly Delights on Saturday – it was insanely fantastic – and also caught ‘Akoustic Odyssey’ at the Irish Club – absolutely brilliant. (Not to self: buy their CD).  I’m off to see ‘Township Stories’ (A nail-biting thriller set against the backdrop of life in a post-apartheid South African township) tomorrow night, thanks to my lovely friend Sara’s luck at winning work raffles, and to the Festival of the Arts, which is also on at the moment. 

We’ll be dancing the night away at the Persian Gardens on Saturday night (Festival), then Dr Sexington and I are off to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream — care of Tim Supple and what promises to be an excellent troupe of actors and dancers from India and Sri Lanka — on Sunday (Festival). Monday night it’s all about Chunky Move’s digital landscape in ‘Glow’ (Festival) as well as the Random House party for Writers’ Week. On Tuesday it’s Picador’s turn to supply me with an evening’s entertainment (and champagne) at their WW party; and then on the 6th the good Doctor and I will swoon to the sounds of Cecil Corbel’s harp (Fringe). We’ve got a Canadian comic on the 8th (Fringe), and then a documentary about the real ninjas on the 9th (Fringe). Capping off our Festival season is a play about a crazy Poe wannabe – ‘I Might Be Edgar Allan Poe’ on the 14th (Fringe).

Huzzah! I love Festival Season.