Perth Words… exploring possibilities.

The sight of this little boy walking ahead of me up the Comeragh Mountains here in Co. Waterford made me wonder how childhood Sundays could vary so dramatically across the globe.

This little guy was with his parents and baby sister. He had fallen in love with a rock and wanted to bring it home to keep forever and ever. His parents tried to persuade him to leave it with all the other rocks or even to hide it so that he could see it the next time they visited. But he was determined to carry it all the way back to the car.

He was an energetic, bubbly kid and the family seemed really happy as they made their way back to their car with a now empty picnic basket.

What a contrast to the thousands of children walking ~ fleeing ~ war torn places like Syria on this…

Literature merged with art, music, dance and spirituality in a soul-opening embrace at the inaugural New Norcia Writers Festival yesterday.

The festival, conceived by The West Australian literary editor William Yeoman, was set in the grounds of Australia’s only monastic town – New Norcia. The setting, a touch of Europe in the Australian wheatbelt, was well chosen, allowing participants to retreat inside themselves while reaching out in a communal embrace of reading, writing, and art.

Sessions were spread over the grounds, providing ample photo opportunities for me, as well as a rare chance to be welcomed into the midst of the monastic community. Session one – a reading from Liz Byrski’s non-fiction book In Love and War: Nursing Heroes interspersed with excerpts from Richard Hillary’s The Last Enemy in St Gertrude’s Chapel. Moving, thought-provoking and at times funny (for this Lutheran-raised woman, it did feel naughty to hear words  like penis and sex in…

Interview by Nicole Melanson ~

Sandra Leigh Price lives in Sydney. She graduated from the Australian National University, Canberra, with a Double Major in English Literature and Drama, and co-established a small theatre company before moving to Sydney. She has written both for the stage and screen. The Bird’s Child is her debut novel.

Sandra’s website

Twitter: @thevelvetnap

HOW DID YOU GET STARTED?

I’ve always been a storyteller. As a child I was quite shy and loved the world of the library and books. I wrote lengthy stories about animals and injustices. As an adolescent I became involved with drama, and I loved dissolving into a character and the world of the play. While at University I wrote poetry and also reviews and interviews for Muse Magazine in Canberra, as well as working as a professional storyteller in schools and in a Fairy shop. I spent an amazing time in…

The Beast’s Garden by Kate Forsyth
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I loved Beauty by Robin McKinley and I adore Kate Forsyth so I thought that The Beast’s Garden would be a wonderful magical retelling. Despite the horribleness of the setting (I meant the nasty gruesome war rather than the actual place), I thought that this would be an excellent foil for Beauty’s courage and generosity. In the end, whilst I have very much enjoyed the story, I’d say that The Beast’s Garden is inspired by (rather than a retelling of) ‘The Singing, Springing Lark’, the Grimm Brothers’ version of Beauty and The Beast.

‘The Singing, Springing Lark’ is quite a bit different than the well-known tale of Beauty and The Beast and if you know your literature, you’d know that Grimm Brothers’ version will be much darker. This means that our heroine must be very determined, intelligent, brave…