Perth Words… exploring possibilities.

Your art, the things you love, make up your life. Your life is your art, because life is how you make it, life is your blank canvas, or your empty stage, or whatever you want it to be. Self-expression is a very important part of a fulfilling existence.- Ella Mae

This week I’m celebrating the release of my newest children’s book, The Seven Day Dragon, a quirky, warm-hearted story for eight to 11-year-olds about family, relationships and accepting what is, while still seeing that life is full of possibilities when minds are open.

The book features illustrations by debut illustrator Ella Mae and today it’s my pleasure to introduce her with a behind the scenes look at the way she works and an insight into her thoughts on art and life…

You were only 14 when you were offered the opportunity to illustrate The Seven Day Dragon for Serenity…

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

Last week, on a flight from Perth to Melbourne, I began reading The Casual Vacancy, a novel that has been sitting unopened on my bookshelves since I bought it a several years ago. I’d opened it a few times but then closed it and put it back on the shelf, so now I hoped that the three-and-a-half-hour flight might force me to get to grips with it. I’ll admit that as the seat-belt sign went off I wished I’d chosen something else for the journey, but ten minutes later I was wishing I’d started it sooner. The novel is set in the first decade of the 21st century but I was captivated by the recognition of so much that was familiar to me from living in a village near a small town in England from the 1950s to the eighties.   Initially the petty…

A brand new trailer has dropped for Kriv Stenders’ Australia Day ahead of its world premiere at the Sydney Film Festival.

The trailer shows an edgier side to Stenders, who’s best known for his family friendly Red Dog film’s, and marks the third collaboration between Stenders and Bryan Brown who starred  in Kill Me Three Times and Red Dog: True Blue.

Sean Keenan’s career is going from strength-to-strength and he looks to be at the top of his game here – making us even more excited to see him star as John Grant in the upcoming Wake In Fright telemovie.

On Australia Day three young people from diverse cultural backgrounds are running scared.

April is a 14-year-old Indigenous teen fleeing from a car crash.

17-year-old Iranian boy Sami is running from a crime he didn’t commit.

Lan, from China, is escaping sexual slavery.

Elsewhere there’s Sonya (Shari Sebbens)…

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the Summer issue of The High Window. We are delighted by the growing international interest in our online journal and printing press. This issue sees work from across the age spectrum, from Sophie Reisbord, aged 15, to Maurice Rutherford who is 95 this year, with a range of ages in between!

In previous issues detectable themes have appeared in the submissions accepted, but the poems in issue 6 are incredibly diverse. What strikes us is the language that crackles at sometimes subtle and sometimes loud decibels, and that the poems are profoundly confident in themselves, as if the poets had chiselled their thoughts to the point of no return: this is what I have to say. As Peter Daniel’s writes in ‘Down and Up’:

On the upper side of the cloud cover, God sits deciding
what’s on the cards, sharpening the moon like a sickle.