Love writing? Curious about how to get published? Teaching creative writing? Come join a vibrant community of writers at Read, Write, Publish: Hobart on Monday 27th October! www.facebook.com/share/19hBVu... @utas.edu.au

The (idiosyncratic) Nobel Prize for Literature is announced tomorrow One Australian has the best the odds (Gerald Murnane), another (Alexis Wright) is seen as a genuine possibility (FWIW, if it's Tom Stoppard I'm here for all your media inquiries... 🤓) lithub.com/here-are-the...

2nd at the Coastal Pathway 64km (5h12) (and a 50km PB (4h) en route) 🥳 Wonderful crew, good running weather, lovely day out all round Now for a nap and all the food

Running the first Coastal Pathway 64km Ultra on Sunday 🏃‍♂️ Latrobe -> Ulverstone -> Latrobe Hoping for dry(ish) and still(ish) 🌦️ As always, it will be hardest on the (wonderful) crew...😬

Looking forward to chatting about Kate Kruimink's novel 'Heartsease' with @helenshield.bsky.social on ABC Hobart, tonight at 21:15 2025 Tasmanian Premier's Prize for Fiction Winner, with, among other things, a fair bit of middle-class Hobart in it...

"You can be an academic badass and a track goddess" BA in English (Cam) *and* 200m silver medallist (22.14s) at the World Athletics Championships If you need a sporting role model, you could do a lot worse than Amy Hunt... www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/s...

This was a joy to listen to - intelligent, humble, informed, and, unexpectedly, intensely moving. I cannot imagine a better case being made for King Lear. Thankyou Douglas Schatz, Mark Lawson, and Michael Billington 🎭 open.spotify.com/episode/4od4...

Teaching HEN319: Literary Cultures @utasenglish.bsky.social, and the treatment of Meanjin is an obscene paragon of what we're studying www.crikey.com.au/2025/09/08/m...

Grateful for @jamesley's most recent SRB piece. The key (the call to arms is elsewhere): Neo-liberalism's "transference of the emancipatory language of rights and freedoms to capital makes the rights and freedoms of actual people secondary and conditional." sydneyreviewofbooks.com/reviews/bast...

Enjoyed Diana Souhami chatting Bryher, Sylvia Beach, Gertrude Stein, Natalie Barney, and alternative titles for her book: 'No Modernism Without Women Who Had Special Relationships With Other Women That They May Not Have Known How To Define' or 'Lesbians Galore!' open.spotify.com/episode/4qF7...

A pleasure to chat with @helenshield.bsky.social about Zadie Smith's 'The Fraud' - historical fiction that begins with a floor of a house collapsing under the weight of its books. 📚📚📚📚📚 Arguably a consummation devoutly to be wished... Here, from 2:27:30 www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

The launch of a new Tasmanian publisher (Evercreech Editions) and a new Tasmanian novel (My Heart at Evening, by Konrad Muller), on August 7 at Fullers. Launched by Geordie Williamson, Adam Ouston and Richard Flanagan. www.fullersbookshop.com.au/event/my-hea...

Repeal the “inequitable, “pernicious,” and “perverse" Jobs Ready Graduate Policy! openpetition.org/!repealjrg

24 hours in Melbourne: Sport (2/2) Lions! Wallabies! MCG! (Rugby Union!) A game that I suspect many more than 90,000 might claim to have attended...

24 hours in Melbourne: Literature (1/2) Homer! Virgil! Bookshops! Library!

There is a cloud over Launceston this morning.

Work in libraries? Tell me a bit about your experiences with library work and mental health (as well as your perceptions of them). Anonymous survey running through August 1. Details in the form for more info.

Chatted about Adam Ouston's 'Waypoints' - and reading it in a glass box in Hobart... 🛩️ The conversation's here, from 02:28:30 www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

Sam Jinks - Mortal Reflections - at Launceston's QVMAG. Life size, hyperreal sculpture; intensely moving.

New equity in teaching survey is dropping as part of our ACSES-supported project, "Supporting academics with inclusive & equitable curricula, teaching and learning"!

Just published an article about WritersBLOCK/ReadersBLOCK, written with the project's instigator, Dr Lucy Christopher @utas.edu.au - it's here @aunz.theconversation.com theconversation.com/we-spent-a-m...

"WRITE ABOUT THE THINGS OF THE WORLD WITH NO GLAZING" Lockwood -brilliantly- identifies the specific value of reading Plath's collected prose alongside the journals and the poetry, saying something important about her work that we didn't see before. If Plath matters to you (too), read this.

Western States has started! Weather looks consistent with records...🤞 Kudos to the livestream for gender equal coverage. Love our sport.

If I'm back with Stoppard, then, in my case, it's also time to go back to Wittgenstein... ...though, in this case, it's not only Ludwig

Returning to Stoppard, and 'Brazil' (1985) couldn't be more timely. Newly learned that the final shot - the torture chamber - is, in fact, Croydon.

Something I wrote on Gail Jones's latest theconversation.com/mystery-outb...

The real impact is on the ground, but still nice to see which lamentable pun (h/t @seanmicallef.bsky.social) the WritersBLOCK/ReadersBLOCK project would inspire in the local press...

“Purpose,” Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about a prominent but tumultuous family in Chicago, won the Tony Award for best play on Sunday. Follow live updates. nyti.ms/4mTzBme

WritersBLOCK/ReadersBLOCK started today: highly recommended. 📖 Two hours of reading Adam Ouston's 'Waypoints' passed in minutes; conscious of focused, creative work being done by Dr Lucy Christopher next door. 📝 Hopefully normalising focused literary engagement; clearly new for some passersby!

Participating in Dr Lucy Christopher's WritersBLOCK/ReadersBLOCK project tomorrow... 📖 ... spending two undisturbed hours reading Tasmanian literature in a glass fronted block in Salamanca Square, Hobart, while a Tasmanian writes in the block alongside... 📝 ...hope it's as idyllic as it sounds!

This Russel Herneman cartoon accompanied me through my PhD. I have no idea what the going rate is for an original, but this one had already gone when I asked. So I was beyond thrilled to receive this in the post: a signed print, with a dedication that I couldn't be happier about. Thanks Russel!

What's so funny about research? 🥸 The awesome @tilknowles.bsky.social is talking with a new generation of humour researchers: what are we working on, why, and how? 🤓 While I'm really proud to be talking with her for ep.1, I can't wait to hear the ep.s to come... open.spotify.com/episode/1BGL...

Steph's not just an athlete and a mother; she's one of the most important advocates for equality in the ultra world. One of first, if not *the* first, to publically call for the biggest races to allow women to defer their entries around pregnancy. See: www.outsideonline.com/2236961/why-... (2017)

Enjoying - as ever - @theplaypodcast.bsky.social ; but especially this edition about Ionesco's 'The Rhinoceros', since @utas.edu.au has its own life size rhinoceros, who hangs out, appropriately, just outside the Annexe Theatre... ...she's called Mavis, apparently.

From the new seasons of Andor and Black Mirror, to The Narrow Road to the Deep North – May’s must-watch TV proves time flies when your options are this good.

This month's streaming recommendations at @aunz.theconversation.com - including Last One Laughing UK, which is specifically designed to demonstrate competing theories of humour 😂 (Odd bonus fact: the French version begins with a clip from the Australian 🤷) theconversation.com/feuding-mob-...

Really excited to listen to this! Bergson is central to my current @utasenglish.bsky.social Venn diagram: reading Proust with the Modernist Reading Group, and teaching theories of humour to Honours students... 🤓 and/or 🥸 (And my copy is on order, @emilyherring.bsky.social , honest!)

Looking forward to chatting with @helenshield.bsky.social on ABC Hobart at about 21:10 tonight, about why things - like #LastOneLaughing - are quite so funny... 🤡 youtu.be/-HeAAhlNNgw?...

Why do we, whatever our linguistic or cultural background, love watching comedians trying not to laugh at each other? @drfergusedwards.bsky.social writes for @aunz.theconversation.com "It works because it’s funny – but it’s not about comedy. It’s about laughter." utas.au/LOL #LastOneLaughing

The most read Arts+Culture article on @theconversation.com from @utas.edu.au over 2025 YTD 🙂 The most read article from @utas.edu.au from any section over the past week 😀 10,000+ reads since Tuesday 😂 Not bad for a first article 🤣 theconversation.com/were-hardwir...

Just seen that @thenewdaily.bsky.social has picked up my article, and I do like the wording of their front page link! www.thenewdaily.com.au/life/enterta...

Is there ANYONE who doesn't like having jokes explained to them? Thanks to the Honours students @utasenglish.bsky.social who are enjoying the extended, twelve week version...

What's so funny about #LastOneLaughing? My first article for @aunz.theconversation.com: theories of humour, definitions of comedy, and why Lou Sanders didn't even reach her set-up line 🤣 Appropriately for a programme with Jimmy Carr, there's a Czech involved theconversation.com/were-hardwir...

Australasian modernists, the abstract deadline for the AMSN guaranteed panel at MSA 2025 is one week away. Join us in Boston! amsn.org.au/events/

Perfect weather to summit Black Bluff; views to Cradle, Barn, and Ossa. The only one on the hill today. Terrible.

Hiked in for a night on Lake Rhona. Wet and windy on Saturday, but beautiful on Sunday. As @kudelka.bsky.social reminds us: Tasmania is awful, do not come here.

A new publication! 🥳 The entry on Stoppard's 'Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth' is now live at the Literary Encyclopaedia 🐶💀, 🚗🦉🧙‍♀️ I was helped by two very generous editors; thanks to them both www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.p...

Celebrated Douglas Adams's birthday by talking all things 'The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy' with Tracey Strong on ABC Hobart yesterday... ... so I'm now off to find a decent cup of tea while holding my towel... (The conversation's here, from 02:29:00) www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

Spent the morning with honours students @utasenglish.bsky.social talking about 'The Comedy of Errors' and the works of @oldfortunatus.bsky.social and Northrop Frye. An unalloyed pleasure in itself, and also a chance to reflect on that time The X-Men met Frye and chatted about Blake's poetry...

Looking forward to running 101km from Stanley to Wynyard tomorrow! Beautiful weather forecast so hopefully a good day out...