Category: Writing

  • Ep 67 Learning with a beginner’s mindset with Darryl ‘The Bird Guy’ Jones

    Ep 67 Learning with a beginner’s mindset with Darryl ‘The Bird Guy’ Jones

    ‘I regard my seventh book, Curlews on Vulture Street … as my first real writing. You know, this is the one I’m most proud of. It was the biggest challenge and the one I enjoyed the most.’ Darryl Jones is a Professor of Ecology at Griffith University in Brisbane, where for over 30 years he […]

  • Time travelling in Winnipeg

    Time travelling in Winnipeg

    All through high school and university, I was desperate for one thing – to leave my home in Winnipeg, Canada, and explore the world. I’d never travelled outside the country, beyond the few American states across the border. But I had neighbours who’d lived all over the world. When I was 22 and on the verge […]

  • Ep 66 How to say goodbye with Jackie Bailey, author of The Eulogy

    Ep 66 How to say goodbye with Jackie Bailey, author of The Eulogy

    How do you work through a major edit on your book when you have a traumatic brain injury? And how do you write about the death of a loved one while you’re grieving? Jackie Bailey, author of debut novel The Eulogy and professional deathwalker, joins us to discuss her experience with both. Jackie Bailey is […]

  • Ep 65 What people don’t know with author Al Campbell

    Ep 65 What people don’t know with author Al Campbell

    ‘For most people, when they become a carer, it happens in an instant.’ This is the way it happened for Al Campbell, Brisbane-based author and mother to two autistic sons. In episode 65 of James and Ashley Stay at Home, Al joins us to discuss her debut book The Keepers, a fictionalised account of her […]

  • Keen to improve your creative non-fiction skills?

    Keen to improve your creative non-fiction skills?

    I know I recently came out as a crime writer – and I love crime fiction! One of my absolute favourite authors is John Sandford. That said, I think my first love is creative non-fiction. In fact, I love it – eep! – even more than fiction, because of its basis in real-life events and facts. If […]

  • Ep 64 If you kids don’t behave, I’ll turn this podcast around

    Ep 64 If you kids don’t behave, I’ll turn this podcast around

    Heads up, episode 64 of James and Ashley Stay at Their Respective Homes in Separate Cities is full of spoilers for Denizen – but this post isn’t. If you haven’t read Denizen yet (where have you been?), you can still enjoy reading about our special double-guest episode, and then get even more excited to go […]

  • Success story – Curlews on Vulture Street

    ‘Plenty is going on between humans and wildlife. This intersection of realms is where I have been dwelling now for several decades; the strange, exhilarating place where people and nature mix, often uneasily, trying to understand what the heck is going on.’ – from the introduction to Curlews on Vulture Street Curlews on Vulture Street: Cities, […]

  • Ep 63 How not to write a memoir with author Bronwyn Birdsall

    Ep 63 How not to write a memoir with author Bronwyn Birdsall

    After contracting glandular fever as a child (aka mono), Bronwyn Birdsall ended up with such bad chronic fatigue, she missed six months of school. This was at a time when there was still significant stigma surrounding the illness. Bronwyn grew up in Sydney. At age 24, she moved to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and worked […]

  • On writing and persistence

    In 2017, my manuscript was one of five shortlisted for the Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Award. None of the writers on the list had a book published at the time. Here’s an excerpt from the announcement: I started the creative non-fiction manuscript that became Full of Donkey in 2010. I had my first essay, […]