Latest blogs

I’m absolutely thrilled that my debut novel The Hands of Pianists was last week shortlisted https://www.arts.gov.au/pm-literary-awards/shortlist/hands-pianists for the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. The fiction-section winner will be decided on 13 December from five finalists. What the judges thought of my book simply bowled me over. It’s an ‘extraordinary piece of fiction … with a brilliant sense of darkness and an irresistible dramatic power’. Its writer is ‘of the very first rank’. He has produced a work ‘that reminds us of …

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I’m honoured to be among the first authors to help American entrepreneur Ben Fox add flesh to the skeleton of a brilliant idea at https://shepherd.com/. A book-lover and tech expert, he wants readers to be able to access easily the tomes they enjoy reading. So Shepherd, the website, is sub-titled ‘Discover the best books’. Ben describes it as browsing in your favorite bookstore ‘reimagined for the online world’. Authors, experts and creators recommend books in many categories. You search under …

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I haven’t reviewed restaurants professionally for almost a decade. But I’d like to comment a little on a new restaurant called lene, its first letter fashionably lower-case. Owner-chef Cameron Williams is 25 and has an impressive background in cooking. Apprenticed at 17 to Jacques Reymond, whose comprehensive and rigorous culinary skills I’ve admired and written about for decades, he went on to work in Michelin-starred restaurants in London and Copenhagen before returning to his home town Melbourne with a dream …

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