All the Presidents' Literature

"It's an uncommon coincidence. The solitary existence of the writer, recasting the world alone in a room, generally unfits him for the intensely sociable, collegial life of practical politics, just as most successful politicians would as soon turn into Trappist monks as face the daily silence and seclusion of the writer's study. [...] "Yet writing has sometimes been as important an accomplishment for an American president as his skill as a general or diplomat, as when Jefferson, Madison and John Adams wrote the United States into being by lamplight, and Lincoln scribbled disconnected sentences on scraps of paper that he tucked for safe-keeping inside his hat." - Jonathan Raban. From "All the Presidents' Literature" at WSJ.com.

First Pages Prize official longlist.

My novel, The Gatherer, made the longlist for the First Pages Prize: www.firstpagesprize.com/longlist-2021 You can find the shortlist here: www.firstpagesprize.com/shortlist-2021

Somewhere a Dog Barked

Link: "Somewhere a Dog Barked" Pick up just about any novel and you'll find a throwaway reference to a dog, barking in the distance. By Rosecrans Baldwin: "As a reader of novels and not much else, I keep a running list of authorial whims. Male writers of the Roth/Updike generation, for example, love the word cunt . Also, where novelists once adorned their prose with offhand French bon mots , Spanish now appears. Here's another: Novelists can't resist including a dog barking in the distance."

Enough

I might regret doing this, but here it is: "enough." I wrote this poem during the first lock down in Melbourne, Australia in (the soon to be historical) 2020. I sent the poem out to a variety of publications, only for it to not get published. I nearly sent it to The Melbourne Writer's Group, but I had a conversation with my brain, who said, "hey... everyone else hated it, so they will hate it too". So... anyway... I am putting it here. If I don't put it here now, I will have to wait until 2070 before this poem becomes mildly interesting again, and only as an artifact of this moment in time. Also... this is for the last of the revolutionaries... and the first sandwich thief... and the gummy-bear man. Yeah, you know who you are. If you're one of these people and you hate this, then... go... eat some cheese. Enough After seven hours on your feet, you still make time to pack someone else’s tomorrow’s lunch. You feed your children or your parents, because: li...

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