January Roundup

Well, I’m having my ups and downs with acceptances and rejections, with my two micros bombing in Oz, but another being accepted in the UK for Carolin Smailes‘ charity project. The longer Oz bomb now has been neatly tucked away with artwork by Sharon Ratheiser on my Writings blog.

But I also have some exciting news I can share once the programme of the 12th International Conference on the Short Story in English is up. And I’m really pleased to see Back Burning featured at Australian Writers Rock! I wonder if I could be considered a mid-list writer, since the book is still modestly selling since its 2007 publication.

On 16 January, I went to a book launch and poetry reading. Julia Latja-Novak launched her prizewinning research as the book, Live Poetry: An Integrated Approach to Poetry in Performance and Irish poets, Siobhan Mac Mahon and Neil McCarthy gave terrific performances.

Fred Leebron’s in town offering free craft talks/workshops Thursday and Friday at the University of Vienna as part of his outreach for a Pan-European Low-Residency MfA due to kick off this year. I’m sorry to miss these, but Thursday I’ll be on the train to Geneva for the 8th Geneva Writers’ Conference where I’ll be attending workshops and submitting work to the eagle eyes of a critiquing group.

And when I get back I’ll be deep into preparations for my four flash fiction workshops at the Writers Studio here in Vienna.

Oh, and I nearly forgot – AstridL tells me she’s been interviewed.

Gotta go pack now. More when I’m back from Geneva.