Mar 17, 2016 | Belonging, Your Stories
“I grew up in this Asian bubble in Sunnybank (Brisbane). You know you have people who have been here twenty, thirty years and they still don’t speak a lot of English….” “I never felt a big part of wider Australia because of racism and stuff. But then I...
Feb 19, 2016 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
“As a species we fundamentally evolved to care and nurture, initially our nuclear family, but ultimately our hunger-gatherer tribe, and that has imbued us with certain neural connections. And what I mean by that is that to have what we call a theory of mind, to have...
Feb 9, 2016 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
“Civilization is a series of techniques in which the hunter-gatherer brain teaches itself to rewire itself. And the sad proof that civilization is a composite of the higher and lower brain functions is seen when civilization breaks down in civil wars, and brutal...
Jan 24, 2016 | Belonging, Your Stories
On working on an oil rig, Formula One racing, and how having no place to call home drives change It’s Ramadan and Yassmin was up late last night. After several emails, we make contact the day before she flies out to the oil rig where she works as a well-site drilling...
Dec 14, 2015 | Belonging, Writing With Refugee Kids
School’s out and I’ve just finished my first year at Milpera State High School for refugee and migrant children. Unlike some of the kids who came to do my creative writing sessions, I won’t be moving on in January when the new school year begins here in Australia....
Dec 8, 2015 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
“Every language belongs to a specific place. It can migrate, it can spread. But usually it’s tied to a geographical territory, a country. Italian belongs mainly to Italy, and I live on another continent, where one does not readily encounter it. “I...
Nov 10, 2015 | Belonging, Your Stories
GARETH One evening instant Just a breath Through the front door, Children. Lover. Calm. It never lasts. * * * The times I walked out the door The times he came looking for me Through the city Through millions of people To find each other. Identical brothers now...
Nov 10, 2015 | Belonging, Your Stories
MORGAN-ROSE Out in the world and inside my young body there was no room for myself. After the fights and before they split swaying on a wooden swing the cocoon of music delivered myself to me. I ran to the circus and disappeared. Liberated. ...
Nov 10, 2015 | Belonging, Your Stories
JASMINE In the slick dark damp of winter London Through the smokey pallor and beer-soiled carpet Jasmine inhales the fresh rush of ocean waves, The infinite smell of freedom and possibility and childhood.
Nov 8, 2015 | Belonging, Your Stories
on the hidden delights of being an outsider, learning to disappear, and how searching for belonging from place can lead us astray When Alison grows up she wants to be a magenta bougainvillea. I met the award-winning author and performer at a writing conference in...
Oct 9, 2015 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
Hilary Mantel on the controversy around her short story ”The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher”: ”But is it the job of the writer to primarily consider questions of taste, or safety, or consensus, or being on the right side of the establishment? You...
Sep 15, 2015 | Belonging, Writing With Refugee Kids
I’m back from a social media-free week and boy was it wonderful. It was both freeing and humbling. This from the person who didn’t have a TV for years and who initially refused a mobile phone for work. How did I fall into the habit of checking email first thing in the...
