Sorry if you keep getting the same post over and over!! I’m having a tussle with WordPress – and it won’t let me answer comments. Software that is smarter then I am (or so it thinks!).
A free Pink Shorts panel at Constellations (Not-Writers-Week) Adelaide 2nd March.
Register at https://events.humanitix.com/constellations-at-the-exchange
An accolade from the wonderful Margot Lloyd (among InDaily’s best books of this century): “Margaret Merrilees‘s Big Rough Stones (Wakefield Press) – Adelaide’s own Tales of the City – is a gorgeous celebration of sisterhood and community.”
See here for the others! InDaily
Yes, I was one of them last Sunday, protesting about Santos sponsorship of the Tour Down Under. Not dignified, but whatever it takes to stop coal oil and gas by midnight tonight. That’s how much time we’ve got left to avoid even bigger climate disasters.
We particularly liked the above headline. As in ‘let’s go down to the beach with some other partially naked pensioners and stroll among the almost totally naked youth’.
In the Advertiser I look as though I’ve been in a pickle jar for the last ten years, but never mind!
Lovely review by Lana Guineay of ‘Fables Queer & Familiar’:
There is so much joy in this pithy collection of 52 short ‘fables’. Starting life as at the online serial ‘Adelaide Days’ and broadcast by Radio Adelaide, the fables – one for each week of the year – are delightful, laugh-out-loud snapshots of the lives of ‘lesbian grannies’ Anne and Julia, their extended family, friends, and community.
The grannies are longtime activists who keep their sharp eyes on politics. They’re outraged by the treatment of refugees. They’re keen judges of the hats at Adelaide Writers’ Week. This is Adelaide through a leftie, lesbian, ageing, and activist lens, full of local references and locations; from the Markets, to beach trips to the Yorke Peninsula, Haighs, the Christmas Pageant and WOMAD.
It’s a wry, affectionate look at “this small dry city on a narrow plain, next to an unspectacular gulf”, as well a politically-engaged story of family, longterm love, ageing, and childhood. Merrilees’ light-hearted style makes it a delight to dip in and out of the fables, or read them all in a single sitting.
By the end you may find yourself agreeing with Alison Bechdel: “I wish I could live in the hilarious, delightful, and very queer world of these Fables”. There’s always its follow-up, Further Fables Queer and Familiar.
Full Adelaide Review Article here:
Here’s a lovely interview with the wonderful Peter Burdon on Radio Adelaide (PS it’s not true that nobody reviewed ‘Big Rough Stones’!!):
margaretmerrilees 