Iloved Ashley Hope Perez's heartbreaking Out of Darkness set in late the 1930s in a small town Texas. It should win all the YA awards.
I was wowed by Margo Jefferson's memoir, Negroland, which is about growing up black and privileged in Chicago in the fifties and sixties. It was a window into an alien world. Obviously, I'm not black, but what was really alien to me was her family's focus on respectability. I was never taught when to wear white gloves, what length skirt is appropriate.
The only reason I've ever had to wear a hat is to avoid skin cancer.
I've known white Australian girls from wealthy families who were sent to posh private schools, who knew all of that stuff, and I think would recognise much in Jefferson's book. What I related to most strongly was the sexism and misogyny Margo Jefferson had to battle.
One of my fave TV shows is Into the Badlands because martial arts staged well and magically and saturated colours and eye candy and coherent plot and world building. It has a strong diverse cast.
I enjoyed Ready For This, which was created by the people behind Dance Academy and Redfern Now, and really it's what you'd get if you crossed Redfern Now with Dance Academy
Some worked in collaboration with each other to produce comics as well as short stories.I was partnered with Anita Roy. We critiqued each other's stories. Hers is a corker: future Masterchef. I chortled. There's not a single dud in Eat the Sky.
I've never read a book [ Nnedi Okorafor's Lagoon] like it before. Big and sprawling with a million points of view, including sea creatures. It's about an alien invasion that starts in Lagos, Nigeria but, really, that's just the starting point.
In Australia we have a government actively undoing what little progress had been made on climate change and stripping money from all the important institutions such as the ABC, CSIRO and SBS.
I'm almost back to being able to write as much as six hours a day .
I think I've finally learned to stop worrying about how big the gaps are between my novels' publication.
I spent the year behind on deadlines and everything else. It's only now in December that I feel even slightly caught up. 2016 has to be better.
We still have disgraceful policies on asylum seekers and Aboriginal Australians continue to die in custody.
Sure, Malcolm Turnbull is less anti-science and anti-culture than [Tony] Abbott, but low bar, and there's not a lot to show for it beyond rhetoric.
Lungs, they do not like to be messed with. I give pneumonia one star and that's for the silent p.
