Reading Time: 4 minutes Timothy West’s satirical radio play “This gun in my right hand is loaded” is a wonderful demonstration of what happens when writers who are used to one particular medium (in this case the screen) adapt their idea for another (in this case radio) and fail to account for the affordances and limitations of the form…. Read more »
Reading Time: 5 minutes In introducing my new novel, author Ryan O’Neill puts it most succinctly: This is an introduction to a novel you will never read. He adds hastily that he is referring not to the book in your hands, the one he hopes you’re about to begin, but the novel that inspired his words, the novel he… Read more »
Reading Time: 5 minutes Like all of us, March 2020 was a slow decline into horror at the news of Covid-19. While the British government dithered about what to do, I cancelled some events I’d been booked to hold in promotion of my novel The Blame Game. Quite frankly, I was afraid to travel (from Glasgow to various parts… Read more »
Reading Time: 6 minutes When writers discuss plot and pacing in narrative craft, especially in creative writing classes, we often talk about the curve of stories, the rise and fall in tension that characterises the most common story structures. Now usually, at least in my experience, that curve is not something a writer actively thinks about while composing a… Read more »
Reading Time: < 1 minute Screenshots is a regular feature by Simon Groth, highlighting a project, app, or other resource of interest. Writing with Machine Learning By Robin Sloan Robin Sloan, author of the novels Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore and Sourdough, has recently turned his attention to using artificial intelligence and machine learning as a creative tool. In discussion with… Read more »
Reading Time: 2 minutes Screenshots is a regular feature by Simon Groth, highlighting a project, app, or other resource of interest. Beemgee An online authoring tool Beemgee is a web-based tool designed demystify complex narrative, breaking it down into its components, and step its users through the minutiae of storytelling, one concept at a time. Essentially, it is a… Read more »
Reading Time: 5 minutes Last year, I was invited onto local radio to talk about a new category introduced to the Queensland Literary Awards: the QUT Digital Literature Award. I had been invited in my capacity as chair of the judging panel alongside two of the shortlistees: Mez Breeze and Jason Nelson. The first interview question was directed to… Read more »
Reading Time: 4 minutes All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. This is the phrase. Adopted as a pep-talk by silicon valley Imagineers and tech startups, by creative writing students and university lecturers. It doesn’t mean what you think it does. It isn’t a hopeful phrase, isn’t an entreaty to… Read more »
Reading Time: 2 minutes What makes a city the kind of place where you can grow older and be an older person? No Bindings is collaborating with Bristol Ageing Better (BAB) to explore the possible answers to this question! No Bindings is a project, started in Bristol, by Lily Green. Lily is a resident of the Pervasive Media Studio… Read more »
Reading Time: 18 minutes The interior northwestern United States is remote: impenetrable mountains, untamed rivers, and disorienting prairies paired with unpredictable and extreme weather. Once an intricate patchwork of territories occupied by Nez Perce, Salish, Blackfeet, Pend O’Reille, and Sioux, the region has undergone a post-colonial identity shift to that of ranching and hydropower, agriculture and wilderness playground. In… Read more »