exerpts from an interview with louise swinn

i'm very sickly and yet so many nice things for the mind have been happening today. this was one of them:

"Your short fiction has cropped up in top-notch publications like Meanjin, Best Australian Stories, Overland, New Australian Stories and Cutwater. What's next for Lou Swinn, fiction writer?

I'm not happy with my writing. I'm not very good at nailing the words the way I want them to be. But I think I am gradually getting better at that, letting fewer soft sentences creep in. I think that today; perhaps tomorrow I'll think differently... If I can write another couple of short stories that are really good, then if I could write a really knock-out one, that would be good. I used to want to write lots of books - now that I read lots of books I guess I just want to produce a decent sentence or story or one really good book. Sometimes, on the darker days, I think there are too many average books - I don't want to contribute. I think perhaps all my stories are just one story and I need to find the best way of saying that. Just to write one knock-out story that I am really proud of. Ask me tomorrow and my answer could be quite different.

How goes it down there at Sleepers Publishing? Can you offer us a glimpse inside the sleek machine headed by you and Zoe Dattner?

Oh, Sam - sleek machine?! Haha. A glimpse inside Sleepers? Um, okay - we're just two hokey girls trying our best to make a godfearin' livin' from some publishin' of the literary variety... We drink lots of tea. We talk about writers and books and words we don't like (panties) and how annoying the mean people are and how amazing the great people are. We drink more tea and we read and read and read and read and hope for the next great novel. We write grant applications and send out lots of mail. We giggle a lot at silly jokes - that's kind of important to our business plan. Really, if we weren't doing Sleepers, we'd be doing comedy or some kind of live entertainment act with snakes and Zoe on banjo.

If you could read anyone's journal or raid anyone's hard drive, through whose would you rifle?

Can I do the opposite -- can I know less of that kind of stuff about people? I feel as though I'm reading everyone's diaries all the time already. Don't you? I sort of feel icky about that kind of thing. I wouldn't go to a party I wasn't invited to either - I don't know why exactly, but it's just not something I feel comfortable with. All the magic in the universe is contained in the knowing that there are things I can only guess - if I learn them, they lose their power."



loveeeely.
another nice thing was a lecture i was privvy to by philosopher/patriot/writer/historian : Tim Soutphommasane :
who talks about the necessity of liberal patriotism for a working democracy; a set of shared values in public culture which allow us to respect the rule of law and parliamentary democracy, a patriotism which doesn't entail violence or southern cross tattoos, which isn't militaristic or blind; but is about love of country which allows for criticisms, adaptations, and pluralisms.
i'm surprised at how much australian history has interested me.

academia creates nice things.