Recent Published Work

 
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‘Guards of Honour’ for The Saturday Paper

The interesting thing about the Chinese word for gunpowder is that it doesn’t contain the word “gun”. Historically, as with many materials eventually warped for violence, its original uses were much more positive, including celebration and ancestor worship. The Chinese term, 火药 huǒ yào, literally means “fire medicine”.

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‘Apartment Complexities’ for The Saturday Paper

Here I am with my dark brown hair and my white-passing face looking exactly like what I am: lost. It’s night, although everything is lit so brightly the only way to tell is by looking at the sky. My left hand is clutching a small wheelie bag, and there is a satchel slung over my shoulder. I’m sweating a bit, having just caught a minibus, then a train, then another minibus, and I’m pretty sure my backpack is hitching my dress up too high.

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Interview with Paul Jennings for The Guardian

“It was painful,” he says, of writing his thoughtful and unusual memoir, Untwisted – The Story of my Life. “Some of the things, members of my own family didn’t know about.” But now, at 77, the memoir “was just something I felt ready to do – and I’ve enjoyed it but also it’s been quite confronting”…

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This is not a Eulogy for Hong Kong for Kill Your Darlings

‘Country of birth’ should be an easy question to answer, but I wasn’t born in a country—I was born in a ‘Special Administrative Region’. The first time a form demanded a response from me, I was stumped. Britain? China? My pen hovered over the page until I made a decision. H O N G K O N G, I wrote in careful block letters. It’s what I’ve been writing ever since. One day, someone will pull me up on it, and I’m not sure what I’ll do.

 

Cross section of work, ordered by publication

The Age

The Big Issue

  • No. 629, 2021: Dim the Lights

  • No. 612, 2020: Kitten Around

  • No. 610, 2020: Lessons from Lego

  • No. 597, 2019: Interview with John Kinsella

  • No. 596, 2019: People Power

  • No. 582, 2019: Book in a Visit

Books+Publishing

Broadsheet

Crikey

Frankie

The Guardian

Island

Kill Your Darlings

The Lifted Brow

Liminal

Meanjin

The Monthly

Quarterly Essay

SBS Life

The Saturday Paper

Older Work

Archer

  • Issue #12: Interview with Uncle Jack Charles (print)

City of Melbourne

The Cusp

Film Ink

  • August 2012 Issue: Cunning Stunts (Page 44)

  • October 2012 Issue: Teenage Wasteland (Page 83)

  • April 2013 Issue: They Should Make a Movie of That – Night Watch (Page 53)

  • May 2013 Issue: Fanpower: The Veronica Mars Kickstarter (Page 100)

  • July 2013 Issue: Alternate Content: Cinema’s Resurrection (Page 72)

Junkee

Melbourne Knowledge Week

Metro

  • No. 204 – Autumn 2020: Need for Speed: Risk and Reward in Dylan River’s Finke: There and Back

  • No. 203 – Summer 2020: Everybody's Still Kung-fu Fighting: Serge Ou's 'Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks'

  • No. 201 – Winter 2019: A School of Fishers: Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries and the Lineage of a Franchise

  • No. 200 – Autumn 2019: Breaching Bounds: The Confronting Body in Miranda Nation’s Undertow

  • No. 199 – Summer 2019: Paint and Suffering: The Delicate Art of Acute Misfortune

  • No. 198 – Spring 2018: Getting a Second Opinion: Mairi Cameron on Truth and Trickery

  • No. 197 – Winter 2018: Burning Down the House: Winchester and the Truth About Ghosts

  • No. 196 – Autumn 2018: Musical Chairs: Perspective and ‘Heavy’ Humour In Ben Elton’s Three Summers

  • No. 194 – Spring 2017: PACmentality:  Luke Walker on American Politics and Observational Documentary

  • No. 193 – Winter 2017: Horror and Gore, Honour and Glory: Hacksaw Ridge and the War Film

  • No. 191 – Summer 2017: Dream Sequence: Rosemary Myers’ Girl Asleep and Cinematic Coming of Age (Cover Story)

  • No. 190 – Spring 2016: On The Right Trek: Taika Waititi’s Hunt For The Wilderpeople and New Zealand Film

  • No. 189 – Winter 2016: Stealing The Spotlight: Robbery, Localism and the Fate of Hong Kong

  • No. 187 – Summer 2016: Cinematic Sleight of Hand: Lawrence Leung and John Luc on Sucker 

  • No. 185 – Winter 2015: Battling with Stereotypes: Maximum Choppage and Asian Representation

  • No. 184 – Autumn 2015: A Thousand Lives Together

  • No. 182 – Spring 2014: Brought to Life: The Melbourne International Animation Festival

  • No. 181 – Winter 2014: Behind the Battle Scars

  • No. 179 – Summer 2014: Writing Wrongs

  • No. 178 – Spring 2013: Seeing in the Dark

  • No. 174 – Spring 2012: Candid Cringe: Being Lara Bingle

QVWC Newsletter

Screen Education

  • Number 93, 2019: Antisocial Justice Warriors: Spite and Performativity in Heathers

Smith Journal

  • Volume 32: Off The Grid (print)

  • Volume 31: On Thin Ice (print and online)

Time Out

Voiceworks

  • Issue 94: Hospital Hypocrisy (Page 55)

Writers Bloc