Hackpacker

"Being a gatekeeper was a great gig," Margaret Simons told the Melbourne Writers Festival crowd, "but it's over." The session was once called Buyer Beware but later Where are the Gatekeepers? - about the rise of bloggers with Simons joined by Anthony Loewenstein and John Quiggan . In both these session names bloggers don't fare well. Either as a commodity of dubious value or something to be kept outside the gates. With conservative estimates at 112 million blogs worldwide , the barbarians are well and truly inside the gates. Quiggan has his own interesting response to the topic (including the line from The Aussie 'we understand Newspoll because we own it') which is more articulate than anything I can add. It's interesting the role of blogging in a festival. Live blogging can create not only a new audience but give greater feedback to include mumbles from the crowd. The Guardian's Charlotte Higgins gave it a go during Edinburgh's fe

Last night, humourrist, essayist and all-round nice guy, David Sedaris, spoke at the Melbourne Writers Festival . He opened by reading Crybaby (renamed Journey into Night for The New Yorker ), which was a devilish meditation on having your first class interupted by someone who just can't enjoy the luxury of two kinds of nuts on their sundae because their mother just died. Hearing the story in Sedaris' whiney voice just made it all the funnier. He also shared his diary entries. The best was from a chat he'd had with a flight attendant who told him about first class being like an ICU, due to all the crybabies. They also told him how fun it was to march up to passengers at the end of the flight holding open a garbage bag, look them in the eye and say "You're trash." My favourite was that when they need to 'pass wind' flight attendants do it by walking up and down the aisles gleefully farting without anyone hearing over the engine noises. This they refe

Melbourne has officially been given the nod as the next UNESCO City of Literature. It will mean the establishment of the Centre for Books and Ideas at the State Library of Victoria. But will my hometown be able to measure up to Edinburgh, the first Bookopolis ? Does it boast fictional creations to measure up to Harry Potter , Inspector Reebus or even Begbie ? Nope, but we have got Andrew Bolt, who responded with his characteristic ascerbic charm that it was a victory for black skivvy wearers everywhere rather than great writers or readers. For the rest of Melbourne it's good news. Apparently Victoria's capital has more bookshops and buys more newspapers, magazines or books per capita than any other Australian city. And has more than a few lit classics up its sleeve from Power Without Glory to Loaded . I'm not sure how to compare its couple of hundred years of European writing with the long history of Auld Reekie, but it's got its share of page turners. Other co

The old story about teaching actually having a few lessons for the teacher is true. Recently I've been teaching web writing and the students regularly raise things that I've been taking for granted or never would have stumbled on. On Monday, a student suggested this blog by George Orwell . Despite being dead for more than 50 years, Eric Arthur Blair has had his diaries serialised using the blog format. The posts correspond to 1938 entries which begin with the writer in a sanatorium in Kent before making for Morocco. Sounds like gripping boys own stuff right? Except so far it's been a little drab. Orwell has heard about a snake being killed and had a a few problems with his snuffbox . One reader went off on a symbolic tangent, theorising that his mention of blackberries ripening was a reference to a communist uprising. Nope, it's just an interest in berries. Readers seem divided. Some condemn the blog as fairly dreary reflections in a blogosphere already crowded with

I'm a bit of an Anne Tyler freak. Ever since Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant was one of those serendipitous recommended readings, I've follwed her stories of uptight Baltimoreans. It's strange that I never got to The Accidental Tourist , where she nails the lonely obsessive character, who also happen to be a travel writer. Macon Leary writes for businessmen who find being in another country a bit of an inconvenience. He tells them where to get Sweet and Low in Beijing, and tests restaurants by ordering the same breakfast in half a dozen different places. As a job guidebook writing comes across as rather creepy. Leary's life of routine and order turns on two big plot points - the death of his son and meeting a dog-whisperer at the Meow Bow Animal Hospital. The death is obviously massive, so Tyler treats it with subtlety, mostly unfolding outside of the book and readers only see it's repercussions: the fraying marriage and Leary's retreat into order and eventu

This weekend marked the first Melbourne Travel Writing Festival . Melbourne is glutted with festivals from Melbourne Film Festival to the Bicycle Film Festival . Do we need another festival? Judging by the strong audience numbers, we do. Both days were well attended and there was no shortage of speakers. With one of the world's largest guidebook publishers based here and boutique publishing houses like Transit Lounge also setting up shop, it makes sense that Melbourne would have such an event. This also means there's a depth of talent. My favourite wagger of chins was Brian Thacker , though I had a clash for his excellent session on couchsurfing . I caught his double act with Tony Wilson where the pair shared their collective love for Bill Bryson. A good guest for next year maybe? But don't just take my word for it. Here's what Thomas Swick thought .

The very first Melbourne Festival of Travel Writing is on soon and has a great program from Brian Thacker dossing globally with couchsurfing to Tony Wheeler tackling the ever-thorny issue of Burma .

When writer/illustrator Bruce Mutard heard that his publisher wouldn’t be releasing his first comic, Street Smell, he didn’t give up. “I was naturally disappointed but self-publication was always an option,” Mutard says. “My dad helped me out as I didn’t have enough money but I just wanted to get it out there.” Distributing it through the zine networks of the early 1990s, Mutard produced the comic for four years under his own steam, learning to write and draw as he went along. “I wanted to do it on my own terms. I wanted to tell the stories I wanted to tell. They weren’t commercial. They weren’t genre and couldn’t be easily pigeonholed so the perks of fame and fortune never came my way, but I doggedly stuck to my guns.” With the release of his 250-page graphic novel, The Sacrifice, Mutard has both guns blazing. The first of three ambitious volumes, the book follows Robert Wells, a pacifist who finds himself gradually drawn into World War II. The book has already drawn comparisons wit

With a new film and book out this year, writer Paul Auster is anything but a quiet American in the year of election. “I’m feeling nervous,” Paul Auster’s voice burrs down the phoneline from Brooklyn. “I desperately want the Democrats to win. I think it’s just absolutely crucial to the future of the country that we get the Republicans out.” Like many Americans, the New York writer is watching the election anxiously to see who will be the next leader of the free world. He campaigned actively at the last election against Bush alongside Dave Eggers, Salman Rushdie and a packed bookshelf of contemporary literati. As well as writing an anti-Bush song, he leant his succinct prose to The Future Dictionary of America, a lexicon imagining Stateside language 30 years from now. His entry: “Bush (bush) n. a poisonous family of shrubs, now extinct.” Auster’s pre-election definition didn’t come true with America’s political weeds thriving into a second term. Preparing for his Australian visit this mo

I'm off to China for a semi-business trip and I'm reading the excellent book by Ouyang Yu , On the Smell of an Oily Rag in preparation. It's loaded with cross-cultural references and observations of what it is to be a Chinese Australian. My favourite cultural confusion so far is that the Yahoo! search engine is mixed up with the Chinese ya hu meaning an elegant tiger. The introduction makes an interesting point about our cultural exchange: China purchases 50,000 titles from the West every year, while the West returns the favour by buying only 2000 titles. The imbalance is surprising. With the Chinese diaspora and the increasing interest in all things Olympic, you'd expect a few more titles to come our way. Apparently not. Ouyang's book approaches both audiences and hopefully isn't an example of another of my favourite Chinese expressions: dui niu tanqin , which according to The Meaning of Tingo means "to play the lute to a cow".