Words and Nerds: Authors, books and literature.

Trent Dalton celebrates his new book All Our Shimmering Skies with Dani Vee on the Words and Nerds Podcast's 200th Episode. Join the conversation and come along as we traverse the world on an odyssey from 1942 Darwin to Shakespeare to Wilde to moments in life to the sky and back again.

Ever wonder why pigeons always act so weird?

It’s because they’re out there chasing the bad guys and saving your butts! On Episode 199, Andrew McDonald and Ben Wood share their love of pigeons, true collaboration, baking in ISO and we talk about the weirdest thing we've ever eaten. Join hosts Dani Vee and Adrian Beck.

The priority for all of us at the moment is dealing with coronavirus. That’s our great challenge. As it happens, privacy is a big part of that.

The key question is: how do we balance public health and personal privacy? That is, how should the government and health authorities be able to access personal data and health data, while still respecting individual privacy, which is an integral component of our freedom? For instance, should the government be able to track people’s location data to stop COVID-19’s spread?

This isn’t the only way privacy has become highly relevant. Now that most of us are spending so much time at home, we’re increasingly living online. We’re working, socialising, shopping, entertaining ourselves through our smartphones, laptops and other connected devices. Just what data are Amazon’s Alexa, Facebook Live, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and other digital platforms collecting? How are these platforms using it? Who are they sharing it with? And who else can access it?

As we respond to this pandemic, this is the perfect time to address these questions. The first priority is to deal with the virus. As we do so, we need to ensure that we enact laws and other protections that get the balance right, during the pandemic, but also when life returns to normal.

The aim of Net Privacy is to lay out a plan that can strike that balance. The books subtitle is, 'How we can be free in an age of surveillance'. It obviously refers to freedom from unwarranted intrusions on our privacy. But we also want to be free from pandemics. The book was written before COVID-19. Still, it recognises that privacy doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but must be weighed up against other rights and interests. One step in this direction, it proposes, is for Australia to adopt legal provisions in line with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation. Beyond this, the law ought to enact a series of privacy principles that get the balance right, for now, and for later.

The requisite balancing act is the focus of the following extract, where I build on Kant’s ethics and his idea of cosmopolitanism to argue for a globally-aligned approach to protecting privacy.

Oliver Phommavanh and Dani Vee catch up at Dani's favourite burger place Burger Frank. They about Oliver's short story collection BrainFreeze but mostly talk about burgers. A great episode!

When Ashley persuades her new husband Steve to leave snowy Canada and join her for a year Down Under, she looks forward to an easy transition. After all, Australia’s just Canada with more sunshine and strange animals, right?

But they soon discover things aren’t so simple. Steve struggles to settle and Ashley fears he will come to regret both the move and the marriage – especially after she loses her wedding rings on Bondi Beach. Baffled, homesick and increasingly anxious (in a land renowned for ‘no worries’), she is preparing to return to Canada when Steve shockingly announces that he wants to stay in Australia.

For the sake of her marriage and her happiness, Ashley must find an Australia she can belong to: she decides to travel the country, learn its history, decode its cultural quirks and connect with as many residents as she can meet. How to Be Australian is a remarkable memoir, at once familiar and faraway, that shines a fresh, funny and fascinating light onto the country we think we know.

Imbi Neeme is a recovering blogger, impending novelist and compulsive short story writer.

Her manuscript The Spill was awarded the 2019 Penguin Literary Prize.

She was also the recipient of the 2019 Henry Handel Richardson Fellowship at Varuna for excellence in Short Story Writing. Her short fiction has won prizes in the 2019 Newcastle Short Story Awards, the 2018 Boroondara Literary Awards, and has been shortlisted for the 2018 Peter Carey Short Story Award.

Her first manuscript, The Hidden Drawer, made the judges’ commended list in the 2015 Victorian Premier’s Unpublished Manuscript Awards and was selected for the 2015 Hachette/Queensland Writers Centre Manuscript Development Program.

She blogged for many years at Not Drowning, Mothering, which won the 2010 Bloggies award for best Australian/New Zealand Weblog.

She lives in Melbourne with her partner, kids and largely indifferent pets.

‘This manuscript has tremendous energy and authenticity, as it explores what it is like to grow up gay in an insular regional community. Invisible Boys is a valuable contribution to the growing voices of younger LGBTIQA+ people.’

City of Fremantle T.A.G. Hungerford Award judges’ report

'Sheppard pulls no punches in this story, challenging expectations and taking the reader on a dark journey through each boy's life, with only a sliver of light at the end providing hope for a brighter future. This book feels somewhat unmoored from time, with a raw edginess ... which brings to mind books like Puberty Blues and the work of Tim Winton.' Junior Books + Publishing

'Invisible Boys is full of genuine, authentic voices ... This is an important book for all young people, as it shows one size does not fit all. There is no right way to be gay, or to be anything else, for that matter.' Magpies

Spiky, sharp, intriguingly dark and tender, full of pathos, fury and wit, Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason is a dazzling, distinctive novel from a boldly talented writer. For fans of Sally Rooney, Taffy Brodesser-Akner and Fleabag.

'A triumph. A brutal, hilarious, compassionate triumph.' Alison Bell, The Letdown

''I just adored this book. It's timely and dark and poignant and funny. It was filled with such eviscerating compassion and rage; I couldn't get enough of it. I inhaled it in a single weekend, unable to put it down. Meg Mason is a searing talent.' Kate Leaver, The Friendship Cure

This novel is about a woman called Martha. She knows there is something wrong with her but she doesn't know what it is. Her husband Patrick thinks she is fine. He says everyone has something, the thing is just to keep going.

Martha told Patrick before they got married that she didn't want to have children. He said he didn't mind either way because he has loved her since he was fourteen and making her happy is all that matters, although he does not seem able to do it.

By the time Martha finds out what is wrong, it doesn't really matter anymore. It is too late to get the only thing she has ever wanted. Or maybe it will turn out that you can stop loving someone and start again from nothing - if you can find something else to want.

The book is set in London and Oxford. It is sad and funny.

'This is a romance, true, but a real one ... as devastating and sharply witty as Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag.' Books+Publishing

Anna Whateley’s debut #ownvoices novel Peta Lyre’s Rating Normal, Allen & Unwin, is out now. She also has an essay titled ‘Noisy Silence’ in Growing Up Disabled in Australia, Black Inc Books, edited by Carly Findlay, due out on Feb 2021. When coronovirus spread, Anna founded the bookish chat show #AusChat just to keep the community together, and the youtube channel is now funded in part by the Australian Arts Council.

Anna has a PhD in young adult fiction (literary criticism) and has taught sociology and YA/children’s literature to preservice teachers. She loves to attend writer events, conferences, twitter storms, and book launches, and is also a strong advocate for the neurodivergent community.

During her younger years, Anna traveled a lot, and has had more jobs than she can remember. Some include making pizzas, hotel cleaning, waitering, pharmacy assistant, data entry, publishing, advertising, payroll, and youth work. She is always busy with another hobby or project, from sewing to lego, or taking photos of mushrooms in a rainforest. She loves Minecraft and video editing, and coming up with new ideas for her youtube channel.

Deborah Abela chats about Story Scoop with CBCA NSW & SCBWI, a new resource for teachers and kids. Released on the first day of each month.