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Author Q&A with Carmel Bird – Thurs 14 Dec, 8pm AEDT

We'll be chatting with award-winning Australian author Carmel Bird on from 8pm AEDT on Thursday 14 December to celebrate a new award for digital short stories and the launch of Bird's new digital collection, The dead aviatrix: eight short stories.

Is there anything you'd like to know about writing short stories or publishing online? Don't miss this chance to put your questions to an experienced and talented writer. No need to wait until 14 December either – post them as they come to you.

If you'd like a bit of inspiration, have a read of some of Carmel's work:

The Dead Aviatrix, a story from her new collection: https://tablo.io/carmel-bird/the-dead-aviatrix-and-the-stratemeyer-syndicate
An essay on her new collection: https://tablo.io/carmel-bird/the-dead-aviatrix-the-story-of-the-stories

Carmel Bird has written novels, short stories, essays and books on the art of writing, in addition to editing anthologies of essays and stories. She was awarded the Patrick White Award in 2016.

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Hi Carmel! I love all of the stories in your book! My first question is: 'The Whirlgigge of Time Brings His Revenges' title is taken from Shakespeare's play 'Twelfth Night.' Can you tell us why that line spoke to you and if any other authors or historical texts have influenced your writing and/or story titles?

hello Jordan, and thank you for this lovely question... I suppose the word ‘whirligigge’ and its lovely spelling attracted me. And I think it’s a beautiful, beautiful way to talk about people getting their comeuppance – another rather fun word. The whirligigge thing has stayed with me since we performed the play in high school. I once wrote a short story with the title: ‘Made Glorious Summer’ – from Richard the Third. Rather hilariously a critic said in a review that I had no right to do that because I was not Shakespeare. Right. Rather a cuckoo comment.
It’s kind of hard to say which writers have ‘influenced’ my writing. There are writers (many) that I admire, and perhaps they influence me, but I’m not quite sure how. I love Nabokov, for instance. Has he had an influence? Look, I don’t know. I gave a story a long title that took two bits of The Great Gatsby and put them together: ‘Her Voice Was Full of Money, and They Were Careless People’. I think that sings – and is very sad. But most of my titles are made up, coming out of the stories themselves. I do enjoy titles.
Once Marion Halligan and I got talking about foxes and fox hunting, and we decided we would each write a story with the title ‘Shooting the Fox’. That was fun. They were very different stories. Marion used the title for the title of a collection.

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