Luke Ryan is a Melbourne-based writer, comedian and man about town. We spoke with Luke about his comic memoir, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Chemo, and the pathways from pathos to punchline when writing comedy.

Pamela Cook is a city girl with a country lifestyle and too many horses. Her rural fiction novels feature feisty women, tangled family relationships and a healthy dose of romance. She has published four novels and has taught writing workshops around Australia. What role does tension play across your novels? Many people think tension is […]

‘The best memoirs are not ‘lessons’, but rather quests.’

‘Entertain yourself first. Never write what you think a kid or teen might like if it doesn’t genuinely humour or entertain or thrill or sadden you.’

Some errors just keep popping up over and over again. Here are five of the most common: Errors of fact Our ability to get things wrong is considerable. When I was editor-in-chief of Reader’s Digest magazine, we had researchers who checked everything. They came up with numerous elementary errors made by top journalists – from […]