Today I decided to take up the Challenge – will you join me?
http://australianwomenwriters.com/2013-challenge/
After I registered I stared to look at the reading/review lists and found a few book I have already read – which was interesting and yet somewhat surprising – I hadn’t realised I had read Australian Women’s voices. Is that a good thing or not? The fact that Australian Women Writers voices were just as good as any other and by and large did not leap out at me as Australian is good, isnt it? I suppose because I read mostly crime fiction and contemporary fiction maybe place is not such an obvious marker of writers voice? And should we only write/read about the region we live in? I think not – today we are all citizens of a global world.
I do however think that the words we write are shaped by our experience and where/how we live does have some influence here, but does not necessarily prescribe our words or our stories. We can write about anything, and write well. For example – look at these 2 amazing yet vastly different books, Questions of Travel by Michelle de Krester and Bone Ash Sky by Katerina Cosgrove – what brilliant diverse voices! Or look at the new voices soon to be heard, Miss Blossom Makes A Mean Red Velvet Cake, plenty of talent here.
So who will join me in this Challenge? Readers from any region welcome to join. I dare you!
Good luck! I won’t join in simply because I’ve got too much on my reading plate at the mo, but I shall look forward to your reviews and maybe getting inspired…
It is a very easy challenge – you can read and not review if you like – or as I did select the lowest challenge – but I have found I have already passed this limit, before I even realised! It is interesting to work out where writers are from – to me Scandinavian authors are the only nationalities I can easily determine 🙂 ( And Scottish – the deep fried Mars bars give them away:) ) I have sourced a few Australian Women Writers Crime reads – so looking forward to that but I too have now added a quite a bit to my reading plate. 🙂
I can confirm that it is a really enjoyable challenge. I did it last year too and loves it that much that I am doing it again this year.
there are some great Australian women writers – so many good reads