Michelle Scott Tucker

Book Review: Sea People

I can’t even begin to tell you how good this book is, but let's see how I go. Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia is, as author Christina Thompson admits in the prologue, as "much a story about what happened as a story about what we know." In charting the story of Polynesian settlement in the Pacific, Thompson also charts the way Europeans have collected knowledge about the region, and have made meaning from it. Some of the European observers are well known - James Cook, Joseph Banks, Thor Heyerdahl [...]

Michelle Scott Tucker2021-05-31T21:15:54+10:00May 31st, 2021|Book Review|7 Comments

Podcasts: my bookish faves

Full confession: I've fallen in love with podcasts. And I think it's going to be a lasting relationship. For the uninitiated, a podcast is like your favourite radio program, only there are usually multiple episodes and you can play it whenever you like. In fact most popular radio programs also are available in podcast form. Like Netflix, except for your ears. I use an app on my phone, called Pocketcasts, to listen. At first I listened only in the car, usually on the long commute to and from work. Then [...]

Michelle Scott Tucker2021-05-14T22:35:52+10:00May 14th, 2021|Writing|3 Comments

Rewild Your Words – join me in a new writing workshop

Most writing happens at the desk, but sometimes we find the heartbeat in our work when we are moving in the world—especially the natural world. Immersion in natural places can oxygenate our thinking, switch on our senses, enliven our creativity and ignite our imagination. Join Ilka Tampke and me for a one-day workshop where we will learn how to bring the natural world to life on the page and hear the stories it wants us to tell. The day will begin in a private room at the historic Mt Macedon [...]

Michelle Scott Tucker2021-03-12T21:43:09+11:00March 12th, 2021|Writing|0 Comments

So I’ve had some interesting news…

I've been working on my next book, now, for over a year. For most of that time I wasn't entirely sure if it would go ahead. But I knew there was a terrific story there, and I knew it was an important one, and I knew that the time was right to be telling it. I just wasn't sure whether there was a publisher out there who might agree. Reader, there was. MEDIA RELEASE PANTERA PRESS ACQUIRES DEBUT MEMOIR BY AARON FA’AOSO IN SIX FIGURE DEAL Pantera Press has bought [...]

Michelle Scott Tucker2021-05-14T19:58:19+10:00February 22nd, 2021|Aaron Fa'Aoso, Writing|2 Comments

Shortlisted! Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship

In exciting news, I've been shortlisted for the 2021 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship, worth $15,000. The shortlisting is for a project I've been quietly working on for a while - I'm (ghost) writing a memoir for Aaron Fa’Aoso, Torres Strait Islander actor, film and television writer, director and producer. You can read more about my newest project here. And stay tuned, there is even more exciting news to come! The Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship was established by the family and friends of Hazel Rowley, one of the world’s leading biographers, to [...]

Michelle Scott Tucker2021-01-14T11:24:19+11:00January 14th, 2021|Aaron Fa'Aoso, Work in Progress, Writing|4 Comments

Talking about crime on the ABC

Had a little chat on ABC radio the other day, about books. No, you didn't hear it because I was on - live to air - from 4:30 to 5:00am. The loveliest people are listening then, and they ring in, to chat. I'd love to get a regular guest gig (even if it IS at 4:30 am!) so feel free to let the ABC know how much you love love love to hear my dulcet tones... oh, and my insightful, bookish commentary. Listen to me rabbiting on here. Tell the [...]

Michelle Scott Tucker2020-12-29T14:31:04+11:00December 29th, 2020|Writing|0 Comments

What I read in 2020 – Part 2: Fiction

The discomforts of 2020 were, for me and my family, relatively minor in the scheme of things. Living in regional Victoria as we do, yes we were partially locked down and working and schooling from home, but apart from that we were safe and well (and employed - no small thing right now). Yet for the most of the year I found it hard to retreat into the solace of fiction. Too many times I picked up a book that I thought I should read - because it was a [...]

Michelle Scott Tucker2020-12-07T17:53:00+11:00December 7th, 2020|Book Review|11 Comments

What I read in 2020 – Part 1, the non-fiction episode

2020 has been, for me, a year of comfort reading. Lots of books were tossed aside by page 6 or 7, if they couldn't hold my interest. And for a while there, during the deepest part of the COVID-19 lockdown, it seemed like very little could hold my interest. Miles Franklin prize-winners: tossed. New York Times best-sellers: tossed. Quirky little books highly recommended by friends: tossed. In the end, it was commercial mass-market fiction that saw me through and I'll share my thoughts about my fiction reads in another post, [...]

Michelle Scott Tucker2020-12-01T14:47:54+11:00December 1st, 2020|Book Review, Writing|17 Comments

Writing Q&A: What were they thinking?

Every now and then, people ask me questions about how to write. I like the questions, but whether my answers are useful or not remains a moot point. Recently, I keep getting asked about thinking. Specifically, how can anyone write about a historic figure's mindset, if there's no primary source material to say what they were feeling or thinking on any given day or hour? How much can a writer of non-fiction inject into the story? In my view, there's a few different ways to tackle the problem. But first [...]

Michelle Scott Tucker2020-06-29T19:43:10+10:00June 29th, 2020|Writing|4 Comments

Brave New (online) World

Hands up if you’re quite the expert at videoconferencing now. Got your lighting all sorted? Your headphone hair? De rigueur Indigenous artwork behind you? With the onset of the COVID-19 shutdowns, the Australian literary community has moved its events online with commendable alacrity. A few organisations, like the Wheeler Centre, were ahead of the curve. They’ve regularly livestreamed some of their events for a while now. But for the rest of us, the haste with which the move to online ‘events’ had to happen resulted in a few bumps along [...]

Michelle Scott Tucker2020-06-23T22:11:35+10:00June 23rd, 2020|Life|2 Comments

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