Winner Best Collection, Ditmar Awards 2024

Winner Best Collection, Ditmar Awards 2024

Returned from hols yesterday to learn The Measure of Sorrow (Meerkat Press) won Best Collection in this year’s Ditmar Awards!
 
And as if that wasn’t enough, Let The Cat In won the Ditmar for Best Fan Publication. Kudos to Kaaron Warren and Aaron Dries for three years of shit-talking banter…
 
Congrats to all the winners and shortlistees, but a special shoutout to Kaaron for the Bitters love, and to CH Pearce for the Ditmar trifecta. Huge thanks to all who voted – and to all the volunteers who’ve kept these awards alive since 1969.
The Beautiful Thing You Once Were

The Beautiful Thing You Once Were

Perhaps I should have been surprised when the magpie first spoke. Strange as it may seem, I had become quite used to the mimicries of those curious backyard birds, with their pristine black-and-white feathers, their inquisitive orange-red eyes. Their infamy as deadly swoopers, as springtime terrors of the skies, is legend here in Australia. But I’d never myself been swooped, always associated them rather with their mellifluous warblings, their impersonations. Maybe you remember, too, back when we first moved here as Ten Pound Poms, over half a century ago now, that time a magpie perfectly imitated the mew of our first cat: the irascible ginger, Mr Bentley. Now that was a surprise. Hearing his unmistakable complaints and turning to see not a raggedy ball of orange fur padding toward us across the garden, but an impostor, now hopping, now strutting, peering at us from first one eye, then the other. That muggy afternoon, so many summers ago, the magpie held its beak high and let forth another meow, both throatier and more pure than Mr Bentley’s, but in all other details precisely correct. Since then, I’ve heard magpies imitate all kinds of odd sounds: a neighborhood dog; the onomatopoeic calls of currawongs; and once, the rising and falling groans of a leaf-blower. I was so used to their strange calls, I would hardly have paid this one any mind, if it hadn’t spoken with your voice. And addressed me by name—the name no one had ever called me but you… 

Read the full story for free in Issue 33 of Bourbon Penn.

AsylumFest 2023

AsylumFest 2023

Another year, another road trip to beautiful Beechworth Asylum with notorious Canberra hoodlums Kaaron Warren, Aaron Dries, Robert Hood, Cat Sparks.

Raved about Shirley Jackson and Daphne du Maurier on a panel on the modern gothic, with Kyla Lee Ward, Kellie Beat and Paul Sheldon. Hosted the Australian Shadows Awards with Let The Cat In co-hosts Kaaron Warren and Aaron Dries – with much celebration to follow when Aaron won best short story for little Balloons (my personal favourite from his killer collection, Cut To Care). MC’d the Mayday Hills Ghost Story Competition, and subjected the captive audience to a reading of The Whatnot Shop. And in between it all, chatting to readers, selling books, shooting the proverbial with the many excellent guests. 

Check out photos of the weekend courtesy of the inestimable Cat Sparks (from whom these pictures were lovingly stolen).

J. Ashley-Smith, Cat Sparks, Kaaron Warren, Robert Hood and Aaron Dries in a really big car on the way to Beechworth
Inside the haunted asylum at Beechworth, book tables and punters
Paul Sheldon and Kellie Beat on the Modern Goth Panel
Robert Hood and J. Ashley-Smith at the book tables
Kaaron Warren and J. Ashley-Smith at breakfast
Kellie Beat and J. Ashley-Smith on the Modern Gothic panel
J. Ashley-Smith, Kaaron Warren and Adrian Collins
J. Ashley-Smith and Jason Nahrung at the pub