By Laura Jean McKay Domesticity is supposed to be cosy, isn’t it? A tea on the couch and a cuddle in the dark. But, linguistically at least, it quickly turns. Add an ‘a’ to the start and you get a row. Add ‘violence’ to the end and you get what, according to a 2019...
Believe it or not, another year has come to an end. In the midst of political unrest, we've taken solace once more in books, and there have been some damn good ones in 2019. We asked our team, and some of FWF's friends, to give their recommendations for the best books...
By Emily Maguire When NLA Publishing approached me with the idea of a book recounting the big moments of Australian feminist history, I was excited. I knew a lot about where we’re at and what still needed to be done, but almost nothing about how we got here. I...
By Foong Ling Kong Journalist Jane Gilmore’s Fixed It project began as a sharp and swift red-line response to a lousy headline in September 2015 on one of Australia’s major news sites about a man who murdered his ex-girlfriend. After that first fix, which was posted...
By Hellai Gul In May 2018, Ruby Hamad wrote an article published in Guardian Australia that received enormous backlash and support. The piece highlighted a phenomenon experienced all too often by women of colour: white woman tears. Hamad suggested that there is...
By Jean Tong Being a POC playwright is automatically getting defensive when you receive an email out of the blue asking you to write about The Experience of Being a POC Playwright, specifically. I considered trying to write a thoughtful, emotional piece about...
By Nour Haydar In 2015, I was shocked by the news of 17- year-old Masa Vukotic’s murder at the hands of serial sex offender Sean Price in Doncaster. A fortnight later, my mother’s picture hit the front page. My mum, Salwa Haydar, was murdered a month before my...
This piece was performed at Legacy Books, FWF18 Sydney. When I was seven years old, my second grade teacher made a ‘book’ out of the first short story I ever wrote, called Tilly the Witch. After typing the manuscript on a manual typewriter (hey, it was the 80s), she...
By Melissa Cranenburgh I think about this a lot. How, as we get older, the things we choose to read (hear, see) push us about like someone floating on a backyard pool, in just the right season, at a warm – but not too warm – time of day. Encouraged – gently, this way...
By Nina Funnell In October 2017, the #MeToo hashtag went viral after Hollywood actress Alyssa Milano urged other women to share their stories of sexual harassment and assault on Twitter. Within three days, the hashtag had been translated into 85 languages and today,...
By Ruth Quibell Photo: Pixabay For many women, home is a provisional place. This has long been true. Violence, dispossession and poverty are not new. What is recent is the increase in the number of women over the age of 55 experiencing housing stress, insecurity and...
By Kylie Maslen Photo: Instagram Angela Pippos writes in her book on sexism in sport, Breaking the Mould, that ‘sport is an important part of the feminist movement.’ However: Gender inequalities in sport – which are just as (if not more) sweeping as those faced by...
