On Activism
By Anna Spargo-Ryan CW: references to online abuse and hate. After Donald Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19, Twitter made a sweet but false announcement: they had always said they didn’t tolerate threats to someone’s life on the platform. In fact, even just wishing...
Indigenous Domestic and Family Violence: Setting the Scene
Written by Dr Kyllie Cripps as part of the FWF2020 ThinkIn, Our Culture of Violence. It is widely recognised in Australia that Indigenous people are over-represented as both victims and offenders of domestic and family violence (DFV). This situation arises as Cripps...
The Politics of Health
Written by Katarina Bryant as part of the FWF2020 ThinkIn, The Politics of Health. Last week, I saw a tweet praising Australia’s healthcare system. The person who had posted the tweet had gone into hospital for appendicitis, and had come out with both their appendix...
Gender and the Medical Cis-tem
Written by Asiel Adan Sanchez as part of the FWF2020 ThinkIn, The Politics of Health. There are two ways of entering the medical system: MaleFemale Medicine is not built for bodily and gender diversity. Despite decades of research telling us otherwise, medical...
Equity and Natural Justice Under the Law: All Genders at the Intersections
By Sally Goldner CW: sexual harassment, misuse of police power, queerphobia and other forms of discrimination. Are we equal before the law? Theoretically yes, practically of course — no. Sadly our laws, regulations and related processes are established and run in ways...
An Abstract Site
by Fernanda Dahlstrom 'The prison … functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues…'—Angela Davis When I was six, I spent a morning in the foyer of the old...
The real work of care: an author’s perspective
by Christie Nieman A span of six years is a long time between drinks in the publishing industry. Especially when your first novel does quite well, you really want to establish yourself by following it– bam! – with a second. In an ideal world, the first would have been...
Our Favourite Books of 2020
What. A. Year. There isn't much to say about it other than the fact that we – to various extents – agree collectively that it has been a hell year. As such, discussing favourites during a year like this seems like a strange revelry in privilege. To have had the mental...
Walking away, backwards; or woman-lite in women’s lit
by Jinghua Qian When I got asked to write something for Feminist Writers Festival, I started to say no. I typed up a new version of the response I’ve sent so many times that I should probably just save it as a template: Thanks for thinking of me! I really...
Fiercely interdependent
by Caitlin McGregor If the women I aspired to be when I was growing up had anything in common, it was that they were all ‘fiercely independent’. I use quotation marks because this is a quote, even if not by anyone in particular. It just gets said a lot – used to...
Laura Bates and the Manosphere: Men Who Hate Women
By Ginger Gorman If you’re wondering where you might’ve heard the name Laura Bates before, she’s the internationally known English feminist writer who started the powerful Everyday Sexism website in April 2012. As the project suggests, Bates was attempting to document...
White Feminists: What Are You Willing To Give Up?
If white women are genuinely dedicated to dismantling patriarchal structures; if they’re inclined to ask men to ‘stop taking up space’, will they shuffle over too?
FWF2020: Cultures of Violence
Written by Nicole Lee as part of the FWF2020 ThinkIn, Our Culture of Violence. Women with Disabilities Victoria states that over a third of women with disabilities experience some form of intimate partner violence. Disabled women experience multiple forms of violence...
Putting Pain on the Public Record: Kylie Maslen’s Show Me Where It Hurts
by Kaitlyn Blythe The last five years have seen a surge in memoirs by women examining their lives through the lens of societal marginalisation, thrusting experiences usually dismissed or ignored into the public eye. The marginalised experience is made undeniable...
Relearning: Sex Work During COVID-19
by Queenie Bon-Bon This is the year we were taught en masse to wash our hands. We needed charts and songs and sponsored ads on our phones to tell us we must wet our hands with water, apply enough soap to cover one's hands and rub our hands together. Twenty seconds and...
Publish and Perish: Gendered Precarity, Productivity and University Leadership in COVID19
By Briony Lipton 'It is important we all continue the upward trajectory, including at this time when we prioritise the needs of our researchers as well as the health and safety of our community' the university email reads. Just one message among many emails received...
Games, Dames and Shrinking Pains
By Gabriella Lowgren One of my earliest memories is of playing video games. I was sitting on my stepfather’s knee as we played Diablo 2, him on offense and me on potions. His character whirled around the screen, we had decided to play the Barbarian because I was...
Bound By String
By Yen Eriksen The first time my dad explained to me that old people shrink it blew my mind. To me, this idea was such an unfair fate to thrust upon those who had already lived so much. Everything about old age seemed cruel to me as a kid. Why was it that people who...
Big Girlboss Energy: On the Commodification of Feminism
By Eda Gunaydin I can’t seem to call myself a feminist anymore, although it used to be a hill I was willing to die on. But it is a hill. Having failed to develop a political consciousness until I entered university, it seemed correct to organise around what I observed...
What’s the Point of Performativity?
By Roj Amedi There are two conversations being had in response to our current moment of global pandemics, entrenched racial injustice and ecological collapse. On one side is a growing push to change the way our societies function ― a call to interrogate the...
Redemptive Endings
By Lee Kofman By nature, I am a confessional writer. The more difficult, dramatic, my life is – the better I actually fare. Artistically that is. And yet, it has taken me twenty years to dare to tell one of my most transformative stories, the one which prompted me to...
Parenting in a Pandemic
By CB Mako (Content warning: domestic violence) When March 2020 arrived, we realised that we had survived another summer. We got our first sigh of relief after the scorching start to a new decade, when Naarm was covered in a dense blanket...
A Journal of Solitude: Living Alone During COVID-19
By Vanessa Giron When I first read The Waves by Virginia Woolf, I found myself clinging to one idyllic moment: 'How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on...
Freelancing With a Disability During COVID-19
By Carly Findlay From loss of income and delaying the publication of Growing Up Disabled in Australia, to grieving for the arts sector and connecting with friends, to fear about access and care for disabled people, my time in isolation has been full of anxiety, but...
As Feminist As It Gets: Mothers Who Advocate For Their Children
By Gisela Ervin-Ward Turn to the mother next to you and ask her if her view of feminism and the practicalities of living a feminist life changed after she had children. Go on. I’ll give you a minute. So, how did that go? Whether the mother you spoke to gave you a mute...
‘It’s Already Here’: On Women Writing The Future
By Alice Robinson In recent times, it seems increasingly challenging to parse what used to be more distinct: 'literature' and 'the real world'. As a result, I won’t dwell too profoundly on the specificities of current events—neither the catastrophic bushfires of this...
Seeing Violence in Multiple Shades: Sophie Hardcastle’s Below Deck
By Catherine Noske Sophie Hardcastle’s debut novel has attracted significant attention, with international rights already taken up and celebrated by Allen & Unwin UK, the same publishers releasing it here in Australia. The novel has also been endorsed by several...
The Domestic and the Domestic: Violence in Australian fiction
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...
Our favourite books of 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...
Behind the scenes: Emily Maguire’s This Is What A Feminist Looks Like
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...