I've been on a bit of a Jane Austen bender recently - not reading her actual books, but reading of her life and how it impacted her writing - prompted by my classes in Creative Writing at Tabor College. This pair of letters is my homage to Austen, inspired by a lively chat with one of my dearest friends, over a picnic lunch in Kuitpo Forest. Every writer needs a friend who is willing to play intellectual soccer with ideas. It is plausible that Anne Sharpe, a governess to Aust

I stepped out of my usual pattern tonight: I bravely went to a book discussion on Virginia Woolf's 'Mrs Dalloway', ostensibly because this week is 100 years since the setting of the story, but more realistically because someone I trust invited me to try Something New. "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." (Virginia Woolf, a century before Miley Cyrus) The setting: a bookshop/ lounge/ lecture space in damp mid-winter Adelaide, bursting with academic knowledge