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Polly Simons

Reading Like an Australian Writer edited by Belinda Castles

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May 2021, no. 431
Polly Simons reviews 'Reading Like an Australian Writer' edited by Belinda Castles

‘When I first began reading Nam Le’s Love and honour and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice, I was sceptical: a story about a writer writing a story? A writer at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, no less? Isn’t this a little self-indulgent? Hasn’t this been done before?’

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Playing Beatie Bow 

Sydney Theatre Company
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01 March 2021
'Playing Beatie Bow' | Sydney Theatre Company

Ruth Park’s novels were as much about Sydney as the people who live there. In Park’s famous The Harp in the South trilogy, the slums of Surry Hills are almost as lively and characterful as the Darcy family, whose story it relates. In Playing Beatie Bow, the changing face of The Rocks underpins every part of the narrative.

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A Jealous Tide by Anna MacDonald

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January–February 2021, no. 428
Polly Simons reviews 'A Jealous Tide' by Anna MacDonald

Rivers seem to be something of a preoccupation for Melbourne writer Anna MacDonald. They feature prominently in her 2019 essay collection, Between the Word and the World, and are both setting and centrepiece to her first novel, A Jealous Tide.

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My Brilliant Career 

Belvoir St Theatre
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14 December 2020
'My Brilliant Career' (Belvoir)

My Brilliant Career may not be Belvoir’s first post-pandemic show, but it’s surely the most joyous. Hot on the heels of a government exemption raising audience numbers to seventy-five per cent capacity, the mood on opening night was exuberant – almost as exuberant as Sybylla Melvyn, My Brilliant Career’s impossible yet impossible-not-to-love protagonist.

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