With so much going on in the world – at least two tragic wars, the climate emergency, most folk struggling to pay the rent and put food on the table – it feels a little off to talk about what’s been happening at a personal level. However, perhaps it’s necessary – healing, helpful – to reflect on the smaller things. Does not the big happen in the context of the small, and vice versa?

On 2 January, thanks to generous funding from Creative Australia (formerly the Australia Council for the Arts) and Create NSW, I bunkered down in my writing room and got to work on a new project. I’m not a fan of talking about projects while they only really exist in my imagination, so I won’t go into detail here, but it has certainly been good to have something substantial in which to immerse myself.

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Speaking of fiction, it was wonderful being asked to record a conversation with Dr Andrew Rimby for the Ivory Tower Boiler Room, a New York-based podcast. We covered a lot of ground, including the erotic in queer fiction and writing from the body; Andrew also asked some insightful questions about Bodies of Men and My Heart is a Little Wild Thing.

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In March, my father died two weeks shy of his 94th birthday. He had been experiencing poor health for some years, though was mentally very alert and still tried to do a daily walk, even if it was just around his ramshackle garden before moving into the local hospital, which includes an aged care wing. I wrote about Jack’s desire to die in his home town for Guardian Australia, recognising that many people who live in regional areas are not so lucky.

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Thanks to ongoing support from The Street Theatre in Canberra, my latest theatrical work, a play with songs, has been progressing. This is a project that I began in 2019, only months before the pandemic hit, but we’re now at the stage where my demo songs (I’ve written the play, song lyrics and musical sketches) are being arranged by Perth-based composer Jay Cameron. The intention is for there to be one more creative development in 2024, where we’ll bring everything together in a rehearsal space to see how the work is coming into focus, before, perhaps, a production in 2025. As opposed to writing literary fiction for the page, I do enjoy the collaborative aspect of writing for the stage. Knowing that it’s not entirely down to me is a relief.

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A rather surprising project that has been quietly bubbling along is Hell Herons, which is a spokenword/music collaboration with award-winning poets Melinda Smith, CJ Bowerbird and Stuart Barnes. What started with a question – despite having very limited musical skill, how might I set poems to music? – has become a more formal and ongoing project, thanks to funding from artsACT. The funding will allow each poet to re-record their vocals with the professional assistance of Canberra-based producer/studio technician Kimmo Vennonen, before he mixes and masters all 16 tracks. The intention is to release a full album in mid-2024. From little things, bigger things grow.

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That preceding sentence is a challenging reminder that on 14 October this year Australia declined to recognise First Peoples in the Constitution, a document written 123 years exclusively by non-First Peoples, all men, during a time when the Frontier Wars were still raging across the continent, as they would keep doing for many more decades. The referendum asked if Australia supported recognition through a voice to parliament, which would ensure First Peoples would always be consulted whenever a federal Australian government was devising policies and programs that would impact First Peoples. I wrote about my support of the referendum, and about my experience volunteering for the YES campaign in my home town in regional New South Wales.

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In November I had the pleasure and privilege of interviewing the forever brilliant and generous Christos Tsiolkas about his new novel, The In-Between, which is about modern-day queer love between two men who are very much in the middle of their lives. To my mind it’s another fearless novel from Tsiolkas, and I wish it, and him, well. A recording of our live – and lively – conversation, which was held in Canberra in front of a live audience at the Australian National University, is available here.

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Despite not considering myself a critic I do appreciate having the opportunity to think about books deeply and to write about them in a way that might open them up to general readers, as well as readers of literature. For the Canberra Times, this year I reviewed Sydney by Louis Nowra, Aphrodite’s Breath, a memoir by Susan Johnson, and Art is Life, by the prominent US art critic Jerry Saltz. As the Canberra Times has decided to no longer run book reviews – that the national capital’s newspaper is not supporting Australian literature in this way is a rather sad state of affairs, to say the least – I am now writing reviews for Guardian Australia, starting with a comparative analysis of Frank Moorhouse: a life, by Catharine Lumby, and Frank Moorhouse: strange paths, by Matthew Lamb. The review is available here.

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In the past I’ve ended the year writing some notes on the books that I’ve adored. This year, I’ve done that on Facebook and Instagram. If you’d like to see my lists, please visit me on Facebook (using my name) and via @ngfeathers on Instagram.

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I wish you and yours a wonderful summer – or winter – break, and I can only hope some calmer and wiser heads can soon steer this tiny little rock of a planet on a better course.

Nigel xx