News & Blog by Steven Herrick
Read the latest news and bulletins, essays, features, opinions from our bestselling authors. Find out what's being said, debated, and discussed in the world of books and ideas.
My father worked his adult life in a foundry, operating the same machine. He’d rise each weekday morning and bicycle the eight kilometres to work, a packed lunch strapped to his carrier, his overalls clean and ironed by mum. I used to picture him at the machine, goggles on, his mouth grimacing with the noise, the iron filings clinging to the hair on his forearms. I never went to his factory, but I...
Not long ago I was driving through a spruce forest in Lithuania. My wife was reading a travel warning about a tick that gives you encephalitis. We were on our way to Gruto Parkus, a Soviet sculpture theme park displaying numerous public art-works of Lenin, Stalin and other prominent communists. When the Soviet Union fell, these sculptures were removed from public squares and parks in Lithuania and...
Recently, my fellow Random House author, Peter FitzSimons, who is also a journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote in his column a short piece congratulating the Lithuanian Rugby team on achieving the longest unbeaten run of internationals. The piece seemed to imply that Rugby was actually a sport of consequence in the Baltic nation. I found this hard to believe. And, I read this snippet...
At my age I have only a few firm friends. My wife, of course. And my two sons, Jack and Joe. A few buddies from football and acquaintances, male and female, who remember me when I had hair on my head, not on my chin. I also have other friends. Imaginary friends who come into my life and stay for a year, then leave, sometimes forever. They are the characters in my novels. They enter my life slowly....
I was eighteen years old when I told my mother I wanted to be a writer. I’d failed Year Ten in high school and had worked spasmodically in jobs ranging from storeman to fruit picker since I was fifteen. Now I was choosing my career and telling the only person who cared to listen. Mum had seven children. I was the youngest. None of my siblings had made it past high school. All worked in laboring...
