The June Nutshell

Sarah Zweck, the Davitts Longlist, $1,000 for Cambodia, and a killer novelist

Dear Reader,

I’ve had the newsletter brakes on this month, pausing paid subscriptions and trying to reassure myself the way I’d speak to a friend who feels guilty about dropping the ball (with mixed results). But I’m happy to deliver my usual end-of-the-month message, and especially pleased to introduce you to an illustrator I’m mad about: Sarah Zweck.

Meet Ray.

Picture book “Ray”, written and illustrated by Sarah Zweck and published by Little Book Press in July

My first glimpse of Sarah Zweck’s work was on Instagram. There was I scrolling, scrolling, scrolling — wait, stop, go back, something had caught my eye. It was this:

Illustration copyright Sarah Zweck

The image communicated something to me in an instant, which urged me to look closer. The playful looseness, the sweetness, the palette, a perfect capture of a child trying at something — this drawing had achieved with a paintbrush what I’d been aiming for in some junior fiction I was working on. Sarah made it look easy and carefree in a visual, but I assumed it was as deceptively tricky to craft this closeness to the experience of being a child, or of observing childhood, as it is with words.

I’ve since pored over as much of Sarah Zweck’s work as I can, and fingers-crossed we may put my words and Sarah’s pictures together one day — but in the meantime I want to show you how beautiful her debut picture book is. Ray is written and illustrated by Sarah and comes out with Little Book Press very soon.

It begins with a child who loves, and then loses, a butterfly that he’d been planning on showing his classmates in Show & Tell. Stoically choosing a pebble to take to school instead, the story unfolds into all his classmates’ treasures, every scene colourful and energetic, with the attention to detail you’ll be pointing out over multiple readings, honouring the importance of a single school day and a child’s pure attachment to an object or small creature. Sarah is also brilliant at visually conveying the heaviness of disappointment or change, and how swiftly a child may choose joy again.

A scene from Ray, copyright Sarah Zweck, not to be reproduced without permission.

Ray’s official publication date is 31st July and it can be pre-ordered via Affirm Press here.

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Sisters in Crime Australia Announce the 24th Davitt Awards Longlist

A few days ago, something that has occupied me behind the scenes since February reached its first public stage when the Davitts Longlist — for the best crime & mystery books published by women in 2023 — was released: 30 books narrowed down from 153 across 4 categories: Fiction, Non-fiction, Young Adult and Children’s.

Without going into confidential detail I can tell you that I was one of six judges who read across all categories, and that every book was assigned a minimum of two judges at the preliminary stage, followed by passionate debate and voting.

We each read about 60 books between February and June, another big labour of love on behalf of women in the industry that is undertaken every year by a new set of judges. I can only speak for myself when I say that after that intense study of crime & mystery I am fully qualified to open a detective agency. Miss Gale, Unlikely Sleuth, at your service.

It’s surely been noted that there are only two novels longlisted in the category of Young Adult — Ellie Marney’s Some Shall Break and Amy Doak’s Eleanor Jones is Not a Murderer, both first-class novels. There were few YA crime novels in contention this year and I’ve been perplexed by this for months. Because when I ask students in Years 7-10 what they are interested in, overwhelmingly it is realistic crime & mystery . . .

So, where is it?

There are strong crossover children’s novels that would satisfy many Year 7/8s, such as This Camp Is Doomed by Anna Zobel (characters in Year 7) and The Eerie Excavation by Ash Harrier (characters in Year 8), both on the Children’s longlist, and I’m confident that many Year 7s would also love another longlister, The First Summer of Callie McGee by A.L. Tait, set in the holidays between primary and high-school. The rest of the Children’s list is just as strong, with Copycat by Kelli Anne Hawkins, Boris in Switzerland by Lucina Gifford, and Miss Penny Dreadful and the Malicious Maze by Allison Rushby providing excellent mysteries for mid-to-late primary school readers.

In addition there were 16 adult novels longlisted and 6 works of non-fiction. The next job is the shortlist so there’s further reading and re-reading for the judges to do. In the meantime, I whole-heartedly recommend every book on the YA and Children’s lists, as pictured here:

The combined YA and Children’s Davitt Longlist for Crime & Mystery Books written by women in Australia in 2023

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$1,000 Raised So Far for Literacy Projects in Cambodia

My reading team for the July Readathon, organised by Chapters for Change, has exceeded the initial target of $1,000: thank you to readers of this newsletter who’ve contributed to that! And thank you to the Voracious Readers who will be reading with purpose and paying-it-forward throughout July.

Overall, the Readathon has raised $15,119 and there is plenty of fundraising time left. The woman behind this is Sally Hetherington — I have never seen a more dedicated fundraiser in action.

An important bit of blurb direct from Chapters for Change about where the money goes:

“The Chapters for Change Readathon is an initiative of Human & Hope. We help families move out of poverty by financially supporting Human and Hope Association Cambodia (HHA Cambodia), a grassroots community centre in rural Siem Reap.

HHA Cambodia is run entirely by local staff who provide education, vocational training and development programs to their community in a culturally-sensitive manner. These programs have been proven to alleviate poverty, so families have safe housing, food on the table and children in school.”

You are no doubt fielding daily requests for time and donations from many important charities. If you would like to contribute to a literacy program that has the potential to shift the current stat of 1 in 5 Cambodians over 15 being illiterate, please make a donation today: here is my team’s fundraising page.

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Finally, some podcasts with bookish connections

If you thought I’d had my fill of crime this year with 60+ books inhaled, you’d be mistaken — even my listening has been in that genre. Am I currently trying to write another mystery? Absolutely. Blame Kate Kelly I suppose. (Link is to a previous Voracious article about my latest novel Outlaw Girls.)

I remember when This House of Grief (the story of a murder trial) by Helen Garner came out. I was working at Readings and my fellow booksellers were all over it, but I metaphorically put my hands over my eyes because at the time my children were the same ages as Jai and Tyler, two of the three children killed when the car they were in plunged into a dam — I’d learnt by then that my parental anxiety was a beast requiring careful handling. In a different stage of life now, I decided to listen to Trial By Water, an investigative podcast intending to raise doubts about the conviction of Robert Farquharson. The first episode in particular is distressing but I’m also finding it interesting and well-told.

The tone of Trial by Water is fittingly grave, so it was fascinating to note the change of tone between this and another true crime podcast, an American one called Happily Never After. This is definitely one for the writers among us, as well as the crime fans, because it’s about the murder of a chef in 2018 and the trial and conviction of his wife, Nancy Brophy, author of romance and suspense novels, particularly how her writing and research played a part in the investigation. There are six 30-minute episodes and it’s worth a listen, but on reflection I found the tone a little off for a real-life murder that happened in recent memory, somewhat insincere, but perhaps it was a lost-in-translation thing between America and me.

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Thank you for reading Voracious. Extra thanks to paid subscribers who may be wondering what happened to their deliveries of Voracious this month. I will make it up to you.

I leave you with a recent photo of my dog, Charlie, a detective’s ideal sidekick because look how he makes a little porthole with his nose when the windows mist up. Always watching, that’s Charlie.

So long, June; here’s to July. X