postscript…

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Sean Lee, whose photo appears in full splendour in my previous Image of the Week post (just scroll down), has been announced winner of . Congratulations, Sean!

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Image of the week

I am thrilled to introduce up-and-coming photographic artist Sean Lee, a young action and adventure sports photographer based in Perth, Western Australia. With a focus on mountain biking, Sean’s images can be found on the covers of national and international publications. This high-octane photo was shot during his 2015 trip to New Zealand, and is in the running for the Pinkbike.com Photo of the Year Award.

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Queenstown local Joel Tunbridge flies down a trail on the slopes of Coronet Peak, overlooking New Zealand’s Southern Alps. ©Sean Lee, 2015.

Sean’s amazing image sits beside a worthy competitor. Check out the two finalists . Voting is in its last hours and requires a Pinkbike account, which takes 30 seconds to create without any of those pesky follow-on emails.

with Sean Lee and Lee Trumpore, on the nitty gritty of mountain bike photography. Regardless of which image takes out the trophy, in my eye both boys are champions!

Top shelf

Amanda Curtin

Author Amanda Curtin

Recently, Western Australian writer extraordinaire, book editor and long-time friend  was nice enough to chat with me about my new novel Wildlight in her post:

Amanda Curtin is author of three remarkable works of fiction. Her most recent, , was published to acclaim in Australia, shortlisted for the 2014 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards and, at any tick of the clock, will debut in the United Kingdom. ‘How glamorous things seem from afar when you’ve never felt the everyday of them,’ says Meggie Duthie Tulloch, once ‘Fish Meggie’ during the height of Scotland’s herring trade with its troupes of gutting girls. Elemental spans Meggie’s life from her birthplace in north-east Scotland at the start of the twentieth century, to the close of her life in 1970s Western Australia. The voice of Meggie, and the beauty and restraint of Amanda’s language, empowers this narrative with a consciousness that gives the work a unique vision and a deep-felt humanness that connects us all.

Amanda’s , a collection of short literary fiction about the gifts and burdens we inherit from the world…and those we leave behind, is a MUST READ. The story ‘Rush’ still gives me shivers.

Amanda’s debut novel , centres on Willa Samson, a grief-stricken mother who searches for answers to a very private loss, while unpicking clues to the actual 1882 murder and controversy over the remains of Western Australian convict Little Jock. The Sinkings is a haunting story of present and past.

I have all three on my top shelf and I encourage you to add them to yours!

Wildlight countdown

Maatsuyker Island Lighthouse

With Wildlight in stores next week, remote lighthouses and windswept islands are fresh on my mind. Wildlight is a contemporary novel set on Maatsuyker Island, the site of Australia’s southernmost lighthouse, located off the south coast of Tasmania.

I was recently interviewed by the lovely Georgia Moodie for ABC Radio National’s Books and Arts. If you would like to hear it, listen to the .

Also check out the .

Writing the Wild

Welcome to Writing the Wild, a blog for and about writers and writing, readers and reading, creators and their images. Having just travelled back from the Antarctic Peninsula, still caught in that strange long-haul lag between then and now, it seems fitting to share a recent image of ice, taken at Point Wild off Elephant Island. Antarctica has been a big part of my life for some years but it’s impossible to ever tire of the beauty and art of ice.

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Striped iceberg at Point Wild

But to the here and now…

On returning home I was thrilled to receive advance copies of my new novel Wildlight, being published by Picador on 1 March, and in book stores on 23 February. Check out the Wildlight book trailer kindly produced by Matt and Heather at