A piece of clothing that haunts you? The coat was olive green, knee length, and made of hairy wool that gave it a somewhat shaggy appearance. To my current-day eye, stylish and unique, yet back then, the source of humiliation and an object of passionate loathing. 1965. I was eleven and in my first year at boarding school. How, I raged, could she (my mother) have sent me off with such a horror when a camelhair coat was de rigueurRead more
Clare Archibald
Your favourite piece of clothing?Textiles are so interwoven in my mind with the colour language they offer it is perhaps not surprising that my favourite piece of clothing is one I can’t quite fully articulate with words. It eludes me in the specificity of its greenness, shape, and thread combination, in the feel of it. I no longer have it and realised when writing this that I also no longer have the memory of how I came to lose itRead more
Miranda Edmonds
Your favourite piece of clothing? A textile object that haunts you? A memorable outfit? This black beanie is from one of my favourite people in the world and always reminds me of her. It is warm but not too hot. Stylisty but never dates. It’s been around the world with me and is still going strong. It’s so good even my husband and eldest son try to borrow it but I always get it back! I was so pleased whenRead more
Anna Paolozzi
Your favourite piece of clothing? A textile object that haunts you? A dream textile object? My favourite dress: it’s inky blue and I love it because it’s made out of the thinnest gauzy cotton and has Pre-Raphaelite ruching on the neckline. It’s longer at the back so when you walk it floats out behind you. This is a velvet and horn chair I inherited from my parents, which they bought before they were married. It haunts me slightly becauseRead more
Jenny Bennie
Your favourite piece of clothing or textile object? I love my embroidered bag produced by the Keiskamma Project in the Eastern Cape. The initiative was started in 2000 in the hamlet of Hamburg to help women with HIV find a way to sustain their families. I acquired this interesting handmade item in 2002 when researching a shipwreck off the nearby coast. It is regularly used for carrying my Bookclub books and inevitably draws favourable comments. Work done by the Keiskamma group is inspiring. They interpreted the BayeuxRead more
Trish Bolton
Your favourite piece of clothing or textile object? A piece of clothing or textile object that haunts you? Your dream outfit or textile object? I’m from Melbourne so perhaps it’s no surprise that the colour of my favourite piece of clothing is black. I have, over many years – make that decades – attempted to bid farewell to black. I mean, how difficult is it to find what you’re looking for in your wardrobe when everything is black? And soRead more
Anne Marsella
Your favourite piece of clothing or textile object? A piece of clothing or textile object that haunts you? Your dream outfit or textile object? Among my favorite pieces of clothing are my aprons, this one in particular, with its mock Catholic iconography, its Little Bo Peep plays the Virgin Mary theme. Most importantly it has pockets. I wore it to work this summer at The Red Wheelbarrow Bookstore in Paris, kept cell phone, scissors and pencil in the front pouches.Read more
Rowena Mondiwa
Your favourite piece of clothing or textile object? The drawstring has long since been lost but the bookbag is still intact and I keep it folded up among my belongings. I often think about how it’s my oldest possession, the one thing that has accompanied me in my life across the world. Now, as an adult, it makes sense that this would be the one possession I have kept from my childhood. I’ve had this bag since I was fourRead more
Tanya Huntington
Your favourite piece of clothing or textile object? Your dream outfit or textile object? A piece of clothing or textile object that haunts you? After giving this some thought, I’ve decided on an infinity scarf that my sister knitted following the pattern of a Moebius strip. It’s too warm to wear it now, but I keep it handy as a treasured item. Why? Because sisters are interesting creatures – we are more alike to one another genetically speaking than toRead more
Mauricio Montiel Figueiras
Mauricio Montiel Figueiras (Guadalajara, México, 1968) es narrador, ensayista, editor y traductor. Parte de su obra ha aparecido en medios de Argentina, Brasil, Canadá, Chile, Colombia, Estados Unidos, España, Inglaterra e Italia. Entre sus libros más recientes se encuentran Paseos sin rumbo. Diálogos entre cine y literatura (2010), Señor Fritos (2011), La mujer de M. (2012), Ciudad tomada (2013) y Los que hablan. Fotorrelatos (2016). Desde 2011 trabaja en el proyecto novelístico titulado El hombre de tweed a través de la plataforma electrónica Twitter, dondeRead more
Mena Abdullah
Mena Abdullah was born in 1930 in Bundarra, NSW, and lives in Sydney. She attended Sydney Girls High, before training as an accountant and later becoming a Commonwealth officer, working for the CSIRO. She is a writer of poetry and short stories and was regularly published in The Bulletin, and other Australian journals including Quadrant and Hemisphere. Her first published poem was The Red Koran (1954) – included in Australian Poetry (1955). Her short story collection The Time of the Peacock was first published in 1965 by Angus & Robertson (Australia), andRead more
Greg Bear
Greg Bear is the author of more than thirty books, spanning thrillers, science fiction, and fantasy, including Blood Music, Eon, The Forge of God, Darwin’s Radio, and City at the End of Time. His most recent book is Take Back the Sky (Orbit, 2016), the last volume in his War Dogs Trilogy. Greg’s books have won numerous international prizes, been translated into twenty-two languages, and have sold millions of copies worldwide. He has served as a consultant for NASA, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Department of State, the International Food Protection Association,Read more
Jo Atherton
All the materials used in Jo Atherton’s work have been found on the tideline. In her weaving and printing, she is inspired by the stories these orphaned objects have to tell. Her work highlights the diversity of plastic items washing ashore and how the ubiquity of this material characterises the geological age of human influence – the Anthropocene. Jo has exhibited her work at a number of national and international venues including the National Maritime Museum Cornwall, London Luton AirportRead more
Ben Walter
Ben Walter is a writer of lyrical fiction and poetry who has been widely published in Australian journals, including Meanjin, Island, The Lifted Brow and Griffith Review. He has twice been shortlisted in the Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Prizes, and was the recent guest editor of Overland’s special anti-/dis-/un-Australian fiction issue. What fear was Where no farmers had ploughed the trees or settled seeds to graze the soil, where the folded arms of scrub bar gullies, where the wide buttongrass plains swelter under peaks ofRead more
Emily Midorikawa
Emily Midorikawa is the co-author of A Secret Sisterhood, a book about the literary friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontё, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf, to be published in 2017 by Aurum Press (UK) and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (USA). With her co-author, Emma Claire Sweeney, she runs the female literary friendship blog, Something Rhymed. Emily teaches writing at City University London and New York University: London. She was the winner of the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize in 2015. ClatterRead more