Christine Jackman

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Christine Jackman

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Author, Journalist & Communications Consultant. Author of Turning Down the Noise: The Quiet Power o

14/10/2026

Brisbane Writers Festival 2026 was stunning! Amazing weather, gorgeous venue, great crowds and so many fascinating and fun sessions.

It takes an enormous amount of work to do this every year - and as deputy chair of the best Writers Festival in Australia, I feel so fortunate to watch and learn from this remarkable, hard-working and talented humans.

During the Festival, they are mostly behind the scenes… so I think they deserve to know they are seen and they are LOVED!! Thanks, staff, crew and volunteers. 🙏🏼💗📚

02/10/2026

I don’t know what Brisbane book lovers have been up to 😉 but we’re experiencing a baby boom of new book stores this year!

The latest new arrival is Torchlight Books, which opened on Given Tce last weekend. Paddington is a perfect spot for a book store as there are coffee shops and w**e bars close by, as well as a great op shop for those into thrifting.

I discovered Nicola Morgan owner, the delightful Nicola Morgan, behind her counter armed with a family block of Dairy Milk chocolate and immediately recognized a kindred spirit.

Torchlight offers a curated range of wonderful fiction and non-fiction titles, while also showcasing art, design and architecture books. The store is also hosting a section on behalf of Murderous Ink, so you’ll find lots of crime, mysteries and thrillers, although I hear a rumour Murderous Ink Books may also be scouting for a physical site!!

So we may hear the pitter patter of little pages 🍼👶📚 again very soon.

08/09/2026

📚 BOOK REVIEW: TWO for TUESDAY! 📚

I’m running way behind on book reviews, partly because much of my recent reading has involved doctors’ bills and knee-rehab plans. Not much of a plot, although both contained alarming twists (boom-tish!)

So: Two for Tuesday! Two reviews in one reel, addressing a very current publishing trend …writers writing about writing.

📕 The Ending Writes Itself by Evelyn Clarke gives us six authors, one isolated island and 72 hours to complete a dead crime writing superstar’s unfinished novel.

📗 Dominic Amerena’s I Want Everything offers the local, literary version: an aspiring Australian novelist, a reclusive cult author and an escalating series of lies about who has the right to tell whose story.

Both are clever, twisty examinations of literary ambition, ego and publishing-world absurdity. I admired aspects of both more than I enjoyed either as a whole. For me, Yellowface by R.F Kuang remains the sharper and more propulsive benchmark for writers behaving badly.

Have you noticed this trend? Which novel about the writing life would you recommend?

20/08/2026

Years ago, when I was still at uni, one of my Saturday morning rituals was to sit at the breakfast table and read the various columnists in the enormous Saturday papers.

One of the must-reads was a fellow called Richard Glover. He wrote regularly - and hilariously - about raising his two young sons, who he nicknamed Bat Boy and the Space Cadet.

At the time, I found his tales about parenting both alien - I couldn’t imagine ever being a parent myself at that time - and compelling. He’s definitely one of the writers who inspired me to dream about writing my own newspaper column one day - and a few years later, I was indeed granted that opportunity as a journalist with the Queensland News

That’s just the magic of Richard Glover ‘s writing - and probably explains why he’s one of Australia’s longest-serving and most popular newspaper columnists.

And another bit of magic? Somehow Richard is now a grandfather and I’m the mother of two young men of my own - and we’re finally going to meet on stage for the first time at the Brisbane Writers Festival.

We’ll be chatting about the craziness that is raising children - and how the particular form of craziness has changed with various parenting fads over the years. Who did the least damage to their offspring: Richard or me? You’ll have to buy a Brisbane Writers Festival ticket to find out!!

16/08/2026

📚BOOK REVIEW📚

The Palm House - Gwendoline Riley

Sarah Jessica Parker raved about this one - and she was not alone. Gwendoline Riley attracted stellar reviews for the exquisitely drawn character studies in The Palm House.

So… no surprises it’s on the Booker long list!

But it’s not for everyone. If you need a propulsive plot to keep you in invested in a novel, this one’s not for you. But if you love to explore human frailty in all its awkward, absurd and occasionally even repellent forms, you’ll find plenty of it in The Palm House.

There were so many scenes in this book that evoked memories for me: seedy parties, hopeless romances, parents who confound and disappoint by being flawed (like the rest of us).

And if you’ve worked around publishing - particularly “high-brow” magazines or news - you’ll recognise the protagonist Laura, a middle-aged writer who is negotiating the possible demise of her magazine alongside her disillusioned friend Putnam, a literary editor.

It took me the first half of the novel to let go of my expectations of a strong plot line and just enjoy the characters I was meeting and Riley’s acute eye for tiny, devastating details.

Will it make the Booker shortlist? You have until late September to read it for yourself before the list is announced.

09/08/2026

📚 BOOK RECOMMENDATION 📚

NYMPH by Sofia Montrone

Why are we not hearing more about this book and this author?

Nymph is easily one of the best books I’ve read in 2026. It’s also Sofia Montrone’s debut, which is frankly ridiculous given how sophisticated, assured and just plain gorgeous her writing is. 😍

Set over two summers at a family-run agriturismo in the lush northern Italian countryside, it follows Leo from childhood into young adulthood, as she tries to make sense of family, grief, memory, desire and her own emerging sexuality.

There are shades of Call Me By Your Name (but betterrrrrrr!): the heat, the languor, the longing, the intensity of a summer in which everything seems heightened but this time we’re firmly in the world of girls and women, as they navigate relationships with their families, the social pressures they face… oh, and even a through line drawing from The Odyssey (sooo hot right now 😉).

And Montrone can WRITE. At a line level, her prose is remarkable: sensual, precise and just so damn mature for a debut. You don’t just see northern Italy; you can smell it, taste it, hear it, bathe in the heat on your skin. I kept stopping to reread sentences simply because they were so good!

Thanks to Terri-Jane Dow for selecting Nymph for her August book club at Cursive Knives 🔪 . We were all obsessed by Sofia Montrone and can’t wait to see what she does next. 👀

Highly, highly recommend. One of my must-reads of 2026. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

04/08/2026

Forecast for August in Brisbane: busy, with a strong chance of books! 📚

I keep seeing those lovely Bookstagram “month ahead” posts, so here’s mine: the Brisbane book events I’m hoping to get to this month, assuming my orthopaedic surgeon doesn’t look at my skiing-injured knee and yell, “HELL, NO!” while waving a scalpel. 😳

On the calendar: the Brisbane Writers Festival 2026 program reveal, bookclubs, writer catch-ups, Wines & Spines, the opening of Romancing The Novel in Brisbane, Meg Mason at Brisbane Powerhouse, Books on Bywong, The Lanes Book Fair, Joanna Jenkins at Books@Stones, and the Indigenous Literacy Foundation trivia night hosted by Avid Reader and Dr Anita Heiss.

Basically, August is serving: books, community, w**e, crime fiction, romance, trivia, and a level of calendar ambition that may require ice packs and crutches.

Which August book events are you going to? And more importantly, which ones have good chairs?

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