Latest news with #writing
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
LSUS to host fantasy and sci-fi writing summer camp for teenagers
SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) — Young aspiring writers in Shreveport can now refine their craft. LSU Shreveport encouraging children to explore their passions Louisiana State University Shreveport Division of Continuing Education will host a summer camp for teenagers aged 13 to 18. During this camp, students, whether beginners or experienced writers, will learn various techniques to tell stories, enhancing their writing skills. The cost to attend the program is $159. It will take place from June 2 to June 5, running daily from 9:00 a.m. to noon. Only 14 slots are available for the youth camp. This year's summer camp drop-off and pick-up will be in the Technology Building, which is at the entrance of the LSUS Collaborative. To purchase your ticket, visit Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Sun
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Sun
90s soap star, 47 looks unrecognisable three decades years after TV fame and new career
A STAPLE of Aussies soaps looks completely different now after ditching her TV career. Tempany Deckert, played Selina Cook on Home and Away for four years until 1998. 3 After the actress moved on from Home and Away, she had some roles in other Aussie dramas such as, All Saints, and treaded the boards in theatre productions Down Under. She decided to follow in the footsteps of her Home and Away co-stars, Melissa George and Isla Fisher, by moving to Los Angeles to try her luck in Hollywood. While she has appeared in some films and TV shows over the years, Tempany has largely moved away from acting and her new career path couldn't any more different than her character Selina on the soap. She teaches writing courses at UCLA, works as a motivation speaker and has published a massive 18 children's books. Tempany based in Los Angeles for most of the year and in between sharpening young minds, she took time earlier this year to appear in season 4 of FOXTEL's prison drama Wentworth. She also made a surprise appearance in the Emmy-award winning Netflix series, Dahmer, where she played a cop working the desk at a police station in one episode of the limited series. Tempany opened up on quitting acting, saying it felt like she'd dodged a bullet. "For me, I always wanted to give a really good turn at my writing, and I wanted to have children," Deckert told 7News in Australia. "I knew that if I had children and I was working on sets, it was going to be very difficult. You are working many hours a day and you don't get to see them that much," she added. "If I had gotten a bunch of jobs in Hollywood, I probably would have stayed the course because I love acting – but I probably wouldn't have gotten married and had kids." The actress also runs writing courses for anyone who wants to follow in her footsteps, including one called Write a Novel, Change your Life. She recently promoted an upcoming course on Instagram where she looked unrecognisable from her days playing Selina on Home and Away. Wearing dark rimmed glasses and minimal make-up, Tempany promised some more courses were coming soon. Tempany is also married to voice actor Brian Donovan and they share two children. She became an American citizen in 2020, but said her dream would be to return to Australia. "I'm trying to convince my Australian agent to get me a great job in Australia where we can move back for six months to a year," Deckert said. "That's the dream – to convince the husband to move to Australia." 3
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Event Guide: Forbidden Fruit, Swell Season and the other best things to do in Ireland this week
Event of the week Borris House Festival of Writing and Ideas Friday-Sunday, June 6th-8th, Borris, Co Carlow, €265/€94/€70, all events sold out (returns only), The words 'all events sold out' rarely apply to festivals where most of guests are writers, academics, journalists, cognitive psychologists, record producers, musicians and actors. This annual gathering shatters the perception that literary events are niche. The line-up is weighty, to say the least, with the likes of Fiona Shaw, Margaret Drabble, Steven Pinker, Rupert Everett, Elaine Feeney, John Banville and Denise Gough chatting across the weekend to anyone who will listen. Music in the onsite venue (aka the Rookery) includes performances by Villagers, Glen Hansard, Kate Ellis, Martin Hayes, MayKay and Jerry Fish. Gigs Morrissey Saturday, May 31st, 3Arena, Dublin, 6.30pm, €68.70, Morrissey celebrated his 66th birthday last week, so we can presume he will continue to write songs that are based, according to his biographer Johnny Rogan, on 'endlessly re-examining a lost, painful past'. Whether or not that's true, the contentious singer-songwriter arrives in Ireland on the back of nine postponed US shows (caused by severe sinusitis) and two unreleased albums (Bonfire of Teenagers and Without Music the World Dies). As ever, fan loyalty remains high. Forbidden Fruit Saturday and Sunday, May 31st and June 1st, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin, 1pm, €174/€99/€89, Forbidden Fruit: Jazzy The first open-air festival of the summer returns with two days of contemporary techno, soul, neojazz, electronic, pop, rock and the proverbial whatever you're having yourself. Audience favourites include Jamie xx, Underworld, Caribou, Jazzy and Peggy Gou. Emerging music acts that might be unfamiliar to Irish gig-goers include two treasures from Australia, Mail Grab and Glass Beams, and two acts making their Irish debut, New York's Fcukers and Germany's Bunt. Kudos to the promoters, also, for featuring up-and-coming Irish acts such as Pastiche, Shiv, Negro Impacto, Celaviedmai, KhakiKid, Cliffords and Bold Love. The Swell Season Saturday and Sunday, May 31st and June 1st, NCH, Dublin, 7.30pm, €55, The Swell Season Almost 20 years after they formed as The Swell Season and then appeared as two struggling musicians in John Carney's charming lo-fi movie Once, Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová reunite for a European and US tour in support of their forthcoming album, Forward, their first album as a duo in 16 years. Expect to hear new material, then, but also the songs that started it all, including Falling Slowly, When Your Mind's Made Up, and This Low. READ MORE Galway Folk Festival Wednesday-Sunday, June 4th-8th, Monroe's, Galway city, various times/prices, Galway Folk Festival: The Scratch Another round of applause for the Galway Folk Festival, which manages to secure the services of not only noted singer-songwriters but also handfuls of emerging folk/trad/hybrid music acts. Most are performing in various rooms, corners, nooks and crannies of Monroe's pub, so if you're looking for a quiet beverage, best think again. If, however, you're in search of acts that deliver classic songwriting (Lloyd Cole, Wednesday, June 4th, Town Hall, 7.30pm, €40), boisterous behaviour (The Scratch, Friday, June 6th, 9pm, sold out), quality musicianship (Kíla, Saturday, June 7th, 7pm, €25), and rigorous confessions (Martha Wainwright, Sunday, June 8th, 7pm, €35), then you've come to the right place. Many free events are also included in the festival line-up. Stage The Cave Friday, June 6th until Friday, July 18th, Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 7.30pm, €50/€45/€33, Any new work by Kevin Barry is worth your attention, and his new play (which receives its world premiere here) is no exception. The brothers McRae, Archie (Tommy Tiernan) and Bopper (Aaron Monaghan) are on the run from the authorities and roughing it in a cave in the mountains of south Co Sligo. They fret about the strength of wifi signals, obsess about an obscure Mexican celebrity, and worry about being discovered by a curious local Garda sergeant (Judith Roddy). Caitríona McLaughlin directs. Following the Dublin run, the play will transfer to Galway's Town Hall Theatre, from Tuesday, July 22nd, until Saturday, July 26th, as part of the Galway International Arts Festival. Falling to Earth – My Summer with Bowie Wednesday and Thursday, June 4th and 5th, Theatre Royal, Waterford, 8pm, €21, ; Friday, June 6th, Everyman, Cork, 8pm, €26, Be careful what you wish for, and other associated hopes might be the core message of this acclaimed one-man show about pub bouncer Scut Kelly (Stephen Jones), whose sole comfort in an otherwise drab, rural existence is the music of the titular songwriter. Also, Saturday, June 7th, Axis, Ballymun, Wednesday June 11th, Civic Theatre, Tallaght, Thursday, June 12th/Friday, June 13th, DLR Mill Theatre, Dundrum (all Dublin); Saturday, June 14th, Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, Co Wicklow; from Thursday, June 19th until Saturday, June 21st, Lyric Theatre, Belfast. See venues for full details. Comedy Solve-Along-A Murder-She-Wrote Tuesday and Wednesday, June 3rd and 4th, Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, 8pm, €25, Murder, She Wrote poster, from Tony Clayton-Lea for The Guide, Saturday, May 31, 2025. Making its debut at the Pavilion, this successful cult comedy stage show features an interactive screening of Sing a Song of Murder, a much-favoured episode of the television mystery series Murder, She Wrote. Accompanied by a series-related quiz and a race against time to uncover the identity of the TV show's killer, audience participation is welcome if not encouraged. Your host is playwright, author and Murder, She Wrote obsessive Tim Benzie. Still running Emma Rawicz Wednesday, June 4th, Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, Co Donegal, 8pm, €15, ; Thursday, June 5th, Hawk's Well Theatre, Sligo, 8pm, €20, ; Friday, June 6th, Roscommon Arts Centre, 8pm, €20, Emma Rawicz One of the most hotly tipped rising performers in jazz, saxophonist Emma Rawicz steers her band (pianist Elliot Galvin, bassist Kevin Glasgow, and drummer Asaf Sirkis) on a nationwide tour that continues until Friday, June 13th. Visit for full details. Book it this week Jade, 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin, October 8th, David O'Doherty, Vicar Street, Dublin, October 10th/11th, These New Puritans, Workman's Club, Dublin, November 10th, Wolf Alice, 3Arena, Dublin, December 10th,
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Madeleine Thien: ‘I ran in blizzards and -20C – all I wanted was to listen to Middlemarch'
My earliest reading memoryResting in my father's arms as he read the newspaper. I must have been three or four years old. He read the paper cover to cover, and for an hour or so each night, I watched the world go by. My favourite book growing upWhen I was 11 I would go to the library downtown and request microfilm of old newspapers. I clicked the spools into place and read and read. I was horrified and baffled and amazed that there existed so many decades, so much time, in which I was … nowhere and not yet. The book that changed me as a teenagerMy parents were educated in missionary schools in Hong Kong and Malaysia; in Vancouver, they enrolled me in a Catholic school. The religious texts and sermons that we read, and the things I saw around me, made me turn away from religion when I was a teenager; but those texts instilled in me a lasting relationship with philosophy. I left religion, but not its questions. The writer who changed my mindOmar El Akkad. I used to think that, sometimes, people are made speechless by the horror of events, by fear, by grief. Perhaps the words they need don't exist. But One Day, Everyone Will Have Been Against Us reminds us that the words are there. We have the language to describe ethnic cleansing and genocide. When journalists are murdered, when 183 children are killed in a single day, when 15 paramedics are executed, and we stay silent, words don't fail us – we fail our vocation and each other. The book that made me want to be a writerPlurality! It's really all of them, isn't it? Contending with one another across time. Reading is prismatic, and a great writer shows us how to read far beyond their own works. John Berger, Canisia Lubrin, Rawi Hage, Yan Lianke, Balam Rodrigo, Yōko Ogawa, Adania Shibli, Ma Jian, Italo Calvino, James Baldwin, Alexis Wright, Kafka, my beloved Proust … and on it goes. The book or author I came back toDuring the pandemic, I ran 10km up and down a mountain every other day while listening to Middlemarch. I ran in blizzards and -20C – all I wanted to do was listen. The book I rereadBohumil Hrabal's I Served the King of England. Hrabal's knowing, sorrowful, open-hearted, gleeful, broken genius. I love him as one loves a friend. The book I could never read againFor now but not forever, the work of a writer who shaped me, Alice Munro. Yet often I find myself thinking about the experience of reading her – this feeling that I knew the women in her stories, had lived among them, had loved them or fled them. The memory of reading, the imprint of the encounter, is a lifelong confrontation. The book I discovered later in lifeI read The Iliad when I was 15 but I feel as if I experienced it for the first time when I read Emily Watson's 2023 translation, which overflows with names and lives and which records the utter waste of war. Simone Weil's essay The Iliad, or the Poem of Force also changed me – her belief that, century after century, we've ignored or misunderstood or misrepresented what Homer was trying to tell us. Weil writes: 'Whatever is not war, whatever war destroys or threatens, The Iliad wraps in poetry; the realities of war, never.' The book I am currently readingÆdnan by Linnea Axelsson, and Ninth Building by Zou Jingzhi. Everyone read these infinitely wise and haunting books. The Book of Records is published by Granta. To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
ABC News
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Hilde Hinton's home for the temporarily defeated
Hilde Hinton's upbringing was marked by the shocking death of her mother when Hilde was just 12 years old. Despite the great grief, there was also a sense of relief for Hilde. She shielded her younger siblings, Samuel and Connie Johnson, from the truth of how and why their mother died. But when Connie also died, decades later of cancer, Hilde was propelled into writing her first novel, in between shifts as a prison officer. Her debut book, The Loudness of Unsaid things, was intensely autobiographical. While Connie never got to read the book, Hilde's brother Samuel finally 'met' their mother through Hilde's writing, and learned all that his big sister had done for them growing up. Now, from her home in Melbourne, where people who need solace freely come and go, Hilde explores in her writing the ordinary things that make life extraordinary. Further information The Opposite of Lonely is published by Hachette. You can watch the episode of Australian Story, which features Hilde's brother, Samuel Johnson, online at ABC iview.
