Bob's Journal

On a cool winter's day in Cairo, I stepped into the Marriott Hotel and wandered over to the local bakery tucked away near the lavish hotel gardens. In the far corner of the small room sat Umm Kulthoum Mahfouz. We were meeting to discuss her recollections of her father, the late Naguib Mahfouz, Nobel laureate author, who still held the most recognizable name in Arabic literature.  Read more

As the decade began, there were rea­sons to be optimistic: America had elected its first black president, and despite a global recession just two years earlier, the world hadn't cascaded into total financial collapse. Obama­care, for all its flaws, was passed, and then came the Iran deal and the Paris climate accords.  Read more

Indigenous literature has been one of the top-performing categories for local booksellers in 2019, and international publishers are noticing a similar increase in interest for books written by Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander authors.  Read more

After 20 years of writing, my first novel, Swapping Purples for Yellows, finally entered the world in August of 2019. The book took four years to write, another two to sell, and 18 months to edit and prepare for publication.  Read more