Tag Archives: Girl Gangs

Nothing but one big shill

Okay, you best all be warned, the following post is one giant shill, mostly on behalf of yours truly.

I am flat out at the moment with the third year of my PhD, so I am finding it hard to make the time to post as much as I would like on my various cultural obsessions, film noir, crime fiction and pulp. That said I still have a lot going on.

First up, this coming Friday, May 4, from 7pm, I’ll be taking part in the first of what will be a series of free events run by my local bookstore, the wonderful Brunswick Bound, in which authors will be reading from the opening chapter of the their current work. This one has a crime theme and there’ll be four of us reading, including me doing a section from Gunshine State, which was re-released earlier this year by Down and Out Books. So, if you are inner Melbourne north way this Friday and feel like hearing some words and drinking some wine, drop on down, 361 Sydney Road Brunswick.

The second incarnation of Gunshine State has been getting a bit of love recently, the best of which is this review of the site of Canberra based blogger and writer, Tim Nappertime.… Read more

Melbourne launch of Girl Gangs, Biker Boys & Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction & Youth Culture, 1950-1980

Please join me on Monday, December 4, for the launch of Girl Gangs, Biker Boys & Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction & Youth Culture, 1950 to 1980, a book I have co-edited with my friend, Iain McIntyre.

The launch will take place from 6.30pm at one of Melbourne’s coolest second hand bookshops, Grub Street Bookshop, 379 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy. We’ll be doing live readings from some of the pulp novels included in our book. There will be cheap drinks available and, of course, you can buy a copy of the book.

Girl Gangs, Biker and Real Cool Cats is the result of four years work. It is the first comprehensive account of how the rise of postwar youth culture was depicted in Australian, American, and British mass market pulp fiction. It includes approximately 400 covers, many of them very rare, and 70 in-depth author interviews, illustrated biographies and articles regarding authors novelists who exploited and celebrated juvenile delinquents, beatniks, mods, bikers, hippies, skinheads, punks and a host of other subcultures.

I am really proud of this book and would love it if you could join Iain and I to launch it. This book will have very limited distribution in Australia, so for Melbourne folks, this is your ideal chance to snag a copy.

Read more