April 7, 2026 – SparklyPrettyBriiiight

(courtesy official Freya North site) Identity is a powerful driver for every person alive. Not all of us may acknowledge it outright, but whether we emphatically embrace the dogma of a religion, the fervency of fandom of a football team or we live and breathe artistic expression in all its Continue Reading

Easter is fun! Mini-reviews of Banjo the Hot Cross Bun, Pink Easter + Never Touch a Grumpy Bunny

(via Shutterstock) I adore kids’ books. Sure they were once upon just books to read to my nieces and nephews, but they’ve grown past books like these now, and yet, in reading them to my favourite little people, it hit me that here are some fun stories worth reading just Continue Reading

Easter has a soundtrack just like Christmas, so why do we never hear it? (curated article)

(via Shutterstock) This article by by Wendy Hargreaves, academic in the School of Education and Creative Arts, University of Southern Queensland, was first published in The Conversation Australia. You can’t visit the shops around Christmas time without hearing “Feliz Navidad”, “Silent Night”, or Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Continue Reading

Easter book review: Easter Bunny Murder by Leslie Meier

(courtesy Penguin Random House) It would be tempting to take in the title to this book by Leslie Meier and assume that the much-loved iconic Easter Bunny has had a brain snap, a breakdown and a loss of inhibition all in one and got on an uncharacteristically bloody killing spree. Continue Reading

Rabbits and chicks and glittery carrots oh my! I decorated my Easter tree with 5 pop culture ornaments

(via Shutterstock) Are Easter trees really a thing?! It’s a common reaction when I tell people I have one, and that I decorate it every year, and I have to explain that yes, they exist – mine was bought at Bed, Bath and Table at post-Easter sales many years ago Continue Reading

Book review: To the Moon and Back by Eliana Ramage

(courtesy Penguin Books Australia) If you have ever met someone possessed of singular, unwavering ambition, you will be well acquainted with how consuming that kind of focus can be. Nothing else matters to that person beyond seeing their vision realised, their life goals realised and all of the hope and Continue Reading

Songs, songs and more songs #135: girli, Em Beihold, Alex Warren, TOMORA + Jessie Ware … extra! RAYE live at Abbey Road

(via Shutterstock) We all need music. It soundtracks the good, the bad and the ugly – this reference makes way further down this pot – and it gives up hope and a sense of direction when all around us life feels like it’s sinking beneath the waves. These five featured Continue Reading

Movie review: The Magic Faraway Tree

(courtesy IMP Awards) It’s a tale as old as, well, not time exactly, but certainly since the day movies arrived just over a century ago and began adapting books into films, setting in train a titanic battle between those who believe solely in the purity of the written word and Continue Reading

An unwelcome visitor … or the start of healing? Thoughts on Homebodies

(courtesy Random Management Instagram) So much is left unsaid when you’re a queer person coming out to your parents. You may have rehearsed the conversations a thousand times in your head, imagined how the discussion might go, good or bad and hoped that everything you authentically are will be far Continue Reading

Book review: That Island Feeling by Karina May

(courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) Heading off on holidays, all we really want is to get away from the insistent stresses and strains of everyday life. Hand us a cocktail, sit us by the pool or in a bush cabin somewhere, banish the internet to a simpler, more analogue time and Continue Reading

Movie review: Project Hail Mary

(courtesy IMP Awards) At the heart of every great and enduring sci-fi story, sits an impressive amount of evocative humanity. It’s easy just to see the spaceships and the planetary expanses and aliens and wars and epic space opera sprawling across millennia and impossibly far light years of stars and Continue Reading