Melissa Cranenburgh

Editor, writer, podcaster, grade-one pen-licence failure. Host of Triple R's Backstory. She/her.

[Jo Case @jocaseau]

Nova Weetman’s gorgeous grief memoir about her playwright partner Aidan Fennessy, a stunning love story, reminded me of being young & prioritising a creative life.

I also loved Sloane Crosley’s grief memoir, an ode to friendship & book publishing.

https://t.co/9lNYP7ZwRV

[Sarah Schwartz @Sarah__Schwartz]

We have launched the Jewish Council of Australia, an expert voice on antisemitism and racism.

We founded the Council because our Jewish representative organisations fail to represent Jews who are critical of Israel and support a free Palestine.

https://t.co/TtF7usvDfL

[Melissa Cranenburgh @thetwits2]

@derridalicious Na’ama, love to you. ❤️

[Jo Case @jocaseau]

Virginia Woolf's own copy of her first novel – with notes in her handwriting – was lost, then found in a University of Sydney library. It's now been digitised.

Mark Byron has examined it and shares what it reveals about her life & work. @ConversationEDU

https://t.co/c9QW3h8WcA

[Jo Case @jocaseau]

Big W has with drawn Yumi Stynes & Melissa Kang’s Welcome to Sex from physical stores to protect staff from customer abuse.

But teen sex education books can help keep young people safe - and are not new.

Expert @emmawhatman explains @ConversationEDU

https://t.co/TDY0GSDteO

[Melissa Cranenburgh @thetwits2]

@errrnah Omg! The text diagnosis game is everything

[Jo Case @jocaseau]

Excellent piece on the disgraceful, dwindling state of arts funding and infrastructure in SA.

Thank you, Jane Howard @ConversationEDU for commissioning & publishing this. It’s important. 🙏

[Melissa Cranenburgh @thetwits2]

@annaspargoryan Oh no! Love to you ❤️

[Jini Maxwell @astroblob]

Good job going at my work! ACMI X is hiring a new community coordinator🌟 Studio managers, producers, events people, apply: https://t.co/AovHlvZeI4

[Jacinta Parsons @Jacinta_Parsons]

Jacinta Parsons: 'How I learned to embrace solitude'
it always feels exposing when you share a bit of da truth of living in this skin - but I know a lot of people go through this at various times...

https://t.co/rKsL2bIS5H

[Patrick Lenton @PatrickLenton]

everyone in arts and culture journalism should do a radio talkback segment, because you confidently come on being like "everyone is talking about Succession" and then it's 42 calls coming in about a show called Big River Farm which ran for 32 years and you've never heard of

[anna spargo-ryan 🍉 @annaspargoryan]

You can help!

Pretend you're interested in my book/me. What question would you ask if I was at a writers' festival or giving a lecture, hypothetically?

[Jo Case @jocaseau]

In the age of AI, what we do at @ConversationEDU –carefully checking facts, as we help experts communicate their work to a wide general readership –is more important than ever.

If you have the capacity to donate, however much or little you can, now is a good time. 🙏

[Melissa Cranenburgh @thetwits2]

@errrnah @wtb_Michael Insanely good

[Melissa Cranenburgh @thetwits2]

@mdixonsmith ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[Mohamad Safa @mhdksafa]

When Tina Turner left her first husband - who was also her boss, captor, and brutal tormentor - she snuck out of their Dallas hotel room with a single thought in her mind: "The way out is through the door."
From there she fled across the midnight freeway, semi-trucks careening past her, with 36 cents and a Mobil gas card in her pocket. As soon as she decided to walk out that door, she owned nothing else.
When she filed for divorce, she made an unusual request. She didn't want anything: not the song rights, not the cars, not the houses, not the money. All she wanted was the stage name he gave her - Tina - and her married name - Turner. This was the name by which the world had come to know her, and keeping it was her only chance to salvage her career.
Things could have gone a lot of ways from there. She could have labored in obscurity for decades, maybe making records on small labels to be prized by vinyl connoisseurs in Portland. She could have stayed in Vegas, where she first went to get her chops back up, and worked as a nostalgia act. And, of course, given what she had been through, she might have ... not made it.
What happened instead is that Tina Turner became the biggest global rock star of the 80s. I'm old enough to barely remember this, but if you aren't, it was like this: The Rolling Stones would headline a stadium one day, and the next day it would be Tina Turner. A middle-aged Black woman - she became a rock star at 42! - sitting atop the 1980s like it was her throne.
She managed this because of whatever rare stuff she was made of (this is a woman whose label gave her two weeks to record her solo debut, Private Dancer, which went five times platinum); because she decided to speak publicly about her abusive marriage and forge her own identity, and in doing so give hope and courage to countless women; and also because - in a perhaps unlikely twist for a girl from Nutbush, Tennessee - she had her practice of Soka Gakkai Nichiren Buddhism, to which she credited her survival. She remained devout until the end.
Tina's second marriage - to her, her only marriage - was to Edwin Bach, a Swiss music executive 16 years her junior. Of him, she said, "Erwin, who is a force of nature in his own right, has never been the least bit intimidated by my career, my talents, or my fame."
In 2016, after a barrage of health problems, Tina's kidneys began to fail. A Swiss citizen by then, she had started preparing for assisted suicide when her husband stepped in. According to Tina, he said, "He didn't want another woman, or another life."
He gave her one of his kidneys, buying her the remainder of her time on this earth and perhaps closing a cycle which took her from a man who inflicted injury upon her to a man willing to inflict injury upon himself to save her from harm.
Born into a share-cropping family as Anna Mae Bullock in 1939, she died Tina Turner in a palatial Swiss estate: the queen of rock 'n roll; a storm of a performer with a wildcat-fierce voice; a dancer of visceral, spine-tingling potency and ability; a beauty for the ages; a survivor of terrible abuse and an advocate for others in similar situations; an author and actress; a devout Buddhist; a wife and mother; a human being of rare talent and perseverance who, through her transcendent brilliance, became a legend.

Will Stenberg

[Melissa Cranenburgh @thetwits2]

@annaspargoryan Beige Piss-tights Energy is my personal goal now

[Jo Case @jocaseau]

Book banning is in local news again today, with the Aus classification board's good decision NOT to restrict readership of #genderqueer appealed.

Let's not go down the path of the US, where book banning for race & LGBTQ themes is rife. @ConversationEDU

https://t.co/dBnjjQzDwP

[Melissa Cranenburgh @thetwits2]

@Tim_Coronel Hi feel this

[Melissa Cranenburgh @thetwits2]

@guyblackman That cutie!