User Profile

Rayne
Allinson

Rayne Allinson is a writer and teacher with a PhD in History from the University of Oxford. She has worked and travelled in many parts of the northern hemisphere, and is now Assistant Publisher at Forty South.

Books & writing

Devonport Bookshop

by Rayne Allinson

03 Sep 2022

There are particular challenges in running an independent bookshop in a predominantly rural region like north-west Tasmania ...

History

Home sweet tome

by Rayne Allinson

27 Feb 2022

Why has our small, heart-shaped island been able to maintain so many independent bookshops?

People

The poet immigrant

by Rayne Allinson

19 May 2021

A former poet laureate of Colorado, David Mason, now lives with his wife, Christine, an accomplished photographer, an hour south of Hobart on two hectares of land overlooking the Huon River, the D’Entrecasteaux Channel and the Southern Ocean. Dave and Chrissy are my step-father and my mother. So this is something of a family affair: two Australian women who have both spent many years living in the US, examining and portraying, in words and photographs, an American who has chosen to move his life from 40° North to 40° South. I was asked to write his story, but in the end all I did was ask some questions and let Dave Mason tell his own story, because no-one could do it better.

The Arts

Raised voices

by Rayne Allinson

01 Mar 2021

I couldn’t read music, and the thought of performing in front of a live, paying audience of several hundred people made my mouth dry. I had practiced all morning, anxious not to stuff things up. Now I couldn’t remember a single word. Time seemed to fall away and all memory shrank to the pool of blue light that flowed over us, our outlines shifting and merging together.