northerly jan-feb 2017

northerly By ron Writers Festival Magazine

January-February 2017

DAVID MARR · NICK EARLS · SARAH HOLLAND-BATT · MEG KENEALLY HANDLING LITERARY REJECTION · REVIEWS · WORKSHOPS · COMPETITIONS

CONTENTS

>> THIS ISSUE

JANFEB2017 002 Director & editor’s notes 003 Literary talk

Byron Writers Festival launches a new book group for 2017

004 News

Grayling returns to Byron, new non-fiction writing group and more

3

006 Residency report

Nancy Fairfax Artist-in-Residence winner Sally Schofield reports on a week spent writing at the Tweed Regional Gallery

007 Notes from the Festival Meg Keneally interviewed by Katinka Smit

008 Poem

'The Coral Sea' by Jackson Moore

7

009 Notes from the Festival

Sarah Holland-Batt interviewed by Katinka Smit

010 The novella fella

Interview with acclaimed Brisbane author and friend of Byron Writers Festival, Nick Earls

012 Tumultuous times

David Marr reflects on the changing media landscape, the nature of literary biography and his illustrious writing career

9

015 Rising Q&A with emerging local talent Helen Burns

016 Book reviews

Polly Jude on The Unforgettable What's His Name by Paul Jennings and Carly Lorente on Goodwood by Holly Throsby

018 SCU Showcase

Short fiction by Jade Hurley

020 Chin up

10

How to deal with literary rejection according to Andrew Hutchinson

021 Workshops 022 Competitions 024 Writers’ groups

12

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>>HELLO

Director’s Note Happy New Year to one and all!

As I type I am literally zipping up my suitcase for India. My 2017 doesn’t start with a Rooster, rather a flight to New Delhi, as I was fortunate to be selected as one of a small group of publishers and festival programmers chosen to tour four cities with the Australia Council on their India Literature Exploratory 2017 trip.

This is the third year the Council has taken a group on a two-week tour of India to attend festivals in Chennai, Kolkata and Jaipur, as well as publisher round table meetings in these cities and Delhi.

Rest assured I will be doing my ambassadorial best to espouse the special attractions of Byron Writers Festival as part of the Australia Council’s intended cultural exchange. The timing of the trip also has a Photo: Angela Kay personal resonance for me as it coincides with the anniversary of the death of a close Indian friend. Maybe he had a hand in this latest instalment in my literary journey.

It promises to be an action-packed year. Please mark March 2 in your diaries and come and hear the exceptional Irish writer Sebastian Barry in conversation with Chris Hanley.

And those of you who saw A.C. Grayling in Byron last time, will I know be as thrilled as we are that he is returning to enchant us again on March 30. More stimulating events are already booked but we can’t yet reveal details, so do keep an eye on our e-newsletters for details.

If your new year’s resolution is to write more, then perhaps one of our workshops might suit you? Any aspiring writer members can book a twenty-minute session with one of our designated authors for free professional development advice. We kick off with Byron Writers Festival board member and author of the stunning novel Harry Mac, Russell Eldridge, on January 30. Call the office for bookings!

Until next time, Namaste

FROM THE EDITOR

002 | northerly

Byron Writers Festival is a non-profit member organisation presenting workshops and events year-round, including the annual Festival.

LOCATION/CONTACT Level 1 28 Jonson Street, Byron Bay P: 02 6685 5115 F: 02 6685 5166 E: info@byronwritersfestival.com W: www.byronwritersfestival.com POSTAL ADDRESS PO Box 1846 Byron Bay NSW 2481 EDITOR: Barnaby Smith, northerlyeditor@gmail.com CONTRIBUTORS: Jade Hurley, Andrew Hutchinson, Christopher Ireland, Polly Jude, Angela Kay, Carly Lorente, Jackson Moore, Sally Schofield, Katinka Smit BYRON WRITERS FESTIVAL BOARD CHAIRPERSON Jennifer St George VICE CHAIRPERSON Adam van Kempen SECRETARY Russell Eldridge TREASURER Cheryl Bourne MEMBERS Jesse Blackadder, Kate Cameron, Marele Day, Lynda Dean, Lynda Hawryluk, Anneli Knight.

LIFE MEMBERS Jean Bedford, Jeni Caffin, Gayle Cue, Robert Drewe, Jill Eddington, Chris Hanley, John Hertzberg, Fay Knight, Irene O’Brien, Jennifer Regan, Cherrie Sheldrick, Brenda Shero, Heather Wearne MAIL OUT DATES Magazines are sent in JANUARY, MARCH, MAY, JULY, SEPTEMBER and NOVEMBER MAGAZINE DESIGN Finola Renshaw, Kaboo Media PRINTER Quality Plus Printers Ballina ADVERTISING We welcome advertising by members and relevant organisations. A range of ad sizes are available. The ad booking deadline for each issue is the first week of the month prior.

Email northerlyeditor@gmail.com

Edwina Johnson Director, Byron Writers Festival

Rejection, we are forever being told, is part and parcel of being a writer.

Indeed, rejection can often be a positive, galvanising thing that increases focus and eliminates complacency. But it can still be a miserable experience when your work is turned down by a publication, especially when the rejections notes come in concentrated clusters, as they are wont to do.

The act of writing, and its presentation for the judgment of others, is always ultimately an attempt at communication, at making a connection with other minds, so when that is rebuffed it can sometimes be difficult to regain confidence. On page twenty the author Andrew Hutchinson describes how emerging writers can overcome disappointment and, most importantly, ensure that rejection does not stop the flow of writing.

Over the Christmas break I managed to escape the confines of family long

northerly northerly is the bi-monthly magazine of Byron Writers Festival.

enough to see Jim Jarmusch's elegant new film, Paterson. Adam Driver plays a gentle-natured bus driver with a talent for writing winsome, sharp, imagist poetry in the vein of Paterson, New Jersey's most famous former resident, William Carlos Williams. Though something of a fantasy, the film was a lesson in the joys of writing for one's self alone, as a means to enrich and process one's experience rather than something that demands the approval of others by the act of submission to a journal or competition. Maybe this is an approach to creativity that can help recalibrate the writer in the wake of a particularly stinging rejection.

A peaceful 2017 to all readers,

Barnaby Smith Editor, northerly magazine

DISCLAIMER The Byron Writers Festival presents northerly in good faith and accepts no responsibility for any misinformation or problems arising from any misinformation. The views expressed by contributors and advertisers are not necessarily the views of the management committee or staff. We reserve the right to edit articles with regard to length. Copyright of the contributed articles is maintained by the named author and northerly.

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Cover art: Willie Wagtails by Bridget Farmer.

Lino cut illustration from the children's book Kookaburra Kookaburra. www.bridgetfarmerprintmaker.com

Byron Writers Festival and northerly magazine acknowledge and pay respect to the traditional custodians of this land.

New book club for 2017

>> NEWS

A new year brings a brand new initiative from Byron Writers Festival: the Members' Book Club. The club's inaugural event will take place in March, focusing on the work of much-loved local author, Marele Day. Byron Writers Festival is delighted to announce the launch of its Members’ Book Club for 2017.

The book club is a members-only free event and will be held every two months, featuring the work of a highprofile local author each time.

This is a book club with a difference, as the author will join the discussion for the second half of the evening.

The inaugural Members’ Book Club on Thursday, March 16 will feature Marele Day’s highly acclaimed novel Lambs of God, with a discussion facilitated by journalist Anneli Knight.

The event will be held at the Byron Writers Festival office on Jonson Street, Byron Bay. Only ten members will have the opportunity to join the first book club, though we hope to expand this number for future events.

You can borrow a copy of Lambs of God from the Byron Writers Festival office or Byron Bay Library, and we ask that you please read the novel and prepare a couple of thoughtful questions for Marele before the event.

Byron Writers Festival is excited about this new members-only free event, connecting our members with the celebrated authors in our region. Please register at https://www.trybooking.com/249300 Marele Day is the author of four crime novels: The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender, The Case of the Chinese Boxes, The Last Tango of Dolores Delgado and The Disappearances of Madalena Grimaldi as well as a collection of crime-comedy stories, Mavis Levack, PI. She has travelled extensively, has lived in Italy, France and Ireland and survived near shipwreck in the Java Sea. Her bestselling Lambs of God was published to international acclaim with film rights optioned by Twentieth Century Fox. Other novels include Mrs Cook: The Real and Imagined Life of the Captain’s Wife and The Sea Bed. Marele is editor of How To Write Crime and co-editor of Making Waves: 10 Years of the Byron Bay Writers Festival.

She is a highly experienced speaker, teacher and mentor, and has won several awards, including the Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement in 2008.

Lambs of God by Marele Day Vegetation grows out of the mouths of stone angels, and sheep wander through the chapel.

For Iphigenia, Margarita and Carla the rhythm of nature and the rituals of the Church have joined to make an encompassing whole, a garment as fitting for their lives as their homespun clothes.

They pray, they do their daily tasks. At the nightly knitting circle they tell stories, stitching into their work the bright colours of fairytale and myth.

Brambles enclose the monastery and the three nuns have forgotten the world outside.

Until a worldly young priest forges his way in.

Brisk and businesslike, Father Ignatius plans to transform the nuns’ very existence. Or is it the man who will be transformed? In seeking to protect the life they so cherish the nuns find themselves capable of drawing on unimagined depths of resourcefulness.

Richly allusive, vividly imagined, pungently erotic and often wildly funny, Lambs of God draws on beliefs and fears deep within us and weaves them into a tapestry of dazzling originality.

northerly | 003

>> NEWS

Grayling returns to Byron

British philosopher and prominent public intellectual A.C. Grayling will appear at Byron Theatre on Thursday, March 30. Grayling's lecture, titled Progress in Troubled Times: Learning from the Age of Genius, will see the author cast an eye on the turbulent seventeenth century, in which science moved from the alchemy and astrology of John Dee to the painstaking observation and astronomy of Galileo; from the classicism of Aristotle that was favoured by the church to the evidence-based investigation of Francis Bacon. Grayling will explain how, fueled by original and unorthodox thinking, war and technological invention, the seventeenth century became the crucible of modernity.

The evening will feature a forty-minute talk followed by a twenty-minute question-andanswer session.

Grayling previously appeared at Byron Theatre in September 2015.

A.C. Grayling is travelling to Australia courtesy of the World Science Festival Brisbane and Byron Writers Festival thanks the Queensland Museum for working with us to make Professor Grayling available to our audiences.

Rimbaud gun fetches big money

The gun with which poet Paul Verlaine shot his lover, Arthur Rimbaud, sold at auction in Paris in late November for €434,500 ($622,000), almost seven times its estimated sale price.

The seven-millimetre six-shooter was taken up by Verlaine while the pair were staying in Brussels on July 10, 1873. The poets were drunkenly rowing, with Verlaine contemplating returning to the wife and child he had abandoned and Rimbaud threatening to join the army. Verlaine eventually cried 'This is for you, since you’re leaving!' before drawing the gun and 004 | northerly

shooting Rimbaud in the wrist. Verlaine was later arrested after threatening Rimbaud again with the weapon in the street.

Verlaine had fled to Brussels from London to get away from his destructive, substance-fuelled relationship with the prodigious boy-poet Rimbaud, who promptly followed him. Verlaine served two years in prison over the shooting incident.

Rimbaud's hometown, Charleville-Mézières in eastern France, set up a special fund to buy the gun but lost out to an anonymous bidder. The gun had been sitting in the cupboard of a Belgian gun enthusiast for the last twenty years.

Call-out for new non-fiction writing group

A new non-fiction writers' group based in the Brunswick Valley is seeking new members. If

>> NEWS

Support northerly in 2017 northerly is the bi-monthly magazine of Byron Writers Festival.

OBITUARIES RICHARD ADAMS British author; May 9, 1920 – December 26, 2016

Published in January, March, May, July, September and November, it is distributed to members, community organisations, libraries, universities, schools, festivals, publishers and bookshops and has a readership in excess of 3,500. Each issue features interviews, reviews, essays and national and international news.

ILSE AICHINGER Austrian writer; November 1, 1921 – November 11, 2016

An array of discounts and deals are available for organisations and individuals interested in advertising. To discuss your advertising needs in northerly, contact us on 02 6685 5115 or via email at northerlyeditor@gmail.com

GEORGIA BLAIN Australian novelist and journalist; December 12, 1964 – December 9, 2016

numbers are strong the group will be looking to meet fortnightly or monthly. Anyone interested in joining this new group can email Joelle at jgergis@gmail.com with an overview of what they are working on, any ideas for the group or its meeting location and any other preferences.

E.R. BRAITHWAITE Guyanese novelist; June 27, 1912 – December 12, 2016

Nancy Fairfax residency announces second winner

Congratulations to local writer Henri Rennie, who has won Byron Writers Festival's Nancy Fairfax Artist-in-Residence For Established Writers. Rennie will now enjoy a week of distraction-free writing time at the Tweed Regional Gallery.

The Nancy Fairfax residency for emerging writers was won by Sally Schofield – turn to page six to read about her experience at the gallery in October.

Online book group launches

A new online writing group will begin in February, the latest project from Stephanie Dale of The Write Road, the creative initiative that takes writing workshops to those in remote areas. The new online course, designed to help anyone looking to start writing a book, will be led by Dale and lasts eight weeks, with eight participants.

The initial February course (February 7 to March 28) has sold out, but another group will start on February 6 and conclude on March 27, for which places are still available. For information about prices and to book, email yourstory@thewriteroad.com.au

Write for us

JOHN BERGER British art critic and novelist; November 5, 1926 – January 2, 2017

WILLIAM PETER BLATTY American novelist; January 7, 1928 – January 12, 2017

ANNE DEVESON Australian writer; June 19, 1930 – December 12, 2016 A.A. GILL British writer and columnist; June 28, 1954 – December 10, 2016 SHIRLEY HAZZARD Australian novelist; January 30, 1931 – December 12, 2016 RODOLFO HINOSTROZA Peruvian writer and poet; October 27, 1941 – November 1, 2016 ROGER HOBBS American writer; June 10, 1988 – November 14, 2016 PHILLIP KNIGHTLEY Australian journalist; January 23, 1929 – December 7, 2016 DAVID MELTZER American poet; February 17, 1937 – December 31, 2016 JOHN MONTAGUE Irish poet; February 28, 1929 – December 10, 2016 SIR JAMES MCNEISH New Zealand author; October 23, 1931 – November 11, 2016 JAMES REISS American poet and novelist; July 11, 1941 – December 2, 2016 MARILYN SACHS American children's author; December 18, 1927 – December 31, 2016 JAN SLEPIAN American children's author and poet; January 2, 1921 – November 2, 2016 WILLIAM TREVOR Irish writer; May 24, 1928 – November 20, 2016

QUOTAT ION CORNER

As the new year begins, northerly is on the lookout for new voices. We are seeking writers interesting in contributing book reviews, essays, interviews and any other ideas as the magazine seeks to evolve and improve in 2017. We're also always keen to hear from local artists who might be interested in having their work featured on the front cover. Get in touch by emailing the editor at northerlyeditor@gmail.com

'The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell.'

Publishing success

— Rebecca Solni t, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics (2007)

Congratulation to Bette Guy, whose 100-word short story was published in Reader's Digest.

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>> REPORT

Notes on emerging

The winner of the inaugural Nancy Fairfax Artist-in-Residence for New and Emerging Writers was Sally Schofield, who stayed for a week in the studio at Tweed Regional Gallery in Murwillumbah in late October to devote herself exclusively to focused writing time.

Here, Sally gives an account of her experience in the studio and her battle with the blank page.

I

am not new to writing. I have been doing it my whole working life but I have cunningly sidestepped any work that exposes my self in it.

Music journalism, corporate communications, digital marketing – these things contain nothing of me, of the stories I long to tell. My forays into fiction gather dust under the bed, unread, unloved.

The Nancy Fairfax Artist-in-Residence for New and Emerging Writers is billed as a week of distraction-free writing. In the past ten years I have not had a week to myself for any purpose, let alone writing. Day one was terrifying. That first night, a northerly wind rattled the building. It was an uneasy sleep in an unfamiliar bed.

In the morning my mother called to check that I was still alive. She worried that I would perish alone in that studio. I assured her that I had plenty to eat, and as if to prove the point, pulled open the pantry drawer to find it stocked with three pepper grinders and a packet of chicken-flavoured two-minute noodles. 'Mum, I'm fine.'

But I was not fine. When I thought of the word 'emerging' I imagined a butterfly slowly exiting a shabby, dusty cocoon, its new form both splendid and surprising.

I was reminded of my own chrysalis, the invisible armour I have spun from denial and self-doubt that encases the vulnerability of a dream to tell stories. Anxiety fluttered in my chest. The blank page taunted me. The urge to do something, to seize this opportunity, was immense yet paralysing. I felt exposed. Fraudulent.

Fortunately, the residency also provided mentoring with writing coach Alison Manning of A Mind of One’s Own. In our first hour-long mentoring session, I confided my fears and foibles. I admitted that I often find my words ugly and clumsy. Unforgivable. Alison told me that the myth of the creative genius is most damaging to new writers. That most first draft musings are only partially formed, and yes, sometimes embarrassing. That there are months, sometimes years, of edits and revisions between that initial lumpy output and the polished prose found in the books of our admired authors. Her voice, calm and clear, silenced my eternal loop of uncertainty and suggested a way forward.

I made a pot of coffee and got on with it. And with no expectation other than to keep going, in the solitude 006 | northerly

of that studio, the words somehow found me. From day two, a routine was established: an early morning walk then some writing exercises to warm up, using word associations and free writing to banish the blank page. I followed a thread, exploring it to its natural conclusion, then picked up another to see where it led. A new character arrived and I let him in (even though he wasn’t part of the plan and changed things entirely!). I didn’t distract myself Googling an obscure fact to make sure it was true or correct (only to get lost down some fascinating internet wormhole.) Hours passed. Meals were forgotten. The sun tracked across the sky dissolving into dazzling sunsets that were perfectly framed by the high letterbox windows of my room. And when I read back over my words at night – a glass of Shiraz in hand – I didn’t cringe. I didn’t despair. And for once, I didn’t feel like giving up. I marvelled at how connected seemingly unrelated passages or scenes were. A sentence or two – sometimes even whole paragraphs – made me think: yes.

The Tweed Regional Gallery is an incredible place, inside and out. It radiates a sense of creative possibility that is immense and humbling. The artworks are impressive not only for their aesthetics but for the single-mindedness required in their creation. The endless skirmish between thinking and doing. (Or not thinking and just doing.) On my last day, some gallery visitors, curious and bold, trod the steel gangplank to my quarters and rapped on the door.

'Who are you?' the woman politely enquired, her question forming like an Alice in Wonderland puff of smoke in the space between us. 'Are you the artist-in-residence?'

I looked back inside the studio to the space where I had lived and worked for the past week. Desks – two of them now – strewn with printed pages, handwritten notes, cups stained with the remnants of coffee, novels fanned flat to mark a page, an empty wine bottle (okay, two). I felt my shoulders soften. Something inside me soared. My wings unfurled. 'Yes, I am.'

Sally Schofield was selected for the Nancy Fairfax Artist-in-Residence for New and Emerging Writers and was winner of the 2016 Byron Bay Writers Festival A Wandering Tale short story competition. She holds a BA in English Literature and is completing a Master of Arts (Writing and Literature).

Notesfrom

>> INTERVIEW

the Festival: Meg Keneally Meg Keneally, a former journalist, last year published The Soldier's Curse, the first book in a colonial crime fiction series co-authored with her father, Tom Keneally. Meg also worked in corporate affairs and as a diving instructor before turning her hand to fiction. She spoke with northerly at Byron Writers Festival 2016 about staking her claim as a novelist and the thrill of digging up the past.

Interview by Katinka Smit.

How did the writing happen between you and Tom for The Soldier’s Curse?

I wrote the first and second drafts. He’d written about 30,000 words then abandoned it. A couple of years later he showed it to me and said, ‘Do you want to have a go at this?’ We initially envisioned that I’d write a chapter and he’d write a chapter and so on. I was very tentative because obviously he is who he is and I felt what right did I have to be changing anything that he’s saying. We showed it to our agent and she suggested that I write it from scratch myself using the characters that he’d created and then he’d come in on the re-write. The characters were very easy to write because Dad had done all that character work. It was easy to make up ten things that Monsarrat or Mrs Mulroney would say and how they would say them.

Were there ever any artistic differences between you?

No. We have very similar temperaments, which is good because if you did this with somebody you didn’t get along with, someone would be dead by the end of it. We talked about the plot a lot. We never really talked about the characters. When I started writing them I thought I would have to break them in, or wear them in a bit, but they just took up residence in my psyche and were pretty much the way he’d envisaged.

How did you research the book?

We went to Port Macquarie and made a nuisance of ourselves with the local historical society. I spent a fair bit of time in the State Library of NSW going over correspondence between the colonial secretary and the commandant of Port Macquarie during the period, and various other documents like Lachlan Macquarie’s instructions to the first commandant of Port Macquarie.

I get very excited when I see even a microfiche of a letter that was written in 1825. I can’t help but thinking about who wrote it, what they were wearing, what they were thinking, what they had for lunch.

Is it difficult to write historical crime fiction?

It’s easy in some ways because there’s such a rich vein to mine. Every time you read a letter, read a book or go into a library you find another story or another angle.

You don’t need to look far for things to add depth or colour to your story. For example, one minor section in The Soldier’s Curse talks about one of the convicts whacking the other over the head with a frying pan that’s so thin it winds up around the other bloke’s neck.

Photo: Penguin Random House

I got that from the journal of an unknown convict who was in Port Macquarie. You have that texture that you can draw on. I need to get the framework right, but as for the characters themselves, I can do whatever I like with them.

How did the historical setting affect the building of the story?

Port Macquarie has geographical constraints – the convicts were hemmed in by them – so there’s a certain claustrophobia there that was easy to exploit for dramatic tension. The landscape is almost a character in the book.

We tried to imbue the landscape with that sense of restrained menace. There was one particular letter that I found very interesting in that regard. Capital crimes were dealt with in Sydney – no one was ever hanged in Port Macquarie. I found a letter from the commandant of Port Macquarie to the colonial secretary about a convict who’d murdered another convict and been responsible for other terrible things. He basically said, he’s so awful, can I please just hang him here without a trial? He was denied permission but it gave me an opening to set the hanging in the book there.

Have there been any literary precedents for you for The Soldier’s Curse?

As far as I’m aware nobody’s done a colonial Australian whodunnit. It was Dad’s idea, and I think it’s a great idea. When I was at high school we weren’t taught Australian history at all. I knew more about Bismarck than I did about Barton. It would be nice to see us embrace our history, warts and all. Even though it’s not one to always celebrate, we should at least own it a bit more than we do.

The Soldier's Curse is published by Vintage. The second book of the series, The Unmourned, is published in February.

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>> POEM

The Coral Sea for Megan Jackson Moore

When some trivial incident Becomes a springboard For romance and mingled With magic sand our frail Selves figure in a picture: Like the sleeper awakened By a wet chux cloth and Ordered to make music By the baton’s flick “I am at your service” I Had Tried Never To Imagined, Find Before Beauty It Where Could I Exist.

And coral so much The trinket of time Refracted by the waters Of sunlight rippling Spastic over hands Sings the moment When we too will look Up from our humid hospital And gulp the air Like soup, and realise that The sponges all this time Were scrubbing and indifferent To the cycles of soaking And drying, complicit In our hygiene, And coming at us now For the ultimate In exfoliation

Jackson Moore has completed his PhD in Australian Literature at the Australian National University. His thesis looked at the novels of Patrick White from an overtly, even militantly, queer perspective. Jackson is currently living in Paris and writing a novel about the affairs he has had with straight, married men.

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Notesfrom

>> INTERVIEW

the Festival:

Sarah Holland-Batt Sarah Holland-Batt, an acclaimed poet, can be said to belong to two countries (and poetic traditions): Australia and the USA. Her works have been published internationally and she has produced two collections, Aria (2008) and The Hazards (2015), which won the poetry prize at the Prime Minister's Literary Awards in 2016. She is currently the poetry editor of Island and senior lecturer in Creative Writing at QUT. She appeared at Byron Writers Festival 2016 and spoke to northerly about living, and writing, in the space between different worlds. Interview by Katinka Smit.

How much of your artistic process is linked to the need to be somewhere else?

It’s become procedural to me to be somewhere else, to look back at something to whittle it down to the important kernel. I need the estrangement of distance to write about an experience. It’s distance plus time, that’s probably the little equation that a poem comes out of.

You’ve straddled two continents for most of your life.

What kind of an influence has that had on you?

My sense of culture and the references that I want to make are neither wholly Australian nor American.

My vocabulary is a mixture, sometimes I revert without thinking to American spellings, it affects all sorts of things, you know. I think my personality is a mixture of the two, and my writing straddles both American and Australian influences. American poetry was the first body of literature that I read. I only began reading Australian literature at nineteen. People have commented that my poetics has a declarative, American element to it. I see myself as being a part of both literary cultures.

You mentioned in a previous interview of being ‘motivated by doubt’. How do you get from that doubt to the conviction that is present in your writing?

Questioning or equivocating is the act of writing the poem: the act of doubting each utterance until you reach the final product, which maybe has the air of confidence but doesn’t really begin from that. I like poems that have thought about their subject matter and come to a conclusion over a period of time. I think that’s the way I work. I’m very doubtful. I abandon so many more poems than I write. The easy way through a poem is always the worst way.

Music has played a large role in your life. How does it influence your writing?

Music involves intellect and mathematics and so does the poem. Language can do in the poem what music can do.

It’s similar to songwriting or composition; you’re working with rhythms and sometimes metres, there are set structures that you set yourself. You work within those confines and it becomes like a puzzle. There’s a conversation between form and imagination that goes on in the poem and in musical composition. To me they are analogous.

Can you describe how you see the link between the natural world and human concerns?

I think it’s fraught and often unexamined. So much of what I want to write about has to do with violence and history. There is violence in the animal world, and I’m always interested in the human truth underneath the landscape, or whatever it is I’m describing. I don’t have a theoretical agenda. It’s very much about what happens in the writing process of the poem. Sometimes I’ve been really surprised. For instance, in The Hazards there’s a poem about the toucan. They’re beautiful and cute and often the subject of children’s literature but in reality they are vicious, cannibalistic. As I wrote the poem it became a weird portrait of dictatorship mediated through the figure of the toucan, rather than a poem about the toucan as it started out.

How do you go about making a collection?

I start with the arrangement, how each poem speaks to one another. They are loosely themed by place into sections. I don’t cluster individual poems based on theme, I look at finding some bridge from one poem to another.

There’s a trajectory there – it partly has to do with a sense of music, like the movements of a symphony – I like there to be a sense of development in each section and a sense of an arc across the book. That being said, of course you can just open my book and read a poem.

What do you think a poem should be doing?

For me it has to do three things. It has to have a sense of authenticity, there has to be some great pleasure when you’re reading it, and it has to stand up to repeated readings. For me the whole point of the poem is that it’s something that you can return to over and over again. You don’t get tired of the great poems.

The Hazards is published by University of Queensland Press.

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>> INTERVIEW

High five: Nick Earls breathes new life into the novella

Nick Earls enjoyed a quite extraordinary 2016, with the prolific Brisbane author undertaking the unprecedented 'experiment' of publishing five novellas in five months. The Wisdom Tree series, published by Inkerman and Blunt, is made up of Gotham, Venice, Vancouver, Juneau and NoHo, and in another decidedly progressive move, each was made available in print, ebook and audiobook simultaneously.

With Wisdom Tree, Earls has dragged the often overlooked form that is the novella firmly into Australia's literary consciousness, in the process receiving extravagant critical acclaim for a series of works that ostensibly seem distinct to one another thematically, yet are linked in various subtle ways.

Aside from the novella project, Earls, 53, is a distinguished novelist, his notable works including Zigzag Street, Bachelor Kisses, Perfect Skin and the young adult novel, 48 Shades of Brown. Four months on from the publication of the final instalment in the Wisdom Tree series, Earls offers his reflections on what was a unique literary adventure.

What have been the highlights of novella project and, conversely, what might you have done differently with the benefit of hindsight?

Being told in a review that I’d written ‘the most perfect novella in the history of the format’ was a pretty good moment. I’ve worked with a great team who have believed in the form in general and these novellas in particular, and it’s been interesting to see what we’ve been able to do with them – that’s definitely added to the fun. It’s been really good to see readers responding to the novellas 010 | northerly Photo: Candid Lane

as well as they have. Also, I keep hearing about them being read on domestic plane flights or listened to while cleaning the house, and I’d hoped they’d find a place there.

There’s space in a lot of lives for a novella-sized read, even when there isn’t space for a novel.

At the moment, I can’t think of anything major that I’d do differently. As a consequence of publishing Wisdom Tree, I’m maybe now more aware of what the novella is up against, so perhaps one thing hindsight suggests is it would be easier to publish them after the perception of novellas has shifted – imagine a world in which readers walk into bookshops with novellas foremost in their minds – rather than being one of the people trying to encourage the shift.

Since it costs about as much to make a small book as it does a medium-sized one, novellas (on paper) can’t end up priced competitively with novels gram-for-gram, and there’s a perception that we buy books by the kilo, at least to some extent. That’s unfortunate because, once we read books, we don’t value them by the kilo. A great novella is a value proposition, even on paper – it’s a movie-length read for the price of a movie ticket (but you get to re-use and share it). If it connects and means something to you, you’re never going to regret buying it.

So, we need to get past the price thing, and we need to get past the unspoken idea that adults don’t read small books. Novellas are such a perfect fit with life, and a great novella is such good reading, that I hope we’ll get there.

And the best time to publish novellas will be when there’s a novella-reading culture, and busy people in their tens of thousands looking for their next fix.

Would you say that the novella is the literary form that comes most naturally to you now?

Maybe it is. It does feel very natural. It’s the perfect balance between concision and complexity. It lets me go deeper than a short story in a way that I find really satisfying, but wherever you are in it when you’re writing it, you can still see the beginning and the end. There are times when you’re deep in a novel and all you can see is middle. You’ve got the notes that’ll take you forward, but the start was ages ago and the end isn’t in sight. A novella doesn’t ever feel like that.

Where did the idea for the five-part novella instalments come from, and can you envisage such a publishing ploy being adopted by other writers?

The ideas came along individually and formed their own independent piles at first. I knew each one had way too much going on to be a short story, but also that it’d take extra plotlines or a lot of padding to make any of them into a novel. I wanted each to be as it was, without losing it – or at least its clarity and sharpness – in a novel, and padding doesn’t feel good for anyone, writer or reader. So, novellas they had to be. Then I realised they were already a good fit with each other thematically, and that I could build links between them, in a whole range of different and, I hope, unexpected ways. I realised each could be its own thing, and work independently, but that I was also creating something bigger, and that was exciting.

I hope it’ll be adopted by other writers, and I hope they’ll find publishers willing to back them. The more it happens, the more normal it will become. Readers will become used to buying novellas and novella series and booksellers used to selling them – as a potentially exciting prospect, not something that a novelist did to fill in the gap between novels.

What qualities – moral, literary, visual or otherwise – make up Brisbane's literary identity today?

It’s at least written about now, and I think in a more normal way. The Brisbane I grew up in was a place writers left, and then sometimes wrote about later. But what they wrote was typically set in a Brisbane long before I knew it. Books like Johnno, The Delinquents and others record their versions of mid-twentieth century Brisbane really effectively, but the Brisbane of the seventies and eighties had very low visibility in fiction.

Then, by the nineties, the time had come to write about it as something other than a corrupt fascist backwater.

Brisbane is still its own place, but it’s a more normal place, and it’s become more normal to write about it normally – to set stories here in which lives happen, without the weight of the politics always upon them.

New York, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Alaska… the novellas feature international settings. Have you been to all those places and does a writer need to have experienced a place to write about it?

I have actually been to all those places, but the link between going somewhere and writing about it is only essential for making the trips tax deductible, not for doing the writing. For the writing, it’s no doubt valuable, but there’s a place for imagination too. And Google Street View. This is a great time to be an author. You can immerse yourself, at least as a visitor, in one credible version of a place – the day the Google car drove through – without ever leaving your home broadband connection, and amass a huge amount of details to inform how you deal with a place and how that place nudges your characters and story along.

>> INTERVIEW

With most of these novellas, even though I had been to the places, I also spent a few days in each case cruising the streets on Street View, picking up more small details that might or might not end up in the stories.

It's fair to say critical reaction to your work has been very positive over the years. How are you affected by such praise?

There are ways a writer is supposed to respond to that question, but let’s ignore those, go somewhere more honest and admit I’m like Sally Field making her Oscar speech for Places in the Heart. The one thing it doesn’t do, I think, is make me outrageously up myself. Others might beg to differ. I love it when people get what I’m trying to do, and it’s a bonus if they’re saying it to huge numbers of people in a way my publishers and I can quote forever, but each new manuscript starts with a blank page and another chance to do something great or crappy, and the same drive to get better and better at it, and turn out the best work I can. So, I don’t think great reviews make me complacent.

How much of an influence, if any, does the fact you moved from the UK to Australia at the age of nine have on your writing?

I was a migrant who sounded different and who was acutely aware of that, and not often allowed to forget it at school, so, while I worked on my accent, I spent a lot of time in my own head and a lot of time reading. Reading, and being told stories, is probably at the heart of me becoming a writer. That and wanting to impress girls and realising I’d never do that with sporting prowess.

I’ve drawn on my experience of moving from Northern Ireland directly in a novel for adults, The Thompson Gunner, and somewhat directly in New Boy, a kids’ book with a ten-year-old migrating from South Africa and going through some of the feelings I went through. A lot of my characters are migrants or have parents who are migrants. But that’s how Australia is, so people don’t tend to notice.

I have some sense of what it is to be an outsider, an observer of a new place rather than someone who belongs, and that can be valuable to a writer.

Similarly, how much of an impact did your previous career as a doctor have on your literary style?

Being a GP makes you spend time with people from all kinds of backgrounds, and the first thing you get them to do is tell you their story, in their terms. It was a real education in how people think and talk. That’s useful when creating characters.

My medical degree also taught me diagnostic problemsolving skills, and some of the principles of that have been useful when solving plot problems when planning and writing.

Gotham features a young rapper as a central character.

Are you a hip-hop fan?

I can’t lie and tell you it’s my go-to music genre, but I’ve listened to quite a bit and think some of it’s smart and really well done. I’m probably more interested in the phenomenology of the rapper though, and the potential of the rapper as character. Then I realised it might be more interesting if we didn’t get an access-all-areas pass to Na$ti Boi’s head, but got to know him from the point of view of an Australian music journo who’s trying to get there. Then I got to think writerly questions such as ‘What is each of them not telling anyone yet?’ and to work out what their lives were really about and how and when to bring it to the surface. That’s one of the bits of the job that I love. BS

northerly | 011

>>PROFILE

THE GREAT EXPLAINER As a chronicler and questioner of Australian culture and society, David Marr's eclectic career has oscillated between several outlets, mediums and topics, driven always by a resolute fearlessness that has often seen him publicly butt heads with those from an opposing ideological standpoint. Ahead of Marr's new Quarterly Essay, Barnaby Smith profiles a veteran of Australian journalism.

Photo: Christopher Ireland

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The Friday morning in late Spring when I met David Marr in Byron Bay saw, ostensibly at least, the town at its most breezy, sunny, some would say idyllic. Heavily tattooed young men with landscaped beards flitted between appointments clutching takeaway coffees, and bicycles carried surfers and their boards to the waves. As always, no one seemed very encumbered by any weighty or complex matters. Marr himself, this behemoth of Australian journalism and biography who was in town for a Byron Writers Festival out-of-season event, arrived cheerfully at the cafĂŠ wearing a flowery shirt and shorts.

However, despite the apparent normality, this was not quite a normal day, and a mood of disorientation, not to say despondency, inevitably descended as soon as we embarked on conversation. Two days previously, voters in the United States had deemed that Donald Trump was the best candidate to become their next president. I had not anticipated meeting Marr in the immediate wake of such an extraordinary event and, more to the point, neither had he. An aghast Marr, like millions of others, was struggling to comprehend it all, leaving him, for once, short of an exposition.

'You know that footage you see sometimes, an example is when that tailings dam burst in Brazil, when you just see a sludge covering the landscape?

That was my sense watching that day. It's a profound wake-up call, because I suppose I operate on the notion that society is basically progressive, that the press works, that polling is pretty accurate and that old bigotries are dying. And all those proved wrong.'

Days before, on ABC TV's Insiders, Marr had cautiously predicted a narrow win for Hillary Clinton, based on polling indications.

'I just don't get it. I don't get how a dissatisfied lower-middle class, white, non-big-city America can turn to a multiple-bankrupt shyster billionaire who doesn't pay tax as the answer.'

For someone who dubs himself a 'professional explainer', this is a rare moment of bewilderment.

An influential voice in Australian public life for more than forty years, Marr is now sixty-nine, though in his tall stature and with his lively demeanour he could pass for twenty years younger.

Arguably his most famous 'explanation' was his

>> PROFILE

systemic, poetic and immersive biography of Patrick White, Patrick White: A Life (1991), a project that he credits with changing his life. He has also explained for Australians the polarising figure that is Sir Garfield Barwick (Barwick, 1980), while his more concise explanations through the vehicle of Black Inc.'s Quarterly Essay series have dissected the character of Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott, George Pell and Bill Shorten. His new Quarterly Essay, 'On Politics and Prejudice', is a treatise on 'the politics of resentment' with particular focus on Pauline Hanson and One Nation – a work that takes on a new resonance following events in America on November 7. Marr also explains things on Insiders and Q&A, and was host of Media Watch between 2002 and 2004.

Born in Sydney, Marr harboured during adolescence an 'incoherent ambition to be a writer' that produced youthful poetry, plays and 'earnest essays'. However, parental pressure demanded that he studied law at university, a subject that, despite his suffering a few miserable years working as an articled clerk, made a deep impression on him. 'I've never escaped a love of law. I'm highly critical of judges and decisions and laws, but I'm completely devoted to the notion of law holding a society together, and as a way of achieving fair outcomes.'

Marr gave up law and travelled overseas ('the middleclass boy has his European couple of years'), during which time he resolved to pursue a career in journalism, a decision that was consolidated as he watched Gough Whitlam become prime minister on a wonky television in a Nairobi youth hostel. Like Patrick White, Marr made the brave decision to take up literary arms in his homeland at a time when fashion dictated that Australia's intellectual and artistic elite must establish themselves in Europe or the United States.

'When I left it was my intention never to return,' said Marr. 'I had a very high view of European existence, but after two years there I knew I wanted to be back here. I realised I was completely Australian. I was not European, I was not a Brit.'

Upon returning to Sydney, Marr sent speculative applications to The Bulletin, The National Times and the Sydney Morning Herald. He was eventually employed by Kerry Packer's Bulletin in 1972, setting out on a career path that led to him becoming editor of The National Times by 1980. The story of his professional trajectory – the Walkley Awards, roles with Radio National, Four Corners, the Sydney Morning Herald and more recently Guardian Australia – need not be told here. Suffice to say that Marr's journalistic tenacity, passion for social justice and startling verbal and written articulacy led him from one thing to another.

While those qualities define Marr, he is the first to admit that his entry into journalism and writing was something of a cinch. Rather than a slew of unpaid internships, expensive journalism courses and cynical networking strategies, Marr's initial ploy was simply to write a few letters to the publications for whom he wanted to write – and that, along with curiosity and talent, was enough. For anyone faced with the daunting prospect of becoming a journalist of Marr's type in today's world, such an uncomplicated 'way in' would be impossible.

'I am everything that is spectacularly wonderful about Baby Boomers, including of course the fact that everything was easy, so easy. It was easy to get into university, it was easy to pass, it was easy in those days to have a wonderful time at university and do almost no study. It was easy to get a job in journalism. It was a

system made for people like me, I never had any training as a journalist and I went into it with no qualifications whatsoever. I have no idea what you would do now. '[But] if you're very good, the careers are still there.

I was in journalism when the money was phenomenal, when the companies were earning. The National Times was essentially set up because Fairfax had so much money they didn't know what to do with it. Fairfax remade its reputation for good journalism through that. For two or three decades the newspapers made so much money, it came out of every orifice.'

With his journalism career ticking along nicely in the late seventies and early eighties, Marr was able to turn his attention to biography. Driven by a desire to explain how a 'Tory plotter brought down a democratic government', Barwick was published in 1980. Then, in the early eighties, Marr began work on a book that would not only set the blueprint for literary biography in Australia, but allowed unprecedented insight into a mysterious man known, by that time, for his cantankerous public persona as much as his novels. The idea for Patrick White: A Life came to Marr in a flash of inspiration on a plane between Sydney and Perth, leading to an exhaustive undertaking in research and writing during which Marr interacted personally with White, earning the author's respect and becoming part of his inner circle. Marr is still feeling the reverberations from his relationship with White and the process of putting together that book.

'He's still very alive in my imagination. I spent most of my forties engaged with him and his writing. When I went to The National Times, my editors were Max Sutch and Evan Whitton, who had the same lesson to teach: humans are contradictory, and if you don't acknowledge the contradictions then your portrait will not be true.

Patrick White was a mass of contradictions out of which a very living figure emerged. I knew from journalism these lessons of contradictions, but I lived it with White.

'He could be hateful, impatient, narrow, vain and cruel and at the same time he could be wise, sweet, funny original and delicate. But in all things he was adamant.

His message was always 'don't shift ground', which was a valuable lesson.'

Marr says that White is often in his thoughts when he writes about Australia's treatment of refugees, adding that White would be also be disgusted by Australia not becoming a republic and the crisis in arts funding.

Furthermore, as Marr says, 'Can you imagine his spectacular explosions over Tony Abbott?'

The two had their differences as Marr went about his work on the biography. He recalls with affection an occasion when he took White to task about his harsh attitude towards his mother. Marr was also dubious about White's perceived inability to write sympathetic homosexual characters.

'His homosexual characters were shadowy and usually despicable. I never really respected his answer when I confronted him about it, which was that he was unable to write truthfully about homosexuality. It was one of our rows.'

If learning to embrace and communicate a subject's inconsistencies was one lesson in writing biography provided by the White book, another, for Marr, pertained to authorial voice. Marr cites a number of biographies that have influenced him over the years, including James Boswell's historic The Life of Samuel Johnson, Richard Holmes' Shelley: The Pursuit, P.N Furbank's E.M. Forster: northerly | 013

>> PROFILE

A Life and Hazel Rowley's Christina Stead: A Biography.

In all of these, Marr believes, with the possible exception of Boswell's work, the biographer keeps himself or herself well out of the way of the narrative. Despite admitting to an admiration of Hunter S. Thompson and Gonzo journalism, he has little tolerance for biographers who become part of the story they are telling.

'I'm pursuing a mission against biographers who without justification insert themselves in their prose,' he said. 'You have them emoting on the page with things like "I stood in the hotel bar where Alan Moorehead stood sixty years before and I could smell the history…" Fuck off out of the way. Yes you need to visit those places but don't interpose yourself between me and the subject. I think I'm getting staid in my old age.'

Throughout our conversation, it becomes clear that Marr is the enemy of complacency, indulgence and tedium. Speaking with the same enthusiastic urgency that you hear on Insiders and Q&A, he hardly seems staid, despite this not being the only occasion when he refers to himself as that, or states that he is growing 'conventional' with the passing years.

Marr embarked upon the White book partly because he simply wanted to know more about the man behind the enigmatic novels himself. But the art of biography quickly became something more for Marr in his subsequent writing, particularly in his work for the Quarterly Essay series. The passage of an individual's life became a jumping off point to explore wider social issues and the potential consequences for the nation of the inner psychological workings of such figures as Abbott, Shorten and Pell.

'I still think that telling the story of people's lives and careers is a tremendously effective way of explaining. I think this is largely because the one thing we all know 014 | northerly

about is the shape of a life; we've all got one, so when you read a biography or a biographical essay you know if it rings true or not because you read it through your own experience. Those Quarterly Essays, at 30,000 or 40,000 words, are quite short, but you can say a lot with a biographical framework about a person's beliefs and achievements.'

The Quarterly Essays, not to mention his outspokenness during television appearances, have resulted in Marr being the target of a certain amount of vitriol from some quarters during his career. Usually such criticism comes from conservative publications and commentators, some of which is justified and forms part of healthy public debate, but some of which is certainly personal and vindictive. And Marr is not even on Twitter, where he might receive the worst of it. (His reason for not using social media: 'I would be the person who posts the utterly unforgivable, career-destroying Tweet at two in the morning. I know that, and can't risk it.')

Today, the importance of developing a thick skin in the face of criticism and even abuse is drilled into budding journalists. Marr admits that it took him a long time to forge that resilience, to 'learn that you will be misrepresented and you will be lied about'. Though comfortable with bad reviews and of the opinion that criticism, however nasty, doesn't matter, Marr points to two episodes that clearly left their mark. One came in 1996 when he wrote an article in the Sydney Morning Herald lambasting the Courier Mail's Chris Mitchell for accusing Manning Clark of being a Russian spy – a subject Marr revisited recently for Guardian Australia.

'The Australian's response was to label me an 'erratic extreme left winger'. It was about a man protecting his reputation and an newspaper protecting its reputation.'

A second flare-up came when Marr was hosting Media Watch and had occasion to take aim at News Limited. 'The News Limited response to criticism is to go low and go for broke. You've got to be tough. It's all part of the discourse.

But just think what this country would be like if News Limited didn't do that kind of thing.'

A quick Google search will reveal that such cases are the tip of the iceberg in terms of anti-Marr sentiment – though it seems unlikely he would stoop to read much of it.

Marr lives in Newtown with his partner Sebastian, who travelled from Sydney to Byron Bay with Marr and dropped him off at our meeting point. As Marr was leaving to re-join Sebastian, he seemed to wistfully consider the possibility of a sea change from the inner city to somewhere as bucolic as the Northern Rivers, before quickly dismissing the idea. 'Sydney is my city. I know the puddles.'

As for current work, the new Quarterly Essay seems to have taken up plenty of recent creative energy, and is likely, as is usual for Marr, to invite praise and incite debate. In 2017 he will become a septuagenarian – is there anything left he feels compelled to 'explain'?

'When the idea crossed my mind of doing a biography of Patrick White, it was instantly convincing. I have never thought of anybody's life since that is remotely worth writing, but I'd love to.

'Sometimes I think of a colonial biography, sometimes I think of a Labor biography. If a subject comes along I'll seize it. I've done a legal biography, I've done a literary biography and I've done scads of political biography. Maybe now it should be something else. Maybe a plumber.'

Rising: Helen Burns

>> RISING

In this section, northerly hears from a series of emerging writers who have had some publishing success but whose voices are still coming into being. Some will hail from the Northern Rivers, some from further afield – either way, each is an exciting nascent talent.

Helen Burns was recently accepted for the Queensland Writers Centre Hachette Manuscript Development Program. She also publishes travel articles nationally. She majored in Hindi and Asian Studies at ANU, and an encounter in Iran inspired a poem that won first prize in a poetry competition at Byron Writers Festival 2007. Her travel memoir, The Way is a River of Stars, was awarded a LongLines residency and was shortlisted for the Varuna Harper Collins Award. She divides her time between Tamil Nadu and Byron Bay. Can you describe your own work in terms of style, practice and form?

After writing creative non-fiction for a decade I found myself staring at a blank screen. I called it a wall at first, but it wasn’t. It was a precipice and fiction threw me a line. The chasm I had long projected between these two was daunting. Nevertheless I dabbled. It was fun; a bright, brave new world.

My style has been described as ‘quiet’ and my current manuscript as literary or women’s fiction.

When and how were you first drawn to literature and a desire to be an author?

What a revelation, the hush inside Lismore’s old municipal building; those long cedar shelves stacked with books. My mother gave me a library card as soon as I could read. Around that time an invention called the ‘telly’ was launched. It was black and white and kind of exciting but books had the upper hand. Reading allowed stories to unfold in technicolour. Writing stories opened up another world entirely. My first book, handwritten, illustrated and tied with string, was about a rabbit.

Later came the swoon of poetry (with some dreadful experiments), and that one life-changing teacher, Mr Shum, whose encouragement laid the foundations for a writing life. Never mind that it took some decades before properly surfacing.

Which writers have influenced you most?

It’s an ever-evolving list. Kim Scott’s That Deadman Dance for his masterful unwrapping of the Noongar language and culture through a story of division.

David Malouf ’s spare yet transcendent prose. Patrick White! John Banville’s The Sea for the craft in every sentence. That feisty generation of women writers born in the first half of the twentieth century – Thea Astley, Judith Wright, Shirley Hazzard, Elizabeth Harrower – bedrocks for any woman writing today in Australia.

Gillian Mears’ Foal’s Bread, Jay Griffiths’ Wild: An Elemental Journey. Wendell Berry’s artful old-time storytelling – in every tale a lesson, and a prayer for the planet. Especially relevant for my current manuscript are translations of the fifth-century Tamil Sangam poets, the Alwar poet saints a few centuries later and the sixteenth century prose poem, Amuktamalyada.

What is the most important piece of writing advice you have been given?

In the beginning it was 'write wild and be true'. A contradiction perhaps? That’s the labyrinth you enter,

the beauty and elasticity of storytelling.

After the ‘wild’, put your manuscript in a drawer and take a breather – hike the long white cloud, take a road trip or an extended Belongil beachcomb – before lovingly dusting those words off. Love at this point has to wisen up and take a step back. You now wield a scalpel and need to use it with a detached mind and steady hand.

Read your work aloud. Walk as you do it. You’ll be amazed what you find.

Read widely and copiously, pay attention to those bits you love so much you just want to read them again. Pay attention when your eyes glaze.

Are there enough opportunities for emerging writers like yourself in Australia?

No doubt about it, the publishing industry is competitive.

I’ve had no formal training so opportunities to participate in past Byron Writers Festival masterclasses were invaluable – the generosity of writers such as Sue Woolfe, Delia Falconer, Clair Scobie, Debra Adelaide and Judith Beveridge. Acceptance into the annual residential mentorship with Marele Day was a life-changer. It’s a fantastic program.

The reality is, however, that every residency attracts a disproportionate number of applications. That means there’ll be fifty to sometimes two hundred and fifty polite 'thank you but sorry' emails. The first one to pop up in your inbox is the worst, the rest are disappointing, yes, but they also build your resilience as a writer. You keep on applying because that’s what you have to do, if anything it gives you a deadline, it motivates you to look at your work with fresh eyes and to polish your pages as best you can.

Are there enough opportunities? No. Can you create your own opportunities? Yes. My first residency with Byron Writers Festival resulted in an invitation to a writers group. Ten years later we still meet, submit, critique, share the craft, the disappointments, the triumphs. It only takes two to begin a writing circle.

Use your local writers centre for networking. Trust in the process and the chemistry. Four to five writers in a circle, we have found, is ideal.

Not having any luck with applications for residencies?

Make your own. It can be a solo week in a forest cabin or a week away with writing buddies. Rent a house, share in the cooking, write all day and gather together in the evenings. It’s as simple as that. Rich, empowering, affordable and often surprising. northerly | 015

>> BOOK REVIEW

National treasure THE UNFORGETTABLE WHAT'S HIS NAME

BY PAUL JENNINGS Review by Polly Jude

Like every good Aussie kid, I grew up reading Paul Jennings. Considering that he has published over one hundred stories it’s hardly surprising that he seems as much a part of our childhoods as picking bindies out of our feet and eating Vegemite sandwiches. It would be un-Australian not to read Paul Jennings at some point in your childhood.

Paul Jennings is the reason I fell in love with books in the first place. It was the magic of stories like 'Wunderpants'and the spooky horror of 'Inside Out' and 'Skeleton on the Dunny' that had me hooked as a kid.

His stories weren’t the squeaky clean, politically correct readers they shoved down our throats at school. Instead, Paul Jennings invited me, and millions of other kids, into his weird and wacky imagination. The easy and accessible way that he writes helps young independent readers build their confidence and challenges their imaginations to go to brilliant and crazy places.

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever read his work that Paul Jennings has won every children’s choice award in Australia. In 1995, they even made the man a Member of the Order of Australia for his services to children’s literature.

Now, he’s done it again. The release of The Unforgettable What’s His Name brings young audiences more of the same. Here he tells the story of a lonely and socially inept young boy, Jeremy, who is more commonly known as What’s His Name. Jeremy wants to find his father more than anything in the world. Oh, and he wants to be invisible in the social situations that make him so incredibly nervous.

Jennings gives poor, hapless Jeremy what is quite possibly the world’s best super power: the gift of invisibility. But this invisibility isn’t just the normal type. There are no invisibility cloaks or magic spells here. That would be way too predictable for Jennings.

When Jeremy gets scared he develops the ability to disappear. Actually, 'blend' would be a better definition.

He can blend into anything: a brick wall, a floral dress or a barbershop’s red and white sign. Jeremy discovers his ability when he is running from an angry mob of bikies who are out to get him.

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At first he can’t control his new power and it lands him in a whole heap of trouble, like when he’s camouflaged as a tree in a pot and gets wheeled into the monkey enclosure at the zoo. The consequences of this, to say the least, are quite revolting.

As he experiments more with his power, Jeremy realises that he can use it to his advantage. It’s more than just the ability to disappear. His special power allows Jeremy to transform into anything around him.

Like when he turns into the world’s biggest, hairiest huntsman spider. The potential of this power for any kid’s imagination is pretty phenomenal. Just think of the endless possibilities and opportunities for revenge on your enemies!

But Jeremy isn’t just scared of the world around him.

He’s actually very lonely and isolated. What Jeremy really wants is to find his father, and the dangerous gang of bikies who befriend him might be able to help him. Another great thing about this book is that Jeremy doesn’t have to hide his power or conform to be accepted by his peers. He just has to find the right people to be on his team, like the earless dog and the bearded bikie named Maggot, both of whom truly accept him for who he is. Jeremy might find that his new friends have a few talents of their own.

The Unforgettable What’s His Name is full of quirky twists that young readers won't see coming. The book is illustrated by Craig Smith, who you might recognise as one of Australia’s most prolific book illustrators. Smith has illustrated more than 380 books over his thirty-year career so if you don’t recognise his work, then you haven’t been reading kids' books.

This one is perfect for children aged seven to twelve who read independently, and will particularly appeal to boys.

The Unforgettable What’s His Name will inspire another generation of kids to love reading and will help develop twisted imaginations as they explore some of the possibilities of Jeremy’s new power.

Allen & Unwin / 224pp / $14.99

Small town blues

>> BOOK REVIEW

GOODWOOD

BY HOLLY THROSBY Review by Carly Lorente

Some days are long They make the nights seem ages away And I work so I'll be strong Not to hold you down but to let you go It was these lyrics, from folk singer-songwriter Holly Throsby, that popped into my head when I was reading her debut novel Goodwood over Christmas. I am a big fan of Holly's, of her fragile voice, her views on motherhood and creativity, and the reunions with her band, Seeker Lover Keeper.

But the book? Some days are long.

Goodwood is a small-town, coming-of-age story, a gently humorous thriller. A story where a girl goes missing. Then an older man goes missing a week later, seemingly unrelated. Jean is the somewhat likeable teenage narrator, who finds $500 cash in a tree when out walking the dog after school one afternoon, and never finds the right moment to tell her policeman uncle this critical information. Then the cash is gone, replaced by a wooden pony, and the rhythm of small town life is penetrated with mystery and uncertainty.

We all know a town like Goodwood. Even if we didn't grow up there, we've passed through, perhaps on our annual Pacific Highway family holiday. Throsby reveals the intimate stories behind the chipped paint of the weatherboard houses and the faded fish and chip shop sign.

Set in the pre-smartphone and iPad world of the nineties, Goodwood tells a tale of two missing people but speaks also of a lost era. One where people left their front doors open on hot nights, and popped round for a cuppa without exchanging ten texts beforehand.

It is the people of this country town that draw you in, extraordinarily rich characters with names like Smithy, Fitzy and Davo, and their small-town idiosyncrasies, that exist in most corners of our sunburnt land, even Byron. Bit by bit, details of their lives are skilfully uncovered to reveal the entwined, often toxic web of small communities,

and there is a certain melancholic melody to the story. Through these characters we ask what makes a community, and wonder if we ever really know anybody.

There are a few characters too many for me in Goodwood, which I found at times confusing. A single mum myself, wanting to switch off before bed at night, I found my brain had to work way too hard to keep track of them all, even though Throsby does her best to stagnate their introductions.

Throsby's language is more nostalgic than poetic. Very visual. You can smell the Spray 'n' Wipe on the benches and burn your tongue on the first bite of crab stick. Despite the dark material, there exists a simple, nice rhythm instead of any intense drama. Like a warm, sunny bath. Or a casual walk to the local milk bar on a scorching afternoon.

Goodwood was long-listed for an Indie Book Award (in the Debut Fiction category) and showed up on a number of end of year lists. ABC's The Book Club named it at number seven in its top ten books for the year, while it featured in the staff picks from Kill Your Darlings and Melbourne Writers Festival. It was number three on Dymocks' list of best books of 2016. The Sydney Morning Herald described it as a 'complete revelation.' I begin to ask myself when I struggle to finish it at one point, what am I missing?

And just like that, Throsby gets me in the end with this account of mystery, sexuality, maidenhood and becoming. Of the promise of youth and the potential that may never be realised in small towns. It leaves you feeling like you were still in the middle of the novel, which I adored.

Subtle, like the rest of the book. It is brave, and at the same time a non-event. Unassuming. I made it and I'm glad I did. And I work so I'll be strong.

Allen & Unwin / 384pp / $29.99

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>> SCU

A showcase of SCU student work, compiled by Dr. Lynda Hawryluk

Ghoul Jade Hurley

Clouds slouched down from the mountaintops, dragging across the grassland, grey and swollen. Ironstraw pasture and woody shrubs bristled, rustling like splintered bone. Tamlin stared down at the calf. Eyes stark white, tan hide shivering, its left foreleg bent at the wrong angle. Beside him, his father's eyes glinted in the shadow of his leather Akubra. Lips a lead line.

Toughened skin clutching his bones.

He unslung the rifle from his shoulder.

'We can fix it,' protested Tamlin.

'If yer keep weak cattle, yer'll be overrun with ghouls before yer know it.'

'I could look after it in the barn.'

His father's eyes staked his. He jerked his head at Tamlin's own rifle.

'You do it.'

Tamlin tried to swallow the stone in his throat.

'No.' The sky snarled and lightning flared in his father's icy eyes. He whipped the gun to his cheek and Tamlin spun away, the gunshot splitting the air.

Tamlin waited. A tiny, white flower trembling beside his boot.

'When you're a man, son,' came the dark voice.

'You’ll be able to do what's necessary.'

Tamlin's nails bit his palms. He swept his gaze over the paddock, eyelashes fluttering as he spotted a liver chestnut and its dismounted rider next to the shattered fence. A little light flared on the rider's lips.

'Renee and I will go look up the mountain,' Tamlin said, yanking his grey mare forward.

'I’ll see you on Bluey's Bluff,' was the tight reply.

The clouds began to leak finely as he led his horse over to the waiting pair. Wind ruffled through Renee’s hair and dragged over his coffee skin, snapping at the smoke of the cigarette burning between his slim fingers. His saffron eyes smouldered as he held it out to Tamlin. Tamlin felt the velvet tug of their skin as it brushed together.

'Fucking fathers,' said Renee, gently damning.

Tamlin drew long and hard on the stub. He held it, waiting till his lungs were about to spasm, then blew the smoke out in a whirl around his face.

'Fucking fathers,' he echoed and crushed the dying end into the dirt.

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He nudged the broken slats with his foot.

'Someone woulda had to tie it up to a ute,' he mulled. 'To pull it down like that.'

'Maybe it was a ghoul,' said Renee pensively, crouching over the damage.

'If it was, Da wants it dead.'

The calf 's eye burned like a hollowed moon in his mind.

'Tamlin.'

'Hmm?' He refocused on Renee squinting up at him against the silver glare.

'Bluey's Bluff?' he repeated.

Tamlin shook himself.

'Yeah.'

They swung into their saddles, urging their horses across the plain and up the mountain. Under the canopy, they were swathed in a eucalypt haze, the smell zinging their noses. Somewhere above, a kookaburra cackled. Damp grass quivered around humps of rock, arching in the yellow-green sea like whales. Lichen clinging to them like barnacles.

Renee's lean body swayed easily with the chestnut's gait, one hand holding the reins loosely. His firefly eyes wandered over the canopy and down the trunks, marking the goanna scrapes and wallaby trails. He grinned over his shoulder to share with Tamlin, droplets of mist frosting his eyelashes. But his friend's mouth lifted only limply, the portcullis closed in his midnight eyes.

Renee rubbed his thumb against the corded rein.

He felt the heaviness lurking in the nooks of the bushland. He caught Tamlin's attention again and gathered his horse underneath him.

'Race you to the top.'

Their heels tapped their horses' bellies and they tore away. Nothing but the thunder of the gallop.

The electrified heart. Gasping crisp air and ducking whipping leaves, they burst from the forest and onto the plateau.

'Ha!' cried Tamlin.

He drank in the silvery light. Thin rain drizzling on his skin. Weightless. He caught Renee's eye and smiled, thin eyebrow raised. Renee's white teeth flashed, his coat buffeted about in the wind.

>> SCU

The horses delicately picked their way over the choppy ground, the forest looming on one side and the cliff dropping away on the other.

'There,' pointed Tamlin.

Churned mud trampled through the grass, heading toward the cliff-face. They followed it. Fixed on the ground, Tamlin started when Renee’s voice stung the quiet.

'Tamlin.'

A heifer lay on her side, her back left leg bent like a plumbing joint down a rabbit hole. They dismounted and she groaned, puffing through her big nose. They looked down on her, rain sliding down their cheeks.

Renee pulled the rifle from Tamlin's shoulder and Tamlin grabbed the barrel and for a moment the metal split their faces, splicing with his father’s.

He let go of the gun.

Hunching his shoulders, he wrapped his hands around his elbows.

'Just do it then,' he muttered.

Renee placed a warm hand lightly on Tamlin's arm.

'There are worse things,' he said, softly.

Tamlin turned his head. Needle-thin space between their faces.

'Like what?' he asked.

'Not caring.'

Wind cracked the gorse and rumbled across the plateau. Moaning, the heifer arched her head backwards in the direction the herd had gone. Renee breathed out through his nose and cocked the gun, levelling it to his chin.

'Get lost Tam.' He said it dismissively, but Tamlin saw the pain. He turned and made his way up a knoll of earth, limbs heavy. He surveyed the ground, sinking into the cold, battering weather. Off to the right, the cattle tracks ended at the cliff 's edge. He sagged, imagining the twist on his father's face.

A whisper.

Tamlin’s head jerked to the left. He took a few faltering steps forward, then a few more. Something groaned. He peered down the other side of the knoll.

There, crouched a ghoul.

Grey skin, tracked by thin pipes of blue veins, wrapped its slender bones. The joints of its too long limbs, waved above its head like a spider fixing its web.

Hairless and soft, it bent over a calf, its clamp-like hands straightening out one of its legs.

The gunshot clapped and echoed through the air.

The ghoul jolted and looked up.

A man's face.

Jaw wider, the mouth larger, but it had a man's face.

The black iris’s focused and clamped on Tamlin. His shaking limbs were stitched to the ground. He wished he could scream.

The ghoul purred and unfurled. Two heads taller than Tamlin.

'Tam?' At his side, Renee's fingers gripped Tamlin's and the ghoul was in front of them in a hitched breath. Eyes

liquid mirrors, so close they almost blurred into the grey rain. The ghoul parted its lips and breathed on their faces. It lifted a hand, fingers now as delicate as naked twigs, and brushed the tips against Tamlin's cheek.

The mist was blown away; sucked down into the pits of the mountain, leaving the top crystal. So quiet, so still. Moored by Renee's warm hand.

Something boomed and the ghoul roared and hauled the boys sideways. They tumbled down the mound.

Tamlin wrenched himself from the mud, spitting it from his mouth and searching for Renee.

He lay beside him in the soupy grime. His eyes sinking like suns, fighting to stay open, darkness seeping from the bullet hole in his shoulder.

'Renee!'

Tamlin scooped him into his arms.

'It’s alright, I got you. I got you.'

His eyes spun through the rain for the horses and stopped.

'Da?' The rifle in his father's hands exploded again, tearing a bright red ribbon across the ghoul’s arm. It cried out and Tamlin with it.

'Da stop!'

But the man swung the metal in his arms, tracking the dancing ghoul, the gunpowder billowing like a mushroom. A bullet slicing into the ghoul's ankle. It crumpled with a howl like a whale's song. It thrashed, pulling itself up, limping away through the lashing grass on its three other limbs.

The man stalked after it.

Shards of rain buried into Tamlin's skin. Stones peeled away his hands.

The man perched his foot on a rock. Exhaled slowly.

There, glinting in the gloom. Smooth with rain.

The man's muscles clenched— Tamlin bent on one knee— And pulled the trigger.

The ghoul fell forward and lay still. The man grunted.

He stepped unsteadily off the rock and turned, grunting again. His hand fingered his chest and came away red. He stared at it, then lifted his eyes to his son and the smoking rifle.

The candle in his eyes guttered. He dropped to his knees and into the muddy grass. Flame gone.

Tamlin slumped into sitting. Tears on his cheeks, his clothes drenched, water filling his boots. He crawled across the sloshy grass to Renee.

He cradled him in his arms.

'Just hang on okay?' his voice husked. 'I'm gonna get you home.'

But the horses had bolted. His house far down and beyond the mountain. And Renee's face too deathly white.

Out on the plateau, a pale form rose from the earth.

Jade Hurley was born on Thursday Island and has lived most of her life in Australia. She was Dux at Alstonville High School and is now taking a Bachelor of Arts degree at Southern Cross University. She very soon will be starting a student exchange to Japan to enrich her understanding of writing.

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>> LEARNING CURVE

How to deal with literary rejection

Anyone with ambitions as a writer will be familiar with that grim sinking feeling upon opening a rejection letter or email. But it needn't be cause for prolonged anguish, believes Andrew Hutchinson, who offers advice on how to cope when your work is turned down.

Like every other writer in the history of time, I’ve copped my fair share of rejection letters. It’s tough to take, every one hurts, but you know what? It’s also inevitable. It happens to everyone.

Stephen King was told that his debut novel Carrie would not sell because it was 'science fiction which deals with negative utopias'. King had so many rejection letters that he kept them spiked on a nail – till the nail got too full and he needed to buy a spike.

'This author is beyond psychiatric help. Do not publish.' That's a rejection note sent to J.G. Ballard for Crash. Crash is disturbing, but it was one of the author's greatest hits and has never been out of print, and was adapted to film by David Cronenberg.

Jack Kerouac was told On the Road wouldn’t sell and would be savaged by critics. You’ve heard of that book, right? More than three million copies have been sold, and it still sells tens of thousands of copies every year.

Publishers don’t always get it right. No one does – art is always subjective, so it’s virtually impossible for any one person to say, outright, that a piece of writing is no good. It depends on circumstance, on audience, on a bunch of other factors that come into play when assessing, and while there are many people with an attuned sense of what makes great writing, there will always be something they’ll miss.

So how do you deal with it? How do you retain confidence and pick yourself up and try again after literary rejection? Here are some tips for coping with the dreaded ‘thanks, but no thanks’ letter and getting on with what you do.

Don’t take it personally. More often than not, the editor(s) will have a specific thing in mind, something that they’re looking for. In this case, you weren’t it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean your work is bad.

Read about the judges of competitions and what they like – get an idea of the things they’re interested in. Read about the competition itself and what are they likely to want to publish as a winner. While objectivity, you’d hope, would be the main driver of any decision, a local library group whose members are mostly elderly residents is probably not gonna select your extreme cyberpunk masterpiece, no matter how great it is. Make sure you read the journals you submit to for an understanding of what they’re looking for.

Don’t respond. At least not immediately. Your initial reaction will probably be anger and frustration and no matter how you try to hide it, that’ll come across. I was told once that you should ensure you’re completely confident with the work you submit to journals because if it’s no good and you keep submitting, you can get a reputation, the editors will get to know

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you and have a negative association before they even begin reading. I don’t necessarily think that’s true – most editors are pretty objective and they read so much that it’d be hard for them to remember specific names. But one way you can highlight yourself is by responding in anger. Then you’ll be that guy/girl who fired back that one time.

When you first receive a rejection letter, and you’re full of frustration, you’re probably gonna’ say something you’ll regret. If you think they’re wrong, you should go prove it – get published elsewhere and be a success, there’s more than one avenue to take for the literary win.

If you really do have to respond, wait a day, at least, get some perspective, then thank them for their time in assessing your work, and tell them you’ll try again some time. A day later and you’ll feel much more logical, trust me.

Use it as motivation. As noted in the previous point, this is a chance to prove them wrong.

Responding and telling them why they’re wrong proves nothing, but showing them why does. Now, I’m not saying you should go and get published then write to them saying how they were wrong, but shift your mindset from the darkness of rejection and turn that into motivation. If you believe in what you’re doing, then you should keep doing it, keep working at it, keep improving and seeking your personal goals. If someone says they’re not interested, fine, seek out someone else who will be and prove to the doubters why they were wrong. Above all, you’re writing because it’s who you are, it’s what you do, don’t ever lose sight of that. What other people think can’t change how you feel when doing the work.

Rejection is always hard, in any context. We’ve all suffered break-ups that leave you devastated and confused. Literary rejection can have the same effect, though (hopefully) on a smaller scale, but the best way to get over it is to look inside yourself, at who you are and what you want to do. What makes you happy? What makes you feel strong, confident, content? That thing that you’re thinking of, that’s what you should be doing, that’s what you need to get back to in order to find happiness within yourself. If you’re a writer, you love the work, the research, the plotting, even the editing, because it’s all moving towards making it the best it can be. And that’s incredibly exciting. And yes, you are going to get rejected. But so what? Everyone does. Take it in, action what you can, then go back to doing what you want.

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A version of this article was originally published at www.andrewhutchinson.com.au Andrew Hutchinson is a freelance writer of both fiction and non-fiction. His first novel Rohypnol was published by Random House. His second novel is due to be released shortly.

Workshops Blogging for Writers with Zanni Louise

Having a blog helps writers connect with potential readers, agents and publishers. It gives writers discipline to refine your craft, and hone your voice. It gives writers confidence, because each time you publish a post, you bare a piece of your writer's soul.

In doing so, you invite feedback, and encourage connection.

Blogger-come-children's author, Zanni Louise, was approached by a major Australian publishing house because of her blog. Zanni will introduce writers to the wonderful world of blogging, and will help writers define why you want to blog, and how to go about it.

Attendants of this fun one-day course will develop a comprehensive blog plan, will learn how to set up your blog using WordPress, and will practice different blogging techniques. You will learn how to reach your intended audience, and encourage connection and engagement.

Attendants will walk away with the confidence and skills to start blogging or develop an existing blog.

Zanni Louise is based in Alstonville. She is parent to two, and wife to one. Her first children's book Too Busy Sleeping was long-listed for the CBCA Awards. Her second book with internationally acclaimed illustrator, David Mackintosh, is called Archie and the Bear and will be released next year by Little Hare Books. Zanni’s books are set to be published in multiple languages. www.mylittlesunshinehouse.com Presenter: Zanni Louise When: Saturday February 4, 10am – 4pm Where: Byron Community College, Room 1, East Point Arcade (opposite Woolworths) Jonson Street, Byron Bay, NSW 2481 Tickets: $95 Byron Writers Festival Members or students / $115 non-members

>> FEATURE To book tickets please go to www.byronwritersfestival.com or call 02 6685 5115

Tools of the Trade with Natasha Reddrop

Punctuation and sentence structure are crucial tools for writers, not only to achieve grammatical correctness, but also to enhance your expression and personal style. If you’d like to add some more options to your toolkit, come along to this fun and interactive workshop. We’ll cover common (and less common) uses for all kinds of punctuation, and analyse some great examples. Bring your long-held questions!

In this workshop, we’ll look at uses for full-stops, commas (including the Oxford comma), semi-colons, colons, direct speech, apostrophes, exclamation and question marks, ellipsis, brackets, hyphens and dashes (both em and en).

We’ll also talk about emphasis, capitalisation and listing.

We’ll discuss how punctuation can be used to structure your sentences for certain effects, and how your own punctuation choices really make your writing unique.

Natasha Reddrop is a grammar aficionado who has been teaching grammar to many different kinds of learners for fifteen years. Through her business, Grammar Debugged, she also offers writing and proofreading services, and all kinds of support to help people write more effectively.

Presenter: Natasha Reddrop When: Saturday March 4, 10am – 1pm Where: Byron Community College, Room 1, East Point Arcade (opposite Woolworths) Jonson Street, Byron Bay, NSW 2481 Tickets: $50 Byron Writers Festival members or students / $60 non-members

Structure with Laura Bloom

This session is for any level of writer, particularly those who have never written before or have not written adult non-fiction.

Everything from conception to creation will be shared. This session is not about how to sell your book, but how to structure, research and begin to write it. There will be writing exercises and it is expected that you will have written a draft of your synopsis and developed a research strategy by the end of the workshop.

Dr. Anita Heiss is the author of non-fiction, historical fiction, commercial women's fiction, poetry, social commentary and travel articles. She is a regular guest at writers' festivals and travels internationally performing her work and lecturing on Indigenous literature.

You wouldn’t build a house that had no supporting beams, no foundation and no ceiling. Neither can you tell a satisfying story without having certain structural elements in place. This one-day workshop will introduce participants to the basic elements of three act structure and help them learn how to identify and strengthen these elements in their own work.

To prepare for the it is requested that watch the film Witness – twice, preferably – starring Harrison Ford, as we’ll be using it to look at the main points of structure throughout the day.

Laura Bloom is the author of four novels, including the critically acclaimed In The Mood. Her latest and most structurally complex novel, The Cleanskin has been described as a ‘masterpiece of drama and characterization.’ www.laurabloom.com.au

Presenter: Anita Heiss When: Saturday February 18, 10am – 4pm Where: Byron Community College, Room 1, East Point Arcade (opposite Woolworths) Jonson Street, Byron Bay, NSW 2481 Tickets: $95 Byron Writers Festival members and students / $115 non-members

Presenter: Laura Bloom When: Saturday March 25, 10am – 4pm Where: Byron Community College – Room 1, East Point Arcade (opposite Woolworths) Jonson Street, Byron Bay, NSW 2481 Tickets: $95 Byron Writers Festival members or students / $115 non-members

Memoir with Anita Heiss

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Competitions

CHARLES PERKINS CENTRE WRITER IN RESIDENCE FELLOWSHIP 2017

This fellowship will support an established Australian writer to create new work within Australia’s leading interdisciplinary centre dedicated to easing the global burden of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and related conditions through innovative research and teaching. The fellowship will be for one year and includes a grant of $100,000 and an honorary appointment at Sydney University.

Deadline for applications is February 10. For full details of this opportunity visit http://sydney.edu.au/perkins/ about/writer-in-residence.shtml

ADELAIDE PLAINS POETS INC POETRY COMPETITION

This competition invites entries on the theme of 'Freedom' and features an open class (aged eighteen or over), and classes for primary school and secondary school students. Poems should be no longer than 60 lines, while there is an entry fee of $10 for the first poem entered and $5 for those entered thereafter. Entries close on April 13, for more information visit http://carolyn-poeticpause. blogspot.com.au/

BIRDCATCHER BOOKS STORIES FOR CHILDREN COMPETITION Stories for this competition should be aimed at children aged between five and eight. First prize takes $150 plus publication in an anthology. Entrants should be Australian or New Zealand residents aged eighteen or older.

Deadline for submissions is February 3 2017, with more information available at http://birdcatcherbooks. com/competitions/

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NEWCASTLE SHORT STORY AWARD

The Newcastle Short Story is open to entries of up to 2,000 words written by Australians living at home or overseas.

First prize takes $3,000, second prize $1,500 and third $500. There will also be prizes for highly commended stories, and all shortlisted stories will be published in an anthology. Judges are Peter Goldsworthy and Maria Takolander, while there is an entry fee of $15. Entries close on February 6, and more details can be found at http://www.hunterwriterscentre.org/ short-story-award.html

BRONZE SWAGMAN AWARD

The forty-sixth Bronze Swagman award will take place in 2017, and invites entries of traditional Australian bush verse with no limit to length.

There is an entry fee of $20 per form with three poems allowed on one form – entries are by post. Winners, runners-up and highly commended will receive trophies and publication in an anthology. Deadline for entries is April 30, 2017.

WB YEATS POETRY PRIZE

There is a fifty-line limit for the 2016 WB Yeats Poetry Prize, which invites entries in an open style. Winner takes $500, with second and third winning $75. Entries are via email or post, with a deadline of March 31, 2017. There is a fee of $8.50 for the first entry and $5.50 for further entries. Full details are available at http://www. wbyeatspoetryprize.com/

KYD UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT AWARD

Organised by the journal Kill Your Darlings, this award will assist an early-career author in the

development of an unpublished manuscript. The award is open to writers of fiction and non-fiction.

The winner will receive $5,000 and a mentorship with either Rebecca Starford (non-fiction) or Hannah Kent (fiction). Submissions close on Friday March 31, for more information visit https://www. killyourdarlings.com.au/awards/

STRINGYBARK SHORT STORY AWARD

The Stringybark Short Story Award is seeking entries of stories up to 1,500 words. Entries should be for adults and must be connected to Australia in some way. Prizes worth $1,085 are on offer, with first prize taking $450 in cash – closing date is February 5. Feedback from judges is also available, those interested can find more information at http://www. stringybarkstories.net/competitions/ open-competitions.html

HENRY SAVERY NATIONAL SHORT STORY AWARD

The 2017 Henry Savery National Short Story Award is open to writers residing in Australia. With an open theme, stories should be no longer than 2,500 words. There is an entry fee of $5 per story, with a deadline of June 30, 2017. First prize will receive $400, with second prize taking $100. For further entry information log on to https://fawtas.org.au/competitions/

THE SHEILA MALADY SHORT STORY COMPETITION

This Gippsland-based competition aims to celebrate and breathe new life into the works of Shakespeare by inviting writers to send in their own creations. These creations should be short stories of up to 2,000 words on

the theme of 'Light/Dark'. First prize wins $300 cash and theatre tickets, while there are special prizes for those local to Gippsland and those aged under eighteen. The closing date for entries is March 23, there is a $5 entry fee, and more information can be found at http://www. stratfordshakespeare.com.au/shortstory-competition/

CARNIVAL HOUR PLAYWRITING COMPETITION

Aspiring and experienced Australian playwrights are invited to submit unpublished and unperformed play scripts to the annual Carnival of Flowers Toowoomba Repertory Theatre Playwriting Competition.

Plays should be 50-75 minutes in length. The top ten scripts will receive professional feedback, with the best play winning $4,000, and second place winning $2,000. The winning plays will be workshopped and then performed at Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers in September 2017. Submissions close on January 31, with further information available at http://www. toowoombarepertorytheatre.com.au/ html/2017_playwriting_comp.html

FORTY SOUTH PUBLISHING TASMANIAN WRITERS’ PRIZE

This competition is open to Australian or New Zealand residents for short stories of up to 3,000 words with an island or island-resonant theme.

The winner will receive a prize of $500 and anthology publication – a selection of other entries also will be published. There is an entry fee of $20 per story, with a deadline of February 13, 2017. For further details go to http://fortysouth.com.au/magazine/ tasmanian-writers-prize/

THE NATURE CONSERVANCY NATURE WRITING PRIZE

QUESTIONS WRITING PRIZE

This biennial nature writing prize invites entries of between 3,000 and 5,000 words and is open to Australian citizens or permanent residents of Australia. With a theme of ‘Writing of place’, the competition offers prize money of $5,000, while there is a $30 entry fee and closing date of January 27. For more information head to https://tncnaturewritingprize. submittable.com/submit

The 2017 Questions Writing Prize aims to recognise and reward the talents of writers aged between eighteen and thirty. Submissions should be between 1,500 and 2,000 words and can be either fiction or non-fiction on any topic. The winner will receive $2,000 and have their work published. Deadline for entries is May 1, and full details can be found at http://www.questions.com.au/ writing-prize/index.php

BOONDOOMA STATION ANZAC STORIES IN POETRY COMPETITION

2017 TEXT PRIZE FOR YOUNG ADULT AND CHILDREN'S WRITING

This poetry competition is seeking entries that deal with at least one theme as decided on by Queensland Anzac Centenary Commemoration, which can be found online. First prize wins $500, second prize $300, third prize $200. Winning entries will also be published. For full entry conditions (deadline for entries is February 17, 2017) and details of themes, visit http://www. abpa.org.au/Files/event_2017_ BoondoomaStnAnzac.pdf

BRISTOL SHORT STORY PRIZE

The Bristol Short Story Prize is open to writers from all over the world, for stories of up to 4,000 words. Stories can be on any theme, while there is an entry fee of £8 (approximately $13.50). Entries must be previously unpublished, with first prize taking £1,000 (approximately $1,650).

Twenty shortlisted stories will be published in an anthology, with a deadline for entries of May 3. For more information visit https://www. bristolprize.co.uk/rules/

This unique competition is for budding authors of YA or children's literature, and is open to writers of all ages, published or unpublished, for works of fiction or non-fiction.

The winner will receive a publishing contract with Text and an advance against royalties of $10,000.

Submissions close on February 3 – for full details head to https://www. textpublishing.com.au/text-prize

WUNDOR SHORT FICTION CONTEST 2017

A UK-based competition, the Wundor Short Fiction Contest is open to collections of short stories or a single piece of work, so long as the total wordcount is between 5,000 and 45,000. The competition is open to anyone writing in English aged eighteen and over and offers a first prize of $500 (approximately $850) and consideration for publication.

There is an entry fee of £10 (approximately $16). The deadline for entries is February 28, and further information can be found at http://www.wundoreditions.com/ wundor-editions---contests.html

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>> WRITERS’ GROUPS

>> Alstonville Plateau Writers Group

>> Dorrigo Writers Group

>> Ballina/Byron U3A Creative Writing

>> Dunoon Writers Group

Meets second Friday of each month, 10am - 12pm. All genres welcome, contact Kerry on 66285662 or email alstonvilleplateauwriters@outlook.com Meets every second Wednesday at 12pm, Fripp Oval, Ballina. Contact Ann Neal on 02 6681 6612.

>> Bangalow Writers Group

Meets Thursdays at 9:15am at Bangalow Scout Hall.

Contact Simone on 0407749288

>> Bellingen Writers Group

Meets at Bellingen Golf Club on the fourth Monday of the month at 2pm. All welcome, contact Joanne on 6655 9246 or email jothirsk@restnet.com.au

Meets every second Wednesday from 10am-2pm.

Contact Iris on 66575274 or email an_lomall@bigpond. com or contact Nell on 66574089 Writers on the Block. Meets second Tuesday of each month, 6:30pm – 8:30pm at Dunoon Sports Club.

Contact Helga on 66202994 (W), 0401405178 (M) or email heg.j@telstra.com

>> FAW Port Macquarie-Hastings Regional

Meets 1pm on last Saturday of each month, Maritime Museum, Port Macquarie. Contact Joie on 65843520 or email Bessie on befrank@tsn.cc

>> Gold Coast Writers Association

Meets monthly at Sunrise Beach, Byron Bay. Contact Diana on 0420 282 938 or diana.burstall@gmail.com

Meets third Saturday of each month, 1:30pm for 2pm start, at Fradgley Hall, Burleigh Heads Library, Park Avenue, Burleigh Heads. Contact 0431443385 or email info@goldcoast-writers.org.au

>> Casino Writers Group

>> Kyogle Writers

>> Cloudcatchers

>> Middle Grade / Young Adult Fiction Writers’ Group

>> Byron Bay Memoir and Fiction Writing Group

Meets every third Thursday of the month at 4pm at Casino Library. Contact Brian on 0266282636 or email briancostin129@hotmail.com For Haiku enthusiasts. A ginko (haiku walk) is undertaken according to group agreement. Contact Quendryth on 66533256 or email quendrythyoung@ bigpond.com

>> Coffs Harbour Writers Group

Meets 1st Wednesday of the month 10.30am to 12.30pm. Contact Lorraine Penn on 66533256 or 0404163136, email: lmproject@bigpond.com. www. coffsharbourwriters.com

>> Coffs Harbour Memoir Writers Group

Share your memoir writing for critique. Monthly meetings, contact 0409824803 or email costalmermaid@ gmail.com

>> Cru3a River Poets

Meets every Thursday at 10:30am, venue varies, mainly in Yamba. Contact Pauline on 66458715 or email kitesway@westnet.com.au

>> Dangerously Poetic Writing Circle

Meets second Wednesday of each month, 2pm-4pm at Brunswick Valley Community Centre. Contact Laura on 66801976 or visit www.dangerouslypoetic.com

024 | northerly

Meets first Tuesday of each month, 10:30am at Kyogle Bowling Club. Contact Brian on 66242636 or email briancostin129@hotmail.com

Meets monthly at 2pm on Sundays in Bangalow. Contact Carolyn Bishop at carolyncbishop@gmail.com or 0431161104

>> Nambucca Valley Writers Group

Meets fourth Saturday of each month, 1:30pm, Nambucca. Contact 65689648 or nambuccawriters@ gmail.com

>> Taree-Manning River Scribblers

Meets second Wednesday of the month, 9am-11:30am, Taree. Call first to check venue. Contact Bob Winston on 65532829 or email rrw1939@hotmail.com

>> Tweed Poets and Writers

Meets weekly at the Coolangatta Senior Citizens Centre on Tuesdays from 1:30 to 3:30pm, NSW time.

Poets, novelists, playwrights, short story writers are all welcome. Phone Lorraine 0755248035 or Pauline 0755245062.

>> WordsFlow Writing

Group meets Fridays during school term, 12:30pm-3pm, Pottsville Beach Neighbourhood Centre, 12a Elizabeth St, Pottsville Beach. Contact Cheryl on 0412455707 or visit www.wordsflowwriters.blogspot.com

BYRON WRITERS FESTIVAL

CHRISTMAS PARTY

DECEMBER 20, 2016

Byron Writers Festival presents

An evening with Sebastian Barry Thursday 2 March, 6pm Byron Theatre

"A master storyteller" - Wall Street Journal

Sebastian Barry is a playwright, novelist, and poet and is considered one of Ireland's finest writers. He has twice been shortlisted for the MAN Booker prize and was named number one in The Guardian's list of top ten writers to see live.

Join him in conversation with Chris Hanley to discuss his powerful new novel Days Without End, set in mid-nineteenth century America and described by Kazuo Ishiguro as a "lyrical western offering a sweeping vision of America in the making".

TICKETS $35 General / $30 Members & Concession Thursday 2 March, 6pm Byron Theatre

byronwritersfestival.com/whats-on