Northerly Magazine - Autumn 2020 Edition

northerly Byron Writers Festival Member Magazine | Autumn 2020

TISHANI DOSHI

JESSICA WHITE

MELISSA LUCASHENKO

DONNA WARD

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Contents Autumn 2020 Features 010 The art of economy Emma Ashmere on crafting a short story collection 012 Book extract Read a passage from Donna Ward’s memoir, She I Dare Not Name: A Spinster’s Meditations on Life 018 Coastal settings Lisa Walker guides us through the local landmarks in her new YA novel, The Girl with the Gold Bikini 020 Portrait of the artist Rebecca Ryall reflects on meeting Melissa Lucashenko

Regulars 002 Chair’s note 003 News & Events Writers on the Road, Colum McCann visits Byron, Extra Early Bird Tickets announced, Residential Mentorship and more 006 Feature poet Two poems from Matt Hetherington 008 Notes from the Festival Tishani Doshi interviewed by Katinka Smit 016 Notes from the Festival II Jessica White in conversation with Katinka Smit 014 Roots and branches Sophie Cunningham’s City of Trees reviewed by Jenny Bird 024 SCU Showcase Short fiction from Samantha Cambray 020 A South Australian tale Garry Disher’s Peace reviewed by Colleen O’Brien

northerly northerly is the quarterly magazine of Byron Writers Festival.

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

LOCATION/CONTACT P: 02 6685 5115 F: 02 6685 5166 E: info@byronwritersfestival.com W: byronwritersfestival.com POSTAL ADDRESS PO Box 1846, Byron Bay NSW 2481 EDITOR: Barnaby Smith, northerlyeditor@gmail.com CONTRIBUTORS: Emma Ashmere, Jenny Bird, Samantha Cambray, Laurel Cohn, Mana Ford, Matt Hetherington, Colleen O’Brien, Rebecca Ryall, Katinka Smit, Lisa Walker, Donna Ward BYRON WRITERS FESTIVAL BOARD CHAIRPERSON Adam van Kempen SECRETARY Russell Eldridge TREASURER Cheryl Bourne MEMBERS Jesse Blackadder, Marele Day, Lynda Dean, Hilarie Dunn, 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 Magazine is published in MARCH, JUNE, SEPTEMBER and DECEMBER PRINTING Summit Press 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 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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026 Workshops 027 Competitions 028 Writers Groups

We acknowledge the Arakwal Bumberbin People of the Byron Shire as the traditional custodians of this land.

northerly AUTUMN 2020 | 01

Chair’s note Welcome to the first edition of northerly for 2020. 2019 was a jam-packed year and it doesn’t look like things are slowing down in 2020. We are in full swing at the Festival, ramping up our year-round program and Festival programming for August.

In just under a month (!) our Extra Early Bird tickets go on sale, with our Early Bird release accompanied by our first guest announcement in May, and the full program release in late June. I’m already excited about the big ideas, storytellers and creative writers that will descend on our town in August.

We have moved to our new premises at Centennial Circuit in the Arts and Industrial Estate, and although we are still getting things set up, we hope that it will be part of the creative hub of the Festival. Watch this space.

We continue to explore every way to make our Festival sustainable. Year after year, the entire team works toward the goal of reducing our footprint to ensure that everything that we do is positive and achieves a triple bottom line. Please support us in this genuine endeavour, as there has never been a more important time for us to work together as a global society to protect our fragile planet and make sure that all of the wonderful and beautiful things that we are privileged to enjoy – art in all forms, literature, ideas, innovation – are here for future generations to experience and also enjoy.

Little did any of us know when I wrote about the bushfires in my last note that they were only the beginning of unprecedented devastation around the country – to be followed more recently by flooding and storms. Dorothea Mackellar is never far from my mind at those times.

Over the summer I did get to catch up on some reading as anticipated in my last note – of books old and new – and I hope many of you also had that opportunity. I started with Anthony Bourdain, who offered a great combination of two of my passions – food and writing. I also managed to read Trent Dalton, Hannah Critchlow and Lionel Shriver, to name a few. I’ve promised myself to make more time for reading, writing and big ideas this year and I wish the same for all of you.

Best wishes, Adam van Kempen Chair, Byron Writers Festival

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NEWS & EVENTS

Writers on the Road revs up Byron Writers Festival’s regional touring program, Writers on the Road, hits the road at the end of March 2020, for a series of free community events.

Writers on the Road, the free Byron Writers Festival touring program, is taking the road less travelled this year with a crew of literary renegades. Acclaimed authors and artists on board include Indigenous illustrator Dub Leffler, writer and recovering teacher Gabbie Stroud, bestselling author Kayte Nunn and Jewish, queer, non-binary writer Nevo Zisin. They are not scared to ask the dangerous questions – or to answer them, for that matter.

‘Writers on the Road began in 2014 and so many of the conversations started then are as important today,’ says tour manager, Zacharey Jane.

‘And so much of that comes from the people we meet on the road: we love getting out into the region and hearing what readers have to say.’

Writers on the Road takes awardwinning Australian authors, illustrators and poets to regional towns in northern NSW for free school workshops and community events. It boasts alumni of

renowned writers including Kristina Olsson, Michael Robotham, Jock Serong, Lian Hearn, Ashley Hay, Nick Earls, Ellen van Neerven and Omar Sakr, among many others.

This year the tour bus will stop in Bellingen, Harwood, Evans Head and Bonalbo before heading back to Byron Bay. ‘We are so grateful to Create NSW for continuing to fund this unique community program,’ says Byron Writers Festival Director, Edwina Johnson. ‘Over the years it has created valuable connections between our touring writers and communities all over the Northern Rivers. The writers love sharing their stories on the road with readers, and each other.’

Due to the popularity of Writers on the Road, the program will offer two tours in 2020, the second scheduled for the week before the annual Byron Writers Festival in August, with dates and towns announced in May.

So come and share your ideas about the world with four of our most creative thinkers. Details are at byronwritersfestival.com/wotr/ It’s fine to turn up on the night, but best to call the venues to book for these free events.

Tour dates Monday 30 March at 5.30pm Bellingen Library Hyde Street, Bellingen (02) 6655 1744 Tuesday 31 March at 6.00pm Harwood Hotel 2 Morpeth Street, Harwood (02) 6646 4223 Wednesday 1 April at 5.30pm Evans Head Library Woodburn Street, Evans Head (02) 6660 0374 Thursday 2 April at 6.00pm Bonalbo Memorial Hall Stratheden Street, Bonalbo Friday 3 April at 6.00pm The Book Room Fletcher Street, Byron Bay (02) 6685 8183

Writers (from left): Gabbie Stroud, Kayte Nunn & Nevo Zisin northerly AUTUMN 2020 | 03

NEWS & EVENTS

Margin Notes News, events and announcements from Byron Writers Festival

McCann visits Byron The bestselling author Colum McCann will appear at Byron Theatre on Tuesday 5 May, talking about his new novel Apeirogon.

Lauded as McCann’s most ambitious work to date, Apeirogon – the name of a shape with a countably infinite number of sides – is a tour de force concerning friendship, love, loss and belonging. Tickets to the event will be available from mid-March via byronwritersfestival.com/whats-on

Extra Early Bird tickets coming soon Our popular first release of Festival Extra Early Bird tickets will be available again this year for one week only, 1-7 April. During this time, you can purchase your 3-Day Passes for $225 (members) and $265 (non-members).

A second release of Early Bird tickets will be available 20-26 May, when the first names of the lineup will be announced, at $235 (members) or $275 (non-members).

Tickets will be available for purchase online, over the phone or in person at the Festival office.

Be sure to get your friends on board, book early and save! For more details on key dates and ticket prices for the 2020 Byron Writers Festival, head to our website byronwritersfestival.com/ festival

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Write your novel with Sarah Armstrong Make 2020 the year you write your novel. Join author Sarah Armstrong for three terms of writing classes spread over the year. The small group will meet once a week for four-week blocks, and a total of thirty-six face-to-face hours, when Sarah will give you practical guidance, tools and tips.

The first term will cover ideas, planning and first drafts; the second term narrative tension, character development and plot; and the third term rewriting and editing, as well as structures and themes.

The workshop begins on Wednesday 20 May. For more information turn to page 26 or visit byronwritersfestival.com/whatson/the-year-of-the-novel-withsarah-armstrong/

Residential Mentorship announced Calling all local writers: it’s time to polish up that manuscript for our twenty-first annual Residential Mentorship. This year’s mentorship will take place 11-15 May. This incredible opportunity offers five days in a glorious Byron Shire location with accommodation and some meals provided. Mentees receive one-on-one mentoring with Marele Day and the company of three other committed writers.

The Residential Mentorship is an outstanding opportunity to participate in a writing experience that has proven to be a launchpad for many regional writers.

Applications open on Wednesday 4 March and close on Wednesday 25 March. For application details visit byronwritersfestival.com/ members/residential-mentorship/

New office open for business Byron Writers Festival’s fabulous new office space is now up and running. Be sure to pop in next time you are visiting the Arts and Industrial Estate to have a browse through the lending library and take a break on the comfortable reading lounges. You can find us at Unit 2, 58 Centennial Circuit, behind the Surfboard Agency building.

AGM notice The 2020 Byron Writers Festival AGM takes place Tuesday 10 March at 5pm, at the Festival Office at 2/58 Centennial Circuit, Byron Bay.

Funds raised for bushfire relief Thank you to all who attended La Nuit des Idees in January. The soldout event raised more than $6000 for the Red Cross Disaster Relief and Recovery Appeal.

NEWS & EVENTS

New funds for criticism

Cover story The cover art for this issue of northerly is Scenic Route to Byron: Whian Whian East Forest by Nikki Wood. Nikki is a professional artist living in Warwick, Queensland. She is a passionate pastellist who also works with acrylic and watercolour. She has a common theme in her work: green.

Her recent exhibition at the Northern Rivers Community Gallery in Ballina, Pockets of Green, explores the areas experienced by Nikki, particularly Killarney, the Sunshine Coast Hinterland, the Scenic Rim and the Ballina area.

Nikki is now working on a large collection to be exhibited at Warwick Art Gallery in October 2020. You can follow her progress on Facebook and Instagram through the handle ‘Art by Nikki Wood’.

LAUREL COHN Editing and Manuscript Development ~ Manuscript assessment and development ~ Editorial and publishing consultations ~ Mentoring ~ Structural and stylistic editing ~ Copy editing and proofreading

Congratulations to Lynton Burger on the publication of his debut novel She Down There (Penguin Random House, South Africa).

‘Your initial assessment of my manuscript was thorough, insightful and structured in such a way that I could immediately get to work with taking it to the next level. You are a passionate and engaging teacher, a consummate professional with a depth of experience across genres. I am indebted to you for your significant contribution, seminal really, to my growth as a writer!

Lynton Burger www.lyntonburger.com

www.laurelcohn.com.au info@laurelcohn.com.au 02 6680 3411

Colin-James wins McCullough prize Local writer Sally Colin-James was recently named as the winner of the 2019 Colleen McCullough Residency Award for her historical fiction novel The Recipe for White. Given by the Historical Novel Society of Australasia (HNSA) in honour of Australian writing icon Colleen McCullough, the award recognises unpublished manuscripts of historical fiction deemed worthy

of support towards publication.

Sally travels to Norfolk Island for a writing residency at McCullough’s private guesthouse.

In other local literary news, the Kyogle-based journal WOB has just published its second issue, and features work from Jarrah Dundler, Jim Hearn, Lynette Lounsbury, Dusk Dundler and others. For more information go to wob-lit.com.au

In encouraging news for the country’s arts criticism, the Copyright Agency, in partnership with the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas, has announced funding of $150,000 to fund arts criticism in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Brisbane Times and WA Today.

At The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, the funds will be put towards 100 additional reviews focused on books, plays and visual arts from around Australia.

Copyright Agency CEO Adam Suckling said, ‘Our job is to support Australian creativity by ensuring that the rights of publishers, writers and visual artists are respected and that they receive fair payment for use of their work.’

Bushfire fellowship Varuna, The National Writers House, based in the Blue Mountains, has announced a new fellowship: Writing Fire, Writing Drought. The new initiative aims to support writers in the development of new work that responds to the recent bushfires and drought. The fellowship will be awarded to five writers from regional New South Wales or the outer west of Sydney.

The fellowship includes a oneweek residential fellowship at Varuna, uninterrupted time to write in a private studio, all meals, the companionship of fellow writers and a one-hour writing consultation. Applications close on 27 March. For more information go to www.varuna.com.au/ fellowships/writingfire

northerly AUTUMN 2020 | 05

POETRY

Feature Poet: Matt Hetherington Scales the hard gold shines as the dead creature is weighed, & the brighter the flesh, the greater the worth to the one who wants it fresh

having ascended to the heights of the food-chain, we dance there in a mode as if carnal delights were delivered on earth for free

but an old man of the sea looks out to ancient lands & demands of me ‘who are you to say it’s wrong to hunt when you forget so easily the luxury of lunch?’

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POETRY

Give It Up

i moisten my fingers with the vortex

then over and again i scrap my teeth along the length of the nape of your neck

then i send you away so i can sigh about you being gone

of course i soon grow lonely

so i beg you to come back and offer me the animal fruit that kisses my mouth

i like to lick in anti-clockwise circles

then i linger in the scented desert that lies between your breasts

i know your streets and retreats, your alleys and valleys

and the perfumes that your flesh exudes when your spirit is being pleased

now i try my best to give up

these lightning bolts of love within me and to make books where the pages open like lips

Matt Hetherington is a writer, music-maker, teacher, and moderate self-promoter based in northern New South Wales. His first all-haiku/ senryu book, For Instance, was published in 2015 by Mulla Mulla Press, and his fifth collection, The Love of the Sun, was published by Recent Work Press in August 2018. matthetherington.net northerly AUTUMN 2020 | 07

INTERVIEW

Notes from the Festival: Tishani Doshi Tishani Doshi, the Indian-Welsh performance poet, novelist and dancer, delighted audiences at last year’s Festival with her poetry performances. Her recent novel, Small Days and Nights, resists the tradition of the grand narrative, focusing instead on the domestic and feminine. Her poetry voices a delicate, seething, visceral, feminism; her performances channel an ancient, matriarchal force.

Interview by Katinka Smit.

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INTERVIEW

When did you first discover poetry?

I think poetry has always been a part of my life in some way – as a child I remember writing a poem for the school magazine – but it seriously began when I was an undergraduate in the United States.

I started reading contemporary poetry. I was amazed that language could be used in such a way. I totally diverted my path from economics and statistics. From then on I’ve been calling myself a poet and trying to be one.

Why does poetry inspire creative fealty in you, even though you have other art forms at your disposal?

Poetry is something that grounds me, very strongly. It’s completely transformative. Voice is very important and in poetry the voice becomes apparent, very quickly.

It’s important to have a place to put that voice out. I keep worrying that maybe I won’t be able to write another poem. A lot of people write prose and are forever lost to the world of poetry, but I’m so glad that my first instinct, whenever I finish a novel or a longer prose piece, is to come back to poetry. As long as I have that impulse, I feel then that that’s right.

Did studying in America affect the cultural lens through which you viewed womanhood or your own sense of self as a woman?

It changed everything for me. I had never been alone in my life, I had never been independent. I had never had to make my own way.

I went to the same school from when I was three to eighteen. Then I went off to college. But I also had to recalibrate my idea of America. I returned to India nine years later to live permanently and it was really

important for me to have made that journey out. There was a great strength in those choices. I found the first year in America very hard, I was very homesick, but I was finding myself, which everybody has to do.

You don’t need to cross the oceans to do it, but travel helps to displace your ideas of yourself.

Especially in India where the culture of the family is so binding?

Yes, to the point of it being claustrophobic. The family structure is important but it also made me think, how can we make new structures? Small Days and Nights is very much about the alternative family, the alternative support structures. I have a lovely supportive family, but I am interested in how the structures are changing, breaking down and reinventing themselves, all over the world, how we can be more active in creating new structures.

Your TEDx performance of ‘Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods’ focuses on the visual image of the sacred yoni, which creates a sense of menace, even as the poem demonstrates vulnerability.

It’s interesting to examine how in certain cultures the divine feminine has been the most powerful part of those cultures. In India, for example, if you go back, it all comes from the goddess. The idea of the divine feminine is still there in temples, in shrines. But in fact we do not worship our women. We mistreat them quite badly. The idea is about reclaiming that power of the body. It is through our bodies that we have to reclaim our voice and we cannot be cowed down by the fact that it is because of our bodies that we are violated. I’ve also worked with the yoni mudras in my previous production, so it came very

naturally, this idea of using those specific mudras, those gestures as a militant act. There’s a beautiful Sanskrit idea of militancy with grace. I think of feminism as that.

The poem is like an anthem, a war cry; it has to be like that. It cannot be tame, because to counter that violence it needs to be like, ‘Here we come with our army.’ But I add the grace. You don’t want to replace one inherently corrupt power structure with another, but with something that is larger in scope and more generous.

Until a few hundred years ago, temples in southern India were devoted to female cults; Shiva is only a recent addition. Poetry itself is long associated with divinity, across cultures. Where do you fit yourself as a poet in this matriarchal history?

You have a sense of where you come from, that history, that ancestor.

My guru, my teacher, always said, ‘Don’t think of yourself as a young woman of this land, think of yourself as an ancient woman.’ It was a very powerful idea. You put your voice in but there are all these voices behind you. And I don’t need to claim just from my country. I can claim my figures, matriarchal or otherwise, wherever I can find the power that I can respond to. As a poet you pick your ancestry. They can be alive, they can be dead; it doesn’t matter.

They’re chattering in your head and it’s a wonderful conversation that continues.

Small Days and Nights is published

by Bloomsbury

northerly AUTUMN 2020 | 09

FEATURE

Balancing act: The art of arranging short stories Ahead of the publication of her first short story collection, Dreams They Forgot, local author Emma Ashmere navigates the advice – and counter-advice – surrounding putting together such a volume.

Much has been said about short stories – as a form. They’re the literary equivalent of practising your scales, limbering up for the novel symphony.

Publishers avoid them. Yet continue to publish them. Nobody reads them. Except they do. They’re back in fashion. They never went away. As Jane Rawson puts it, ‘The short story is both on hiatus and in the prime of its life.’

fewer gear-changes, an almost-novel.

There’s also plenty of ‘how to write’ advice, but less about crafting a compelling whole from various scraps. Maybe because it’s as simple as plonking them into one long document.

Ellen Van Neerven’s Heat and Light is hived into four parts, a hybrid, blurring multiple realities.

Not quite.

Reading like a reader Herding all my stories into one file was revelatory.

I tried to sit on the other side of the desk and read them as a reader – rather than the author. One thing leapt out: repetition of ideas, issues, images – even phrases. Nobody noticed these little obsessions when I’d farmed them out individually to different places over years. I cut several stories. But how to tend to the keepers?

Mixtapes, zoos, share houses Nathan Scott McNamara compares organising a collection to ‘sequencing an album’ or mixed cassette tape, striking ‘a balance between familiarity and change’ and ‘fulfilling the reader’s desires, while also challenging them.’ Randall Jarrell thinks it’s like ‘starting a zoo in your closet.’ The giraffe takes up all the space.

Or perhaps it’s more of a share house, peopled by a mix of timid, loud, pedantic, erratic, long-termers and fly-by-nighters.

To theme or not Some writers bind their collections to a theme.

Continuity of characters/time/events may promise 10 | AUTUMN 2020 northerly

Set in a seaside village, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Sea Road is bound by place and divided by intergenerational feuds.

Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, also in a seaside town, showcases an ensemble of protagonists. But Olive is the star, so too in the sequel Olive, Again.

Toni Jordan’s Nine Days interlocks one-day-in-a-life through time.

Order in the house of short fiction For more eclectic collections, the question becomes which stories where? Surely put the published or prizewinners first. But the frame and context have changed.

There are many voices, differently-decorated rooms, porous walls.

McNamara says the first story must do two things: ‘establish the writer’s authority’ and ‘prepare the reader’ for what’s to follow.

In Paddy O’Reilly’s ‘Speak to Me’ a quasi-alien whooshes into a fantasy writer’s backyard. The reader is warned. Uncertainty abounds.

Amanda O’Callaghan’s ‘The Widow’s Snow’ invites us into a middle-aged woman’s thoughts during a protracted date. Ambiguity, trust, and death course through the book.

Flannery O’Connor’s ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ sets up the skittles with the first sentence: ‘The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida.’ She does.

And motors towards a murderer.

However, Daniyal Mueenuddin believes the ‘brightest’ story will entice. Others plump for those with the ‘widest’ appeal.

FEATURE

“What to say when people claim they never read short stories?

Never? All short stories? Isn’t that like saying you don’t like music?”

Find the shape Matthew Fox offers ‘shapes’ for building collections, for example mosaic and hourglass. There’s also the ‘tent pole’ – planting stronger pieces a few pages apart.

As for longer stories (aka ‘the giraffes’), opinion is divided. Weight at the end, like Nam Le’s novella in The Boat, or satisfy with a hearty appetizer. Flash fictions flit about the equatorial centre. Recurring characters inhabit adjoining rooms. If there’s a title story, it may settle wherever it likes.

The last word For McNamara, the last story should ‘make emotional sense of everything that’s come before’ and ‘wrap things up.’ Fox says they’re an opportunity to ‘open up to the world.’ The final page should be like the final page of all your stories. Equally resolved – or nebulous.

Pitching to a publisher Any decent proposal takes effort. Tease out themes.

Highlight unusual angles. As for the synopsis, I didn’t find much online and asked other writers. Put your characters up front, one suggested. X does Y in Z.

aimed for 100 rejections a year. Useful? Or expensive, time-wasting, soul-crumbling?

I prefer to send out my polished pieces to the ‘right place’ – one interested in my kind of work. If it’s a ‘no’, I polish again.

The best story on rejection closes out Maxine Beneba Clarke’s award-winning collection Foreign Soil. A writer amasses her rejections as ‘literary armour’ against a world apparently not ready for her. They were wrong.

Success So if your collection gets the nod – what to say when people claim they never read short stories? Never? All short stories? Isn’t that like saying you don’t like music?

Perhaps you’ll try to persuade them, and say they’re perfect for commuting, the waiting room and so on.

Or perhaps you’ll smile at your new book clutched in their hands, hoping its contents will surprise, illuminate, entertain, provoke, amuse, engage – and they’ll be intrigued by glimpses of your strange and familiar tenants’ worlds – rather than the actual house they share.

Read a range of collections, blurbs, and reviews. Note which stories are singled out.

I rewrote all my stories, old, new, published, unpublished, long, short, and moved them about in the hope they’d pique – and maintain – the interest of a publisher, who’ll have their own opinions. I spackled together a log-line, wrote a long synopsis (one sentence per story), a short (a phrase) – and submitted both.

Rejection Rejection is part of a writer’s job. There are more writing competitions now – and more writers. Fewer journals – and fewer publishers. Kim Liao famously

Emma Ashmere’s short fictions have appeared in The Age, Overland, Review of Australian Fiction and Griffith Review, and been shortlisted for the 2018 NUW/Overland Fair Australia Prize, 2019 Newcastle Short Story Award, and 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Award. Her debut novel The Floating Garden was shortlisted for the 2016 MUBA prize. Dreams They Forgot will be published by Wakefield Press in May.

northerly AUTUMN 2020 | 11

READ

Extract: She I Dare Not Name

by Donna Ward Donna Ward’s new memoir She I Dare Not Name: A Spinster’s Meditations on Life is a compelling memoir about the single life and the courage to live alone in a world made for couples and families.

Winter’s Road For Jamie I went to the woods because I wish to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or life in the Woods, 1854 It is an ice-split of a winter. 1992. A Sunday afternoon in the middle of it. I am in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne. I am with friends. The sun shines obliquely through the windows of the Turquoise Cafe. Clustered around wooden tables, we sit on roughly painted old school chairs. Red, blue, green. My friends and I laugh, drink coffee. I order a cappuccino and an escargot.

Some of us have whisky to keep the cold from our veins.

We meet here on Sundays. We have been meeting here for years. It is so good to be in company. I haven’t spoken since Friday afternoon.

I expect some of us will carry on afterward. We usually do. Go to a movie, a play, a flamenco bar. As we chat, each person says they won’t meet up for the next couple of weeks. School holidays. Even those without children are going away. Up north. To escape the cold. I order a whisky.

In time my friends peel away into the evening. Fondly, they take their leave. We will reconvene in three weeks’ time. Each say they will look forward to it. Each say it is good to have such a group of friends. See you on the flip side, the last friend says as he departs.

I sit with my whisky for a while, deliberately take in the incontrovertible truth of my life. My landscape has changed. Now everything stops during the school holidays. Choir. Dream group. Yoga. Even I pause my

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psychotherapy practice, since most people want the break. I am thirty-eight, a similar age to my friends. We laugh the same, have work that inspires us the same, but I am no longer the same. They have partners, some have children, I have neither. My friends haven’t noticed the change. They are in the river’s flow. Now, Sunday gatherings stop during school holidays. Soon they will stop altogether, when family life takes off in earnest.

I open the door into my bluestone cottage, into solid cold. The paint is frozen smooth on the plaster. My shoe leather is hard, it leaks heat from my socks, from my feet. The carpet almost crackles beneath my shoes. The light switch tinkles like icicles on a wire. I turn on the oil heater, pour another whisky. Warm my blood. I ring Mum. She’s back in Western Australia, where I grew up.

No answer. Probably out with her new partner. Here, in the middle of winter, silence, as ever, has the last word.

I turn on the television, slip into slippers, curl on the satin couch, drape the throw rug over myself and the oil heater to get warm. Everything in my world is in order.

I have had an uninterrupted weekend to make it so.

Two weeks of unplanned solitude stretch before me to the horizon. Everyone I know and love is engaged in a continuing narrative of domesticity, responsibilities and obligations. The foundational paragraphs of the life I, too, set out to get. I watch an American sitcom to kindle my spirit. I weep. That is the last family sitcom I will watch for decades.

The gates have closed. I am beyond the balance of intimacy and solitude and deep, deep in the territory of she I dare not name. I am spinster. I stand in grief and loneliness, the fractured paragraphs of a discontinued narrative. Grief over what was and is now gone, over what I was convinced would come, for me. Wrapped in the isolation of a foreigner, the enormity of my solitude is incomprehensible to others. As far beyond their imagination as it was beyond mine only hours ago. My

READ

words are the same, but my language wholly different.

When I speak of my life, my words are translated as ingratitude for the solitude everyone desires. I am not ungrateful. I am ill equipped and want to talk about it, find a way through it. When I speak of the new landscape of my friendships to others, to my therapist, my friends are labelled inadequate, unfaithful, uncommitted to the friendship. Some say I should get better friends. But my friends are not unfaithful or uncommitted. We love each other. They are simply, and appropriately, otherwise engaged.

If I had chosen this life I would be better prepared, I assume. I am not sure. I have never heard from another who has lived this urban solitude. It would be different if I was a desert anchorite, or a cross-legged sadhu sitting with his trident by the mouth of Mother Ganga. There would be rules and rituals to guide me, a scholarship and a community to hold my thread. But the religious life is not my calling. Nor can I say I am called to urban solitude. But here it is, and here I am, progressing through it without a map or a community of understanding. Walking darkly, one step after the other.

She I Dare Not Name is published by Allen & Unwin.

Above: Donna Ward | photo by Mana Ford.

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FEATURE

From the Reading Chair: What emojis tell us about good dialogue As part of a new series on the nuts and bolts of writing, local editor and writing expert Laurel Cohn asks how the effect of emojis can be translated into a literary setting.

Do you use emojis when you text? I tried for a bit; never quite got the hang of it. But recently I’ve been prompted to consider why a fat, pink heart may say more to us than the word ‘love’ or ‘xx’, and what this tells us about good dialogue.

Emojis have become an accepted way to communicate a thought or emotion succinctly. While they often act as shorthand, they can also enhance and amplify the meaning of the written word. We use emojis because we recognise the power of an image, however basic, to communicate something unsaid. We hanker for more than words. Our desire to communicate other layers of meaning had led to the development of more sophisticated emojis employing animated graphics and sound. We hanker for more than words and a twodimensional image.

It is the same with dialogue on the page. The more I read, the more I realise that the key to good dialogue lies not in what is said between characters, but in the narrative snippets between quoted speech that reveal what is not said. If you think cinematically, these snippets are the camera showing us what the characters look like and how they are positioned in the setting. Body language is a huge part of face-toface communication, and without some sense of the unspoken physical exchange that occurs between characters, dialogue can fall flat.

Simple descriptions of what characters look and sound like when they are speaking or listening are like adding emojis, enhancing the meaning of the words. For example, a character may be sitting, absentmindedly playing with the hem of her skirt as she timidly asks her best friend’s advice; or glaring at the fruit bowl, unwavering in his attention to the brown spot on the 14 | AUTUMN 2020 northerly

apple as he listens to his mother’s loud rebuke. You can picture the options for relevant emojis. Similar descriptive narration about the setting helps the reader to witness the scene and to feel the heat of the stuffy room, or sense the anticipation of a formal dinner setting.

What lifts dialogue to the next level, however, is beyond what the camera shows us; it is the artistry of a good soundtrack. Music plays a key role in screen-based storytelling, adding emotional depth to a scene, prompting and guiding conscious and unconscious responses to what is being played out before us. On the silent page, a similar effect can be achieved by reference to a specific image or detail that resonates beyond what is being described, suggesting a character’s inner world in that moment, or more of their outer world, amplifying the dramatic tension.

Such telling details enrich further the words, the body language and the setting of a dialogue scene. Let me give you some examples.

In this scene from Nick Earls’s The True Story of Butterfish, the narrator’s brother casually mentions something unexpected about the narrator’s ex.

‘But you’d know she’s getting married again.

You would have heard that from her.’

I felt like I was falling, a long way and into something dark. It was hard to breathe.

Married again. He had really said that. ‘No. No, I haven’t heard from her for a while.’ I was looking at the table, at an ant that was crawling across the glass. Even my own voice seemed like it was coming from far away.

‘Oh. She sent out a group email, but I figured she’d talked to you separately...’

FEATURE

The description of the feeling is strong, but that ant, and the narrator’s attention to it, tells us so much more about his emotional state in that moment.

In the opening scene of Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth, Beverley and Fix are hosting a christening party. Well into the party, Fix opens the front door to Cousins, a work colleague he barely knows, who has turned up uninvited: ‘This makes a boy and a girl?’

‘Two girls.’

Cousins shrugged. ‘What can you do?’

‘Not a thing,’ Fix said and closed the door.

Beverly had told him to leave it open so they could get some air, which went to show how much she knew about man’s inhumanity to man. It didn’t matter how many people were in the house. You didn’t leave the goddamn door open.

Fix’s annoyance and discomfort is supercharged by the focus on the door. And his transference of irritation to his wife tells us something about their relationship, and perhaps about accepted gender relations of the time (1960s).

In this scene from Stuart Turton’s The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, the narrator is probing Peter about the reasons he is being blackmailed.

‘You know me, Peter, so you know what it takes for me to ask such a thing,’ I say. ‘I must have all the pieces of this nasty business to hand.’

He considers this, returning to the window with his drink. Not that there’s much to see.

The trees have grown so close to the house the branches are pressed right up against the glass. Judging by Peter’s demeanour, he’d invite them inside now if he could.

‘Charles Cunningham’s parentage isn’t why I’m being blackmailed, ‘he says...

Here the narrator is making the link between the outer and inner worlds, illustrating his own powers of observation.

Paying attention on the page to what is unsaid when characters speak to one another can make a tremendous difference to the effectiveness of a scene featuring dialogue. I have found myself searching for these snippets of enhancing detail when I read, enjoying the insight they provide not only into the characters and the scene in play, but also into the writer and their imaginative capacities.

I could express this delight as a fat, pink heart, but somehow an emoji just doesn’t quite do it.

Laurel Cohn is a developmental book editor passionate about communication and the power of stories in our lives. She has been helping writers prepare their work for publication since the mid-1980s, and is a popular workshop presenter. She has a PhD in literary and cultural studies. laurelcohn.com.au

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INTERVIEW

Notes from the Festival: Jessica White Jessica White’s hybrid memoir, Hearing Maud, began from an innocuous comment in a footnote she came across while researching Australian novelist Rosa Praed for her PhD. White spoke to Katinka Smit at Byron Writers Festival 2019 about deafness, societal silence and the accidental writing of her memoir.

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INTERVIEW

Were you always intending to intertwine your story with that of Rosa Praed’s deaf daughter, Maud?

No. That was a strategic decision because the book wasn’t working.

My PhD was half about Rosa Praed and half about a nineteenth-century botanist. I thought about getting it published but it was academic and inaccessible. I started putting Maud’s story in and it became more like a biography, but it was still boring. I realised there were parallels with my story; I had to rewrite it and put myself in. And that’s when it worked.

What was that like, involuntarily writing a memoir?

Writing about myself, about my childhood, was very easy. The difficulty came in trying to knit the threads together. It had to be about us. I had to write enough of my story to make it engaging but also make sure there were no info dumps. That was quite difficult.

How did you do that?

Intuition. I can tell when it doesn’t sound or doesn’t feel right and I move things around until it feels harmonious. I noticed doing it with Entitlement [White’s 2012 novel] as well. I originally wrote that in third person, then in two women’s voices writing letters to each other and that didn’t work. I realised it was the protagonist’s story and I wrote it in first person. I don’t know where it comes from.

Did Rosa Praed’s novels shed light on Maud? Did they influence your writing about Maud?

No. Her novels were interesting for finding out her attitude towards Maud. She was very troubled by her daughter. Rosa had a really hard life as well, lots of highs and lows.

She felt that Maud was punishment for something she had done wrong

in a previous life. A lot of Rosa’s attitudes towards Aboriginal people were replicated in her attitude toward her daughter. She expected her daughter to act in a particular way, like Aboriginal people were expected to act in a particular way, to assimilate into a dominant culture. When I read Rosa’s novels I realised the patterns were forming, but she was of her time.

I’ve spoken to people who have children with disabilities and they say, ‘Look at the options.

She wanted Maud to have the best possible life. They thought that an institution would do that.’

After having those conversations I realised I had to be more sympathetic towards her because she wouldn’t have known what to do. I think she just wanted the problem to go away, as well, but she never really left Maud. She was always living near her and visiting her but every time she went to the asylum she was very troubled by what had happened. I think if Maud had been born now and she’d had the psychological help that she needed, she would have been okay.

But it was just really bad. They didn’t have those kinds of facilities in the nineteenth century.

Your poem, Almost Hearing parallels deafness with social attitudes and the Stolen Generation - can you talk about these parallels?

It’s a tricky area to navigate. I’m still privileged, but in terms of not being able to speak your own language, being forced to speak this incredibly difficult language, being alienated from your culture because people think this is going to be better for you, there are parallels in that sense.

I’m very sensitive to people who are spoken over the top of, and white people have been doing that to Indigenous people since they turned up. I’m aware of the things

that are not said – the sensitivity to silence comes in, in that sense.

Who is speaking, who is spoken for?

Who’s not being heard?

You’ve written about deafness as ghostliness, a non-existence. Is writing reinserting the self into the world of hearing?

Very much so. Part of myself has been ghosted. People don’t believe in ghosts, they don’t believe in the deaf part of myself. So it is about asserting a presence and it’s quite a nuanced way of operating in the world. When people think of deafness they think of the stereotype of a speech impediment and being able to sign. I can’t sign and my family worked me really hard on my speech. I wrote the book because people don’t believe me.

There are deep associations of sound with comfort, of the human voice being a ‘civilising force’. Is this where historical associations of deafness with ‘animal’ and ‘savageness’ come from?

It’s more the idea that if you can’t speak clearly you must be an imbecile, an association between reason and speech that has a very long history. They thought that deaf people could never be taught to speak until they discovered sign language. Mum and Dad worked hard on my speech because they wanted me to succeed. I don’t begrudge that. It meant I could become a writer.

What do you mean by that?

I’m unusual as a deaf person. For a lot of deaf people, writing, reading and speaking are just hard work, but for me it was salvation. If I hadn’t had those tools I wouldn’t have been able to take that path.

Hearing Maud is published by UWA Publishing.

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FEATURE

Location, location, location: Why Byron Bay is a perfect crime setting To tie in with the publication of her new YA novel The Girl with the Gold Bikini, local author Lisa Walker acts as a guide to some of the key Byron Bay locations in the book.

Setting is important in crime novels.

Where would Sherlock Holmes be without the fog-bound London streets? And wouldn’t Scandi-noir be way too cheerful without those long, cold, snowy nights?

Byron Bay might not be quite so noir, but it is still a fascinating location. In my new young adult comedy/crime novel, the beauty and the weirdness of the Bay become almost another character in the book.

My protagonist, Olivia Grace, is a Gold Coast girl: They could have scrawled ‘here be dragons’ on the map south of Coolangatta as far as I was concerned.

The first time she went to Byron, she thought it was paradise: Byron Bay, I soon discovered, was a place to conjure dreams. The sweep of the bay to the base of the mountains; the dolphins leaping from water so clear it was barely there. For us, it was nirvana.

But nirvana had a dark side and things didn’t turn out so well back then. Now, Olivia is back. A freshly hatched private investigator, she is

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hot on the trail of a yoga guru who’s a bit of a creep.

Unfortunately for Olivia, things only go downhill from here…

Here’s a whistle-stop tour of the mean streets of Byron as trodden by Olivia in The Girl with the Gold Bikini.

Ah, Wategos…

A Byron Bay yoga studio I read recently that Byron has the highest percentage of yoga instructors outside India. Even if that’s not true, it’s believable.

Things heat up for Olivia when she heads out to a fictional yoga studio, Lighthouse Bliss: I park among the bangalow palms and make my way past the flowering lily pond to reception. The usual South American panpipes are playing and lavender wafts from an aromatherapy burner.

Despite this auspicious welcome, Olivia soon discovers that Byron Bay yoga is not for the fainthearted: Ajay’s Bikini Beach Body Boot Camp Speed Yoga is powerful stuff. Each two-hour class covers all the moves other yoga teachers would take two weeks to fit in. He learnt this form of yoga from an Indian guru, who granted him sole worldwide rights.

I guess gurus aren’t what they used to be.

Olivia trails the creepy yoga instructor to a large house with an infinity pool, overlooking Wategos Beach.

As I wind past the cabbage tree palms to Wategos, Abbey’s voice is in my head. ‘How good is this place, Ol? Surf and rainforest. It’s paradise.’

Byron Bay is still paradise. Seems like the whole world thinks so too, though.

Despite the crowds, I still think Wategos is possibly the most beautiful beach in the world. Surfing beneath the lighthouse as the sun sets over the mountains is one of life’s magical moments. Which brings me to…

Surf’s up…

One thing you can almost guarantee about Byron is… crowded surf breaks. Olivia used to surf, but she gave it up after a bad experience.

Now she’s trying to get back into it again.

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I’d forgotten how cutthroat it is out here. One of the men in the lineup is a kind of man-fish thing. His hands are the size of flippers and he gets onto the waves with about two strokes.

The pack takes my measure quickly.

Every time I paddle for a wave someone else comes in from in front or behind or materialises out of nowhere.

Hot tip, Olivia – if you want to avoid the crowds, you need to surf in the dark. Which, in due course, she does. And after a surf, where would you head, but…

The Pass Café For a post-surf snack, this has to be the best spot in town.

A bush turkey roams around underfoot while the magpie cocks its greedy eye at a muffin. In Byron, the rainforest, with all its wildlife, comes right to the beach. Jacq and I claim a table with a view of that show-off, the sea.

Mmm, and after a coffee, it’s time to move on to…

Jonson Street At the risk of sounding like our prime minister, how good is Jonson Street? You could watch the world go by all day and never get bored.

The pavement is teeming with the usual frenzied mix: hippies down from the hills, European backpackers, spiky-haired Japanese surfers and gold-sandalled blondes in white linen beach wear.

And when you’re ready for some entertainment, there’s always…

Byron RSL Several years ago, I did Mandy Nolan’s stand-up comedy course, culminating in a performance at the Byron RSL. The experience was so nerve-wracking, I had to get Olivia to relive it for me…

Sipping a beer, I perch at a table down the back where I can take photos without being noticed. It’s open mike comedy night and she’s just taken the stage. The crowd is a mixture – young hip surfies mingled with your typical middle-aged RSL drinkers.

And of course, a novel set in Byron Bay wouldn’t be complete without a trip to…

The Lighthouse A northerly wind whips at our hair and flattens the surf to whitecaps.

Panting, we look over the cliff edge and see two dolphins, a mother and a calf, below us. I imagine them as the slackers of the dolphin world. ‘I can’t be bothered catching fish. Let’s get takeaways tonight.’ If I was a dolphin, that would be me.

Now that I’ve scoped the town, I can confirm that Byron Bay is the perfect setting for a fictional crime.

Particularly if you’re into that of the yoga and surfing variety.

The Girl with the Gold Bikini is published

by Wakefield Press.

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FEATURE

Lip service: A meeting with Melissa Lucashenko Melissa Lucashenko enjoyed a stellar 2019 on the back of her latest novel, Too Much Lip. Here, local writer Rebecca Ryall reflects on a profound recent meeting with the author.

I meet with Melissa Lucashenko on a spring afternoon in the plaza at Southern Cross University’s (SCU) Lismore campus. It’s late afternoon and the plaza is nearly deserted, which is perfect for me. It’s not our first meeting – I attended a workshop she facilitated for writing students at SCU a few days earlier. And I had glimpsed her at Byron Writers Festival the month before. On that occasion, she had impressed me for the most mundane of reasons. When she took her seat in the audience (of a panel discussion involving women writers of colour) I was a little in awe of the literary legend in front, until, that is, I saw she was wearing tracksuit pants. Mundane, yes, but symbolic, in my view, of someone very down-to-earth and lacking pretence.

This interview is for a student publication, but we also discuss my research interests, which include connection to Country. She recommends the work of Tasmanian Indigenous artist Julie Gough. Examining Julie’s work, I see more clearly what Melissa is doing with her writing. Like Gough, Melissa explores alternative narratives, re-centring the Indigenous experience and giving it back. She tells me that she writes her novels with multiple layers.

‘I aim to write books that any reasonably literate person can read and enjoy; at the same time, I aim to write literary fiction,’ she says. ‘Too Much Lip can be read just as an adventurous yarn; reading it from a literary perspective reveals the subtext and reading as a blackfella reveals a whole other set of subtexts.’

This has been my observation of her work. In an early 20 | AUTUMN 2020 northerly

scene in the book, local Bundjalung elders are called upon to conduct a ceremonial smoking by a young (non-Indigenous) couple, being kept awake by an (apparent) disgruntled former Indigenous custodian.

The obliging Uncles arrive, conduct a suitably solemn and baffling ceremony before departing, chuckling over the gullible whitefellas, insomniac due to the termites slowly consuming the house around them. As a whitefella engaging with Indigenous ontology, I return to this scene regularly, lying wakeful in my own termiteridden house in the sticks.

Melissa is planning her own move to the bush soon, but has much to say besides, about connection to Country being just as important in the built environment as the ‘wild’.

‘Everything has a Dreaming and the built environment tells its own story, of who made it, who uses it,’ she tells me. I am reminded that the paving stones under my feet are part of the landscape that is Country, as much a historical text as a Reynolds.

Melissa was born and raised in Logan, south of Brisbane, and it is to Brisbane she returns for her current work. She expects she will spend the next three years or more of her life immersed in the chaotic world of colonial Brisbane. This is her PhD thesis, and the scholarship she was awarded to complete it will allow her to fully focus on the work, as well as plan her upcoming move back to Bundjalung Country in northern NSW. Her first foray into fiction was driven by boredom with her public policy thesis, but also the lack of Indigenous

FEATURE

representation in literature.

‘There were hardly any Indigenous writers getting published back then. There was a big, gaping void.

I was twenty-five and full of piss and vinegar and I thought the world needed to hear what I had to say.’

She laughs self-deprecatingly but was clearly right.

Melissa is quoted as saying that she ‘wanted to write about the grassroots mob who are constantly living on the edge of things: the law, racist violence, various kinds of family implosions.’ With Too Much Lip, she has done so, with characters so authentically drawn that readers can find themselves reflected there. It is storytelling that builds empathy, so perhaps this book can be seen as an extension of Melissa’s other great passion – social justice organisation Sisters Inside.

Alongside Deb Kilroy (now an OAM bearer, but then a recently released prisoner), Melissa was one of the co-founders of Sisters Inside (in 1992). The organisation works alongside girls and women, supporting and advocating on their behalf within governments and the legal system, to achieve fairer outcomes for some of the most marginalised individuals in society. In telling stories which directly address the lived experience of Indigenous people in contemporary Australia, Melissa affords the non-Indigenous reader a greater level of understanding, whilst empowering her mob by giving them and their stories mainstream representation.

The Indigenous characters Melissa writes are strong and proud. She tells me that she made a conscious decision early on that all her Indigenous characters had to have four things.

‘Humour, beauty, power and land. And since Mullumbimby I have added another must-have to the list – love.’

Melissa maintains that the people and situations she writes are not based on real life, rather they are imagined, possessing elements from multiple people in her life. The real beauty of her characters is their complexity, their flaws. The relationships and interactions explored in Melissa’s novels are notable for their authenticity – you can imagine yourself having a conversation like that, or falling for a guy like that, or feeling that way. I live in the hills on Bundjalung Country. Versions of the stories Melissa sets in these hills really happen in these hills; the character portraits she paints could really exist here.

The real gift of Melissa’s writing is that her language is the accessibility of her language. She wants people to read her novels and connect with the stories so she writes in a universal way, with the odd Goori language word thrown in. Doing so means she can connect with a diverse audience – not just the whitefella academics.

And this, ultimately, is the reason her books are so highly acclaimed.

Too Much Lip is published by University of Queensland Press.

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BOOK REVIEW

Beneath the canopy City of Trees: Essays on Life, Death and the Need for a Forest

By Sophie Cunningham Review by Jenny Bird

A tree is never just a tree. It speaks of the history of the place where it has grown or been planted: the hills that were dynamited, the creeks that were concreted, the water that has been drained to give it a place to root. Trees speak of the displacement of first nations. Of the endless wanderlust of governments (small and large) to control places and the ways in which trees should or should not grow, the ways in which humans should or should not live.

— City of Trees A tree is never just a tree A lot can happen in the space of a year. During the twelve months since Sophie Cunningham’s City of Trees: Essays on Life, Death and the Need for a Forest was launched by Text Publishing, millions of hectares of forests burned in South America, California and Australia, incinerating billions of animals and emitting millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The climate crisis rushed in from a hypothetical future and stamped itself on this very real present.

I read City of Trees through this last summer of fires across Australia. At times I found it unbearable and had to put it down. Sentences that I knew Cunningham had written before the fires broke my heart: ‘The production of your average physical book takes months, which is plenty of time for an entire ecosystem to be destroyed.’

Or this: ‘less than ten percent of Australia’s presettlement forests remain.’ Text’s publicity notes from

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April 2019 state that the book forms ‘part of a timely – and urgent – conversation on Australia’s relationship with its natural environment.’ Little did they know that events that lay just ahead would amplify the urgency to a howl.

Yet I also found this collection of deeply considered love letters to trees, nature and our damaged planet fortifying and soothing. Cunningham’s writing invites a warmth and intimacy with her readers, like having a long lunch with a well-informed friend where the conversation meanders and ranges wide. By threading memoir through the collection, we meet Sophie, her wife, her two fathers and her walking friends. She shares her writing process, her travels, and her love for walking and for trees. I developed an affection for Sophie Cunningham and worried terribly about her during the summer of fires.

Cunningham knows and loves trees not just as botanical species, but in their relationship to humans.

Like William Blake, Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau before her, she is alert to the wisdom of trees.

She is not afraid to assert that trees ‘are, in a way, sentient,’ and that anthropomorphising trees is useful in progressing their cause.

Her essays are like canopies in a forest – light, lacy, spacious, separate but connecting, overlapping. She is interested in both the patterns and randomness of things. In the hands of a less assured writer, a discursive style like Cunningham’s risks losing readers in a labyrinth of facts and stories. She asks her readers to trust her divergences, to stay with her, as she makes

BOOK REVIEW

“Her essays are like canopies in a forest – light, lacy, spacious, separate but connecting, overlapping.”

broad points out of rigorously researched threads of disparate things.

Clues to Cunningham’s determination to avoid linearity in her essays can be found in her reflections on walking and writing. Cunningham is a committed walker and employs walking as a device to explore some topics.

She quotes Rebecca Solnit in Wanderlust: A History of Walking: ‘As a literary structure, the recounted walk encourages digression and association.’ Near the end of the book, Cunningham reflects on the notion of narrative fallacy, the tendency to try to neaten things with hindsight, or to create a logical discourse through the inclusion of incidental details that are not, in fact, related … I do not want to give in to the siren song of a resolved narrative.

One that makes sense of what humans are doing to this planet…

Confronted with the unavoidable truth of the summer of fires, I found myself drawn to the heading of one of Cunningham’s essays: ‘Staying with the Trouble’.

I followed up on the reference to American feminist theorist Donna Haraway, who published a book with that title in 2016. Haraway outlines a new ethics for ‘living and dying together on a damaged earth’ as a means towards building liveable futures. Staying with the trouble feels like a mindset, a scaffold, that I can sign up to, and I’m grateful to Cunningham for introducing it.

kind of way. I am inquisitive, for example, about the very different fates of two ancient species of tree endangered by the bushfires in New South Wales. Why did a Wollemi pine forest hidden deep in a gully in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, deserve a secret, military-style rescue operation carried out by expert fire fighters, whilst the last 100 or so ancient Gondwanaera nightcap oaks in the Nightcap National Park in the north of the state attract no rescue effort at all and have been left devasted by fire? Does history privilege trees unevenly in the same way that it does humans?

As politicians and governments begin to formulate their response to the Australian fires, I realise that both the burned and the remaining untouched forests are vulnerable to more clearing, more logging, as if getting rid of trees is the answer to getting rid of fires and avoiding the root cause of the climate crisis. Again, I am drawn to the heading of one of Cunningham’s essays: ‘I Don’t Blame the Trees’. Cunningham is in America and interviews a man called Peter who lost his mother in the 1991 Oakland, California firestorm that claimed twenty-five lives. He says, ‘I want to make it clear that I don’t blame the trees.’

Stay with the trouble.

Don’t blame the trees.

Text Publishing / 224pp / $19.99

Since reading City of Trees, I am all ears and eyes to tree stories in the press, but in a new Cunningham

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READ

A showcase of SCU student work, compiled by Dr Emma Doolan

Requiem Samantha Cambray

When we understood that overpopulation was going to end us, death became more revered.

We moved from investing billions into medicines and keeping elderly folk comfortable and sedated. We looked to the joyous funerals of the Balinese; the fires of Varanasi. Death returned to a focal point of life.

Yesterday, my social standing lifted: such was my brother’s sacrifice. Conscripted into farm work after the collapse of industrial agriculture, he was bitten by a brown snake whilst building irrigation channels. First aid is taboo now – he died in that field in a valley once lush with rainforest.

I slept poorly overnight. Did the venom in his veins make his last minutes transcendent? Did he witness his spirit moving from the earth? Or did he only writhe with pain and fear and the heat of summer?

how to talk again, talk that spans a whole afternoon. If there is an interment, everyone on the field takes their knee while family sing their loved ones into the handdug earth.

My brother’s body lays on a bamboo stretcher close by me, all but his face covered in flowers, a few coins and the choicest vegetables. I crave their taste.

His co-workers keep digging, their conscripted bodies stronger.

Shame in my incomplete digging festers, until it reforms as the urge to grieve like in my parents’ day: in private, breath-depriving sobs bearing the reality of loss. The bond with my brother, as it stood, is forever arrested. And more threateningly: I too am mortal.

***

Our family line stops with me. They tested me when I started menstruating. My genes weren’t strong enough to avoid a governmentally prescribed hysterectomy.

Few women have the genes.

I drop the shovel beside my collapsing body. My skin has stopped sweating, instead, the soft flesh of my kidneys feel arid and as tough as the soil.

I’ve heard rumours of whole communities fled to the bush, where their elderly live to old age, where they give birth to as many children as they conceive.

The funeral pyres of winter are too much a risk of wildfire, so all other deaths are buried. When the old town cemetery filled, the sports fields were opened for burials.

I don’t know if the rumours are true.

Sweaty men play cricket in their greys next to families picnicking with their dead. Children run between colourful graves, whilst as a community we remember

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Samantha Cambray is a mother of four children and lives in the lush Thora Valley of northern New South Wales. She is a Creative Writing student at Southern Cross University and is currently exploring potential cultural and sociological shifts brought about by climate change in her work, which spans both fiction and non-fiction.

BOOK REVIEW

A South Australian tale Peace

By Garry Disher Review by Colleen O’Brien

I have to confess up front – I’m a Garry Disher fan.

Especially his Peninsula Crime and Bitter Wash Road series.

Book two of the Bitter Wash Road series is Peace and follows Bitter Wash Road (aka Hell to Pay). The main protagonist is Constable Paul Hirschhausen – nicknamed Hirsch – who runs a one-man police station in a small town south of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia.

At first, I wasn’t sure I liked this novel, but I persevered and am so pleased I did. Peace is like one of those super-realistic photographic paintings you come across in art galleries. At first it looks simple, maybe even boring, but when you stand closer you finally get it as you perceive the incredible detail and small strokes taken to create the image. There are no large brush strokes in Peace – it is all in the detail and the slow build towards the realisation that there is a cohesive picture being portrayed.

Constable Hirschhausen is dogged, even a little dull.

But his doggedness pays off both in the plot and in the depiction of his character. Although Peace deals with a number of crimes committed by myriad people, I feel its main focus was on police culture. Hirsch navigates this culture expertly and quietly. And that is where I realised he isn’t dull so much as quiet and relentless – and moral. Morality plays a large role in Peace – the morality, or lack thereof, of the townspeople, police and Hirsch.

Murder is the major crime in Peace and is woven into the story with the crimes of cruelty to animals, drug dealing, domestic violence, police corruption and theft.

All of these converge and form a pattern – and they all have a local man sitting and watching. The spider at the centre of the web.

Hirsch spends hours travelling the dusty back roads of his district and turning up to answer questions from superior officers in Adelaide. Questions that show his commanding officers don’t understand the role of a country cop include, ‘How to explain that a country copper is always on duty? That an eight-hour shift is meaningless in the bush?’ Unlike city detectives, he has to not only carry out day-to-day policing, but investigate a variety of crimes from the trivial to the serious.

An example of Disher’s style comes when Hirsch finds a driver in a crashed vehicle. ‘You’d think: surgeon on his day off; film producer scouting locations. You’d also think he’d been shot. A large exit wound behind his left ear was seeping blood.’ He doesn’t have a racy style in Peace and Bitter Wash Road, unlike his Wyatt series, but he has great moments of cynicism and humour. He understands his characters and depicts them in detail through their actions and interactions. Also, unlike Jane Harper, Disher doesn’t write the countryside as a character, but portrays it as an unrelenting canvas.

Peace is a slow burn, but well worth the read.

Text Publishing / 336pp / $29.99

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WORKSHOPS

CRITICAL READING FOR WRITERS WITH LAUREL COHN SATURDAY 14 MARCH 10.00AM — 4.00PM Byron Writers Festival Office 2/58 Centennial Ct, Byron Bay $110* / $120 All good writers are readers.

They read extensively within their own genre, as well as beyond it.

We all learn through a process of imitation, and influence plays a significant role in how we fashion ourselves and our creative outputs.

Reading the work of others is a way of understanding the craft and helps you develop a range of technical skills and aesthetic ideas that will support the expression of your own voice. The key is to read critically, to read like a writer.

This workshop is designed to sharpen your critical reading abilities. In the workshop we will read a range of excerpts. Specific exercises will focus on different story elements that are relevant to both fiction and narrative non-fiction writers, such as voice, backstory, openings, chapter beginnings and endings, point of view, setting and description.

IMPROV’ YOUR WRITING WITH HILTON KOPPE SATURDAY 28 MARCH 10.00AM — 4.00PM

2020: THE YEAR OF THE NOVEL WITH SARAH ARMSTRONG STARTS WEDNESDAY 20 MAY FOR 12 EVENINGS

Byron Writers Festival Office

5.30PM — 8.30PM

2/58 Centennial Ct, Byron Bay

Byron Writers Festival Office

$90* / $100 Finding writing too solitary or serious? Feeling stuck? Looking to be inspired? Then this workshop could be the one for you. A range of fun short writing exercises in a variety of styles for writers of all levels will leave participants feeling rejuvenated, refreshed and ready to write.

Hilton’s writing can be found in Grieve, The Examined Life, Pulse, Chrysalis, The Universal Doctor and More Voices. His play, Enduring Witness, has been performed in the USA and Australia. A film version of the play is used in medical education to facilitate end-of-life discussions.

2/58 Centennial Ct, Byron Bay $950* / $1050 Join author Sarah Armstrong for three terms of writing classes spread over the year. The small group will meet once a week for four-week blocks, and a total of 36 face-to-face hours, when Sarah will give you practical guidance, tools and tips. The first term will explore how to come up with ideas, planning, how to build a first draft.

The second term will drill down into narrative tension, character development, how character drives plot, and will offer written feedback. Third term is all about how to tackle rewriting and editing: beginnings and endings, structure and themes, and a discussion about where to go from here.

Sarah Armstrong has written three adult novels, including Salt Rain which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award.

For workshop details and to register visit byronwritersfestival.com/whats-on 26 | AUTUMN 2020 northerly

*Member/Student price

COMPETITIONS

Competitions

WB YEATS POETRY PRIZE

QUESTIONS WRITING PRIZE

There is a fifty-line limit for the 2019 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 31 March. There is a fee of $10 for the first entry and $4 for further entries. Full details are available at wbyeatspoetryprize.com

The 2020 Questions Writing Prize aims to recognise and reward talented young writers aged between eighteen and thirty. Submissions should be between 1,500 and 2,000 words and can be fiction or non-fiction on any topic. Prize money of $2,000 will be awarded to one winner or shared among several winners, while the winner(s) will also have their work published. Entry is free. Deadline for entries is 1 May, for further information visit questions.com.au/writing-prize/ index.php

2020 POETICA CHRISTI PRESS POETRY COMPETITION This poetry competition invites poetry entries of up to 50 lines, according to the theme of ‘Joy in the Morning’. Open to Australian residents aged 16 and older, and there is an entry fee of $7, or three for $20. Prize money for first place is $300, and 25 poems will be published as part of an anthology. Deadline for entries is April 30. For more information visit poeticachristi.org.au

BEST OF TIMES SHORT STORY COMPETITION TThe Best of Times Short Story Competition is held twice a year, with entries for the 2019 autumn competition due by 30 April. Humorous short stories are invited on any theme with a wordcount of up to 2,500. Prize money is $300 or $400 depending on number of entries, with second place taking $100.

Entry is $10 per story.

For further information including submission requirements visit bestoftimes.com.au

THE MOTH INTERNATIONAL SHORT STORY PRIZE The Moth prize is open to anyone aged sixteen and over. There is an open theme, with first place taking out €3,000. Word limit is 5,000 and entry fee is €15 per story. This year’s judge is the author Mark Haddon. This Ireland-based competition closes for entries on 30 June. For full details visit themothmagazine.com

ADELAIDE PLAINS POETS INC. POETRY COMPETITION This competition invites entries of poems to the theme of ‘Vision’ and features an open class (ages eighteen and over) as well as classes for primary school and secondary school students.

Poems should be no longer than sixty lines, while there is an entry fee of $10 for the first poem entered and $5 for those entered thereafter. Entries close on 26 June. Total prize money available comes to $700. For full details go to carolyn-poeticpause.blogspot.com.au

KYD UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT AWARD Organised by the journal Kill Your Darlings, this award will assist an earlycareer author in the development of an unpublished manuscript. The award is open to writers of fiction and nonfiction. The winner will receive $4,000, while all shortlisted entrants will receive a one-week fellowship at Varuna, The Writers House in the Blue Mountains.

Submissions open on April 27and close on 3 July. For further details visit killyourdarlings.com.au/awards/

UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA VICECHANCELLOR’S INTERNATIONAL POETRY PRIZE This prestigious international poetry competition offers a first prize of $15,000, with the runner-up receiving $5,000.

Poems should be no longer than fifty lines and 1,000 words in total. There is an entry fee of $25 per poem, while entries close on 30 June. For full details regarding entry conditions go to canberra.edu.au/about-uc/ competitions-and-awards/ vcpoetryprize

FUTURE LEADERS WRITING PRIZE The Future Leaders Writing Prize is designed to recognise and reward talented young writers and to encourage expressive and creative writing. Year 11 and 12 students in Australian secondary schools are invited to submit a piece of writing of between 800 and 1,000 words. The writing can be fiction or non-fiction and on any topic. The winner will receive $1,000, and when there is more than one winner the prize money will be shared. Winners will also have their work published. Entry is free, with the deadline for entries 31 May. For full details go to futureleaders.com.au/ awards/index.ph

The VALERIE PARV AWARD The Valerie Parv Award is open to aspiring or emerging writers of romance.

Entries should be the first 10,000 words of a manuscript alongside a 1,000-word synopsis. A maximum of two entries are allowed per person. First place wins a one-year mentorship with Valerie Parv herself, while entry is $44 for members of Romance Writers Australia and $110 for non-members. The competition opens on 6 April and closes on 26 April. For further details visit romanceaustralia.com/contestsoverview/valerie-parv-award/

northerly AUTUMN 2020 | 27

Writers Groups

Alstonville Plateau Writers Group

Dorrigo Writers Group

Ballina/Byron U3A Creative Writing

Gold Coast Writers Association

Meets second Friday of each month, 10am - 12pm. All genres welcome, contact Kerry on (02) 6628 5662 or email alstonvilleplateauwriters@outlook.com Meets every second Wednesday at 12pm to 2pm, Ballina RSL. Contact Mandy Waring on 0427 327 381 or malawa@bigpond.com

Byron Bay Memoir and Fiction Writing Group Meets monthly at Sunrise Beach, Byron Bay. Contact Diana on 0420 282 938 0420282938/6685 5387 or diana.burstall@gmail.com

Byron Writers

Every Tuesday 10am to 12pm, Byron Bay Library.

Contact the library on (02) 6685 8540.

Coffs Harbour Writers Group

Meets every second Wednesday from 10am-2pm. Contact Iris on (02) 6657 5274 or email an_lomall@bigpond.com or contact Carol Deane on (02) 6657 4005 Meets third Saturday of each month, 11.45am for 12.00pm start, at Fradgley Hall, Burleigh Heads Library. Contact 0403021176 or email gcwa.executivesecretary@gmail.com. www.goldcoastwriters.org

Kyogle Writers

Meets first Tuesday of each month, 10:30am at Kyogle Bowling Club. Contact Brian on (02) 6624 2636 or email briancostin129@hotmail.com

Nambucca Valley Writers Group

Meets fourth Saturday of each month, 1:30pm, Nambucca.

Contact (02) 6568 9648 or nambuccawriters@gmail.com

Meets 1st Friday of the month 10.30am to 12.30pm. Contact Rosalie Skinner on 0437 221 619 or email rosalieiswriting@gmail.com www.coffsharbourwriters.com

Taree Scribblers

Cru3a River Poets

Tweed Poets and Writers

Meets every Thursday at 10:30am, venue varies, mainly in Yamba. Contact Pauline on (02) 6645 8715 or email kitesway@westnet.com.au

28 | AUTUMN 2020 northerly

Meets second Wednesday of the month, 10am-12:30pm, Taree Library. Contact Bob Winston on (02) 6553 2829 or email rrw1939@hotmail.com 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 (07) 5524 8035.

BYRON WRITERS FESTIVAL 7 — 9 August

EXTRA EARLY BIRD ON SALE 1 — 7 APRIL

Book early and save on 3-Day Festival Passes byronwritersfestival.com/festival

Advertise with us!

SUPPORT NORTHERLY northerly is the official magazine of Byron Writers Festival.

Published quarterly in March, June, September and December, it is widely distributed to members, community organisations, libraries, universities, schools, festivals, publishers and bookshops throughout the Northern Rivers and beyond.

Designed to be picked up, put down, passed around, dog-eared and scribbled on, northerly reaches a highly engaged readership of discerning arts enthusiasts.

Deals and discounts available. To discuss your advertising needs, contact us on (02) 6685 5115 or email northerlyeditor@gmail.com

Gabbie Stroud, Dub Leffler, Kayte Nunn, Nevo Zisin and MC Zacharey Jane

Monday 30 March - Friday 3 April 2020 TOURING BELLINGEN, HARWOOD, EVANS HEAD, BONALBO, BYRON BAY

All events are free to the public.

For details head to byronwritersfestival.com/wotr SUPPPORTED BY