Northerly January 2015

Inside:

Elizabeth Gilbert • Faber Writing Academy • workshops & events

in this issue ...

02

Noticeboard

03

A Word From the Director

04 Upcoming events 05

06

08

The Faber Writing Academy

LOCATION Level 1 28 Jonson Street, Byron Bay Annelie Knight POSTAL ADDRESS Arkie’s Pilgrimage to the Next Big Thing PO Box 1846 Byron Bay NSW 2481 PHONE 02 6685 5115 FAX 02 6685 5166 Lisa Walker EMAIL info@nrwc.org.au Short Story Slam winners WEB www.nrwc.org.au

Jan Mulcahy & Jane Abercrombie

09

Unleash your creativity

Dylan Arnot 10

northerly is the bi-monthly magazine of the Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre. The Writers’ Centre is a resource and information base for writers and readers in the Northern Rivers region. We offer a year-round program of readings, workshops and writer visits as well as the annual production of the Byron Bay Writers Festival.

The Centre is a non-profit, incorporated organisation receiving its core funding from Arts NSW.

Summer reading

The Anchoress Dirty Chick

Mateship 13

Community events

14

Stage & Screen

15

North Coast Koalas

Jesse Blackadder 16

Kid’s Page

Tristan Bancks

17

From the reading chair

Hayley Katzen

18

SCU Page

19

Book review & member’s news

Dusk Dundler 20

Workshop, Opportunities & Competitions

24

Writers’ Groups and Member Discounts

NRWC COMMITTEE CHAIRPERSON Chris Hanley VICE CHAIRPERSON Lynda Dean SECRETARY Russell Eldridge TREASURER Cheryl Bourne MEMBERS Jesse Blackadder, Marele Day, Lynda Hawryluk, Anneli Knight, Adam van Kempen, Teresa Walters 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 CONTACT EMAIL: northerly@nrwc.org.au PRINTING: Quality Plus Printers Ballina MAIL OUT DATES: Magazines are sent in JANUARY, MARCH, MAY, JULY, SEPTEMBER and NOVEMBER 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 northerly@nrwc.org.au.

The Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre 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.

Cover artwork: - NRWC Christmas party photos courtesy of Greg Saunders northerly magazine | january - february 2015- 3

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The NRWC is currently looking for three talented people to join our small team.

• a Partnership Manager This role requires professional sponsorship, fundraising and philanthropy skills, to lead and deliver a fundraising strategy across all NRWC activities including the Byron Bay Writers Festival. This is a permanent part-time position • a Communications Manager to manage and co-ordinate all publicity, marketing and social media activity on a contract basis for Byron Bay Writers Festival • an Editor for northerly, the bi-monthly magazine for the Writers’ Centre, with responsibility for the delivery of the magazine in its entirety, inclusive of commissioning, editing, design and layout.

For further details please see our website or email info@nrwc.org.au

4 - northerly magazine | january - february 2015

S

o how many books have you read over

Christmas-New Year? It’s prime reading time because of the do-nothing days and the fact you’ve got that extra bit of Christmas belly to prop your book on.

I wonder if most people reach for the lowconcentration reads at this time, the pages sunyellowed and seaspray swollen. Like my friend who was heading off for three weeks on a Barrier Reef island. “What are you taking to read?” I asked.

you always mean to buy or borrow, or which glare at you unopened from the bottom shelf of your bookcase?

Either way, it’s a grand time for reading. Australian publishing seems to be on a roll at the moment, so there’s plenty to choose from.

Welcome to the first edition of northerly for 2015, and I can tell you we’re already salivating at the names expressing interest for the Byron Bay Writers Festival in August.

“About 2,000 pages,” he said.

Or are you someone who uses the summer break to catch up on those good-intentions books, the ones

Russell Eldridge NRWC Committee

A word (well several) from the Director

Dear members,

Isn’t this the loveliest time of year? Long leisurely summer days filled with ocean swims, falling asleep in the afternoon sun with a book open on your lap and in our case long drives to Sydney and back with plenty of reading time.

We spent two weeks over Christmas and new year in my family home in Sydney – the day we arrived a pair of King Parrots in the Christmas colours of red and green landed in the tree by the front gate as I opened it. Their welcome took my breath away. They eyed me curiously and I stood there for five minutes watching them devour the berries from the crabapple tree before calling my son and his dad back to observe them too. Later we were delighted to discover them in residence up the road in a cypress tree, outside the childhood home of family friends.

In our evening strolls around the streets that I roamed as a child, I spent a lot of time contemplating the meaning of ‘home’ and the sense it evokes. Having been a bit of a gypsy in adulthood, my parents’ home holds a special place for me, as do the streets of the small riverside suburb where they have spent the past 40 years. I reflected on the fact that for me, books provide a sense of home. Wherever I live, amongst a pile of friends in the shape of books, I always place two of my favourites on my bedside table and in doing so a

sense of home is evoked wherever we are living. My constant companions are a translation of the Tao Te Ching and small collection of Haiku given to me by my mother with her familiar script on the inside – I just have to hold it and I feel connected to ‘home’. I wonder which books you keep by your bedside. Write in and tell us if you feel like sharing – we’d love to know.

I was speaking with our treasured committee member Marele Day recently and she told me that years ago she and her sister encouraged their mother to note down stories from throughout her life, which Marele’s sister then compiled into a book along with family photos.

Later, when their mother was in a nursing home the book had the effect of completing calming her – connecting her back to her own stories. Isn’t that the most wonderful idea – I think we should all do it as a way of preserving our own stories and providing comfort at the end of the lives of the people we love. Another old friend of mine did something similar for his mother, only it was after Alzeimhers and Parkinsons had taken hold. He used to write a story a week of a childhood memory and his father would read them out to her and it had the same effect of calming her.

What a beautiful and simple way to honour and celebrate those we love as they near the end of their lives.

As you are probably aware, we are very excited that literary friends and stellar authors Elizabeth Gilbert and

Rayya Elias will head to Byron after their appearance at the 2015 Perth Writers Festival for an event at Byron Theatre on Wednesday 25 February 2015.

Please join us – we’d love to see you there. And down the track, on 30 April, extraordinary story teller and adventurer Tim Cope will head to Lennox Head for a literary dinner presented in conjunction with our friends at Lennox Arts Board.

Cope will share stories of his journey through the land of nomads following in the footsteps of Genghis Khan. He recently spoke to a full house at the Royal Geographical Society in London – hundreds had to be turned away, so keep an eye out for details of his event.

All of us at NRWC are looking forward to sharing another year of stimulating and entertaining conversations with you about books, writing, reading and big ideas.

Edwina Johnson

northerly magazine | january - february 2015- 5

Upcoming Events SUPERCHARGED FOOD WITH LEE HOLMES ‘In Conversation’ with Lee Holmes author of Eat Clean, Green and Vegetarian and award-winning food writer Belinda Jeffery.

Author Lee Holmes discovered supercharged foods after she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease in 2006.

Eager to find a drug-free solution, she became a keen food and health researcher and developed a diet regime that led to her full recovery.

Lee holds an Advanced Certificate in nutrition and is a certified holistic health coach, yoga teacher, whole foods chef and author of Supercharged Foods and Supercharged Fodds: Eat Yourself Beautiful, Lee is a regular columnist for WellBeing magazine and a writer for Miranda Kerr’s Kora Organics blog.

She is also the author of the popular website www.superchargedfood.com When: Thursday 12 February, 5.30pm Where: NRWC Office, Level 1, 28 Jonson St, Byron Bay This is a free event please reserve your place at www.nrwc.org.au (limited to 30 places) Light refreshments will be served

ELIZABETH GILBERT AND RAYYA ELIAS We are delighted to let you know, that literary friends and stellar authors Elizabeth Gilbert and Rayya Elias will head to Byron after their appearance at the 2015 Perth Writers Festival for an event at Byron Theatre on Wednesday 25 February 2015. Elias, who has been described as a lesbian hair-cutting refugee punk, was a smash hit at the 2014 Ubud Writers Festival leaving audiences clamouring ... In Byron she will sing for us and she and Gilbert will discuss their latest books, the writing process and of course, creativity.

Gilbert’s most recent novel – The Signature of All Things – is a combination of stunning writing and fantastic story-telling.

A great holiday read if you haven’t already had the chance to enjoy it. Mark your diaries or buy your tickets on-line. This event is on it’s way to selling out.

When: Wednesday 25 February, 6.00pm Where: Byron Theatre, 69 Jonson St, Byron Bay Cost: $35 general admission, book www.nrwc.org.au

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by Anneli Knight

H

ave you always wanted to write that novel that’s been swirling around in your head?

Do you know why it is you want to write this specific novel? What is driving you to tell this story? And what, importantly, is holding you back?

These were the questions that we were asked of us – the participants of Faber Writing Academy’s Start Your Novel in a Week – in the opening segment of the week-long program, held in Sydney at publisher Allen & Unwin’s head office.

Our never-afraid-to-ask-a-hardquestion tutor, mentor and guide through this week was novelist, essayist and script writer Kathryn Heyman, whose five novels have received wide acclaim, and whose strengths as a writing mentor have been praised by the likes of Mark Haddon, who said, ‘The structure of Curious [Incident of the Dog in the Night Time] owes a great deal to Kathryn Heyman, with whom I was teaching a course some years ago. She was talking to the students about structure… speeding a story on… as she spoke, the heavens opened, angels sang... ’ So as I chewed my pen under my own response to such a deceptively difficult question as why my second novel was going to tell this story, I trusted that Kathryn had a good reason for launching off our week together right there.

Apart from this actually being quite an obvious question for a writer to be able to answer (given one is about to commit the next few years to this particular story), there was another more enlightening reason for this to be our starting point. It led us, quite naturally, into the mind and world of our story’s protagonist.

Your protagonist’s desire is what drives a story, Kathryn reminded us.

And, like all things when it comes to writing fiction, this plays out on different levels: material, emotional, and even unconscious. Sure, your character might want something. But is it tangible? Can your reader easily grasp this thing that your protagonist desires? If not, how can you translate this desire into something the reader will not only understand, but also attach to. For example, in Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, the thing doctor’s wife Emma Bovary desired was to be special, to live a remarkable life, and the way Flaubert translated this into a tangible desire was to show us that she wanted to move to Paris.

Kathryn’s style of teaching is to constantly drill down to fine details to help reveal to you, so you can reveal to your reader, what it is about your story and your characters that is unique. And on the first day of the program we continued to contemplate this by bringing the focus back to our own reality and experience. For example: what does your character think about his or her name? We discussed in small groups each of us telling the story

of the relationship we have with our own name and how this underlies our sense of identity. This can reveal much about a person. What is your own story – stop and think about it now – that you have about your relationship to your name? There’s a lot you can learn about someone as they answer this question. Do you know the story of your character and his or her name? The writing exercise uncovered a snippet from my story’s protagonist, Drew, that I am certain will end up in the novel.

These are just a couple of examples of the level of insight Kathryn encouraged us to discover within our stories. During the week we spent the mornings on this type of active theory dotted with short writing exercises – with topics for each day being theme, character, place and setting, structure and re-writing and redrafting – and the afternoons were a time for us to work independently in the room putting words on the page to get our story underway.

It was a week that raised more questions than it answered, in a way that can only lead to improvement, and it had all of our minds spinning in the worlds of our story and on the techniques of our craft.

The Faber Writing Academy offers a variety of courses, from singleday to year-long programs. I highly recommend you check them out: www.faberwritingacademy.com.au

northerly magazine | january - february 2015- 7

Book launch: Arkie’s Pilgrimage to the Next Big Thing An extract from Lisa Walker’s delightfully funny and inspiring novel Chapter One It has been precisely a year since Adam left me.

On the streets, New Year’s Eve partying is in force, but here on the station, all is quiet. Byron Bay has turned out to be not at all what I needed. Despite determined efforts to be cheerful, to smile at strangers, to exercise and swim, even to have a Reiki treatment, I have slid further and further over the line.

My feet are placed squarely on the white mark beyond which you may not pass. Two steps and I will be over the edge.

Why a train? Why not pills, drowning or a blade? Perhaps I was thinking of Anna Karenina – the snow, the rushing wheels, the final jump. I always have been fond of trains.

How did I come to this point? Perhaps it is as simple as a loss of pleasure.

That’s how it seems. The world feels tuned to black and white. This black and white world has been mine for a year now. It no longer seems likely that it will change.

A Dali print used to hang in the bathroom which Adam and I shared. Every morning and evening, the drooping clocks mesmerised me as I brushed my teeth. They hung off tree branches and walls like melting cheese on a hot summer day. If time was really as soft as a camembert cheese, would I bend it back and do things differently now?

A raindrop lands heavily on my head and a clay-like smell drifts towards my nostrils. I check the battered timetable I have plucked from the drawer in my motel room. The train from Sydney arrives at 21.20. I do the figures again. Fifteen more minutes to wait. I tap my feet on the concrete, watch spots of rain decorate the rails, try to focus my mind, so I will be ready.

‘Excuse me.’

The voice is an unwelcome distraction. I thought I was alone.

‘Would you like play bingo?’

I turn.

The girl is a strange figure in this setting – neatly cut hair, glasses, a shortsleeved collared shirt tucked into too-high jeans. A briefcase hangs from one hand. Most of the Japanese I’ve seen in Byron are hip. They have jagged-cut bleached hair and low-slung shorts. This girl shares one thing with them – a surfboard in a silver cover is slung over her shoulder.

She doesn’t look like a surfer.

Bingo. I could almost laugh. Do I want to spend the last moments of my life playing bingo? With a girl who has no dress sense? Let me just think about that. Hm, no. I picture the irony. Did you hear? She was playing bingo.

Before she jumped. Sad. She used to really be someone.

‘No thank you.’

The girl bows. ‘Sorry.’ She turns to go.

I feel bad. She seems lonely. She wants to play bingo. I don’t want to leave this life feeling selfish. Pretentious and delusional maybe, but not selfish.

‘Wait.’

She swivels back, her eyes apologetic behind her glasses.

‘How do you play bingo with two people?’

She smiles. ‘I show you.’ She beckons with her hand towards the rear of the platform.

I’ll be back, I tell the white line. Don’t go anywhere.

We sit down on the bench, one at each end so there is room between us.

Pulling a small box out of her briefcase she gives me a card with numbers marked on it.

‘We must be quick,’ she says.

‘Because the train is coming?’

8 - northerly magazine | january - february 2015

She shakes her head, her silky hair swinging against her face.

‘Bingo starts at 21.14.’ The girl inspects her watch, then hands me a pencil. ‘Thirty second. Then we start.’ She pulls out some cards and places them on the bench between us. ‘We take turns to turn over.’ Her eyes follow the hand of her watch. ‘Now.’ Her tone implies great urgency.

I want to ask her why the rush, but there doesn’t seem to be enough time.

‘Twenty-one.’She giggles, crossing the number off her card.

I flip up the next one. ‘Two.’ One for me.

‘Sixteen.’

‘Thirty-six.’

The pile of cards diminishes between us.

‘Nine,’ says the girl.

‘Bingo.’ I wave my card with mock excitement. Thank Christ that’s over. Now I can get back to it. I start to rise.

‘You win.’ The girl opens her briefcase and hands me a parcel.

‘Your prize.’

It is a face-cloth, sealed in plastic and decorated with pink flowers.

‘Sakura.’ The girl points. ‘Cherry-blossoms.’

‘Did you bring this with you from Japan?’

She nods.

‘Just for bingo?’

‘Yes.’ She taps her briefcase. ‘I am ready.’

‘Thank you.’ I turn it in my hands. Wonder what they’ll make of it. After.

She smiles. ‘You are welcome. I am Iida. Miss Iida.’

‘I’m Arkie. Ms Arkie.’ I exhale, lower myself to the seat again, stick out my hand. Going through the motions. A good hostess.

Miss Iida looks at my hand, then puts hers out and clasps it briefly. ‘Misaki? This is Japanese name.’

I don’t bother to correct her. Misaki. I quite like it. I glance at my watch.

‘Train almost here,’ says Miss Iida.

I nod. I am resigned to being stuck with her now. I hope she’s not squeamish. I edge to the furthest point of the bench in preparation, measure the distance with my eyes. Five steps.

‘Beautiful blossom,’ says Miss Iida.

‘Pardon?’

‘Your name – it mean beautiful blossom.’

‘Oh.’ That almost makes me smile. Misaki. Beautiful blossom.

‘On the train, we will have soba noodles,’ says Miss Iida. ‘At 22.14.’

I can’t let this pass. ‘Why the timing? Why soba noodles?’

‘Fourteen minutes past the hour, because we are going to 2014.

It is...’ She pauses.

‘Lucky?’

‘Yes, lucky. And we have soba noodles, because it is traditional.’

She gives a quick bow. ‘And they are delicious. It is optional of course. You don’t need to have, if you don’t want.’

I glance at her slim briefcase. ‘You have them in there?’

She nods.

‘What else have you got?’

‘A prayer. That is for 23.14. And a present. For 24.14. I think we are in Brisbane then.’

I’ll never get to see them. I brush the thought away. It will take more than a prayer and a present to deflect me. I think of telling

her that the train only goes to Murwillumbah, but it seems too hard.

Miss Iida inspects her watch again. ‘Train is late.’

‘Not really.’ It is only nine twenty-five. ‘In Japan they run on time, right?’

Miss Iida nods. ‘Five twenty-two train comes at five twenty-two.

Not five twenty-one or five twenty-three.’ There is something hesitant about the way she says this.

‘That’s good, isn’t it?’

She nods in an indeterminate way. ‘Sometimes I wish...’

I wait.

‘Sometimes I wish it is less perfect.’

My eyes meet hers for a moment. She has nice eyes, dark brown behind her glasses. ‘Sometimes I wish it was more perfect here.’

She smiles. ‘We like to organise. In Japan.’

She is distracting me. I drum my fingers on the bench, tap my feet, tense my muscles so I will be ready. I twist my hair back from my face and secure it with a clasp. I need to be able to see what I’m doing. Five steps, then a jump.

Adam used to say that my hair was the colour of autumn. Now it is like autumn leaves chewed by caterpillars. Autumn leaves with flecks of snow. Stress has not only ruined my hair, it has made me lose weight. Once, I would have killed for the hips I’ve got, but now I miss my curves.

On the positive side, my clothes sit better on my body. Tonight I am wearing my cloudy night outfit – floaty black with flashes of silver. Stars glimpsed through curtains. Such things will be noted – by those who care. I am no longer one of them.

‘In Japan, sometimes train is late.’ Miss Iida gazes out at the platform. ‘When it hit people.’

I catch my breath, stare at her face, but there is nothing to see. I cough. ‘Does that happen much?’

‘Yes.’ Her gaze doesn’t shift from the rails.

I am expecting her to say more, but she doesn’t. ‘So, what happens after the prayer and the present?’ I hadn’t even known I was going to speak.

She turns to me. ‘After present, is bed-time.’

To see a trailer for Arkie’s Pilgrimage to the Next Big Thing go to www.lisawalker.com.au

Arkie’s Pilgrimage to the Next Big Thing will be launched at the Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre on Friday January 30 at 6pm.

RSVPs 02 6685 5115 or info@nrwc.org.au

northerly magazine | january - february 2015- 9

Short Story Slam Winners Mango Magic

by Jan Mulcahy

In her hand she inhales my mango aroma and gives a gentle squeeze to my flesh. I know everything about this woman.

The way her fingers linger on a tiny skin blemish, the way her mouth thins as she wonders if I am ripe enough to join those diced Lebanese cucumbers in the salad bowl. I much prefer them to those course, home-grown Aussie cucumbers.

Now she holds me firmly in her left palm and slices my right cheek off and then the left. I am reduced to a seed and a strip of skin covering my remaining flesh. She deftly dices both cheeks, so surely she will finish de-fleshing me? No, she’s cutting up my partner and in no time, finishes him off completely and I lie here awaiting my fate.

She finely chops mint and chives, which look very attractive, tossed over the salad. She adds chopped fresh ginger and I watch her measure Olive oil and Balsamic vinegar, add salt, pepper and sweet chilli sauce into a small glass jar.

Uh, oh there goes the phone and I hear her voice say a loud goodbye. Here she comes to finish the dressing. I see by the way she shakes the daylights out of it, that phone call upset her. She adds the dressing to the salad and the way she stirs and stirs it tells me she is raging. Now she returns her best

plates to the shelf and digs around in the cupboard for an old plate. She stands up and I can see she is shaking as she grabs a tea towel and wipes her eyes.

She seems to have forgotten me. I don’t want to be tossed into the compost bucket with all this flesh clinging to my sides.

After the way she touched me, chose to cut me first, surely she cannot have misjudged my fully ripe state, oozing juice around my nakedness.

She serves a plate of chicken, potato salad, tomato and garden salad. Now she spoons the mango and cucumber salad over the chicken. There she goes into the lounge room with her dogs and tunes in to her DVD of Downton Abbey.

I hear the drama and her intermittent laughter. She returns to the kitchen and eyes me over, picks up a clean tea towel, tosses it over her shoulder and peels away my rim of skin. Oh, all my fibres tingle with anticipation. I am at last, about to fulfil my destiny.

She carries me into the lounge, sits and continues with the next episode of Downton Abbey. I am wrapped in her hands, close to her parted lips and drip as she licks me, sniffs my scent. Slowly devoured, I slip and slide down her throat while she licks her lips and dries my secretions from her chin. On Christmas day I become one with the lady of the house and my last awareness is of her slow, satisfied sigh.

Holiday House

by Jane Abercrombie

The holiday in the rented beach house overlooking the bay at Lorne was the last holiday my parents, my brother, and I ever would ever spend together. It was the summer after I finished school. It was the summer I accidentally ripped all the eyelashes from my right eye with an eyelash curler, the summer I accidentally slammed the car door on my finger.

Blood smeared on my HSC results, fresh from the Lorne post office.

And it was the summer when my father invited Sheryl to stay with us at the holiday house. I think he had the idea that if he made a show of them being casual friends no-one would twig to what was going on.

I’d confided to my younger brother that I reckoned Dad was having an affair with Sheryl. “Nah” said Max, “Dad’d go for someone more, you know sort of sexy and blonde and everything.” But I knew it was weird the way for the last few months our father kept going off on long Saturday afternoon drives by himself, saying he needed to “put petrol in the car and pick up a few things”. And weird the way he sometimes invited his twenty two year old secretary Sheryl over for afternoon tea at our place on weekends. I knew from the strained awfulness as Mum passed around the choc-mint slices. I knew.

10 - northerly magazine | january - february 2015

The other person I wasn’t happy to have at the holiday house was Tom, my boyfriend, or sort of possibly ex-boyfriend. He was a twenty-three year old music teacher from my all-girls’ school, and our clandestine romance - and the secret sex that had been so tantalizing for the last couple of terms - had suddenly lost its glory now that I’d finished year twelve.

But it was too late: he’d charmed the pants off both my parents, and my mother had invited him to join us at Lorne.

He was a deep-voiced seducer with bedroom eyes and a nice touch on the classical guitar. In the final school term, while I’d been in my room swotting up on King Lear, Renaissance architecture and irregular French verbs, nights when Dad was ‘working back late’ in his city office, I’d hear Tom laughing with my mother, over a bottle of red wine out on our suburban back porch. Now he was cosily installed with my brother in one of the beach house bunk rooms.

A few days into the Lorne holiday I met up with a school friend and went off with her to the pub. Later that day I smoked my first joint and pashed on with a bearded university student up at the waterfall. Arriving home late at night I found everyone asleep except for Tom and Sheryl, who were sitting close together on sweaty vinyl chairs in the fluro-lit kitchen. All the dinner dishes had been washed and stacked. Tom was playing some sweet thing on his guitar; Sheryl was swaying.

Unleash Your Creativity A workshop with Melaina Faranda

by Dylan Arnot As writers, we all know what it’s like to be blocked creatively. Self doubt, fear of criticism, fatigue are just the tip of an iceberg of blocks. And then, when we have a good creative flow, life gets in the way. “At some point, I’ve just gotta stop writing and put on the potatoes,” remarked a woman in the one day course.

Melaina Faranda, author of 29 young adult and children’s books, gives the impression of boundless creativity. With her exuberant, explosive teaching style, it’s no wonder she’s published eight of those in one year alone. But she has experienced creative fatigue.

“I was recently completely worn out,” she says.

“I felt like a dry well. So I had a big break just to fill up again with life. Then, when I was brimming over with stories and inspiration, I started writing again.”

To most effectively develop and harness the imagination, however, we need to utilise discipline.

“Imagine your muse is Romeo. If you’re Juliet and you’re waiting for Romeo, he’s much more likely to turn up if you keep your appointments. Find a time and place where you write each day.”

When tapping into your creativity, Melaina suggests being easy on yourself, releasing the expectation of immediate, un-self conscious creativity.

Creativity is like a water tap on a rural property. It sputters a bit before the the water flows. Just start.

Melaina sees boundaries as things to be ignored. “I have ruined so many of my dresses crawling under and over barbed wire fences!” She recounts. “It’s the same with writing. Be as free as you like. What’s under that log? That stone?

Be curious about life, then send in your inner-magician, your imagination into the scene. What can the character taste and feel? What can’t they perceive?

What’s outside the scene?”

Melaina had our class engage in some writing exercises to help exercise our imagination muscles and find our flow.

In one writing exercise, Melaina had us observe a collage of random magazine pictures, imagine what was happening outside the frame, then relate that back to the collage.

“You can always leave. If you’re not happy with, well, whatever, or, if you’re just too happy and you need a spot of discontent in your life, then you can leave. The child who’s been hit. The king who’s sick of the life. The boy who leaves the girl who’s been kissing other boys. Maybe even the celebrity who’s sick of celebrity. Even they can leave.

They’ll need to do a life/image/name/

“Imagination is like a muscle. If you work it, it develops. If you ignore it, it shrinks.”

One of these was “Go” writing, where we were thrown any topic and we wrote stream-of-consciously about that for five to eight minutes, without a halt to our pens. One of these topics was “Leaving.” I’d like to share an excerpt of my attempt with you.

location overhaul, but they could still, in theory, leave.

But do we ever leave ourselves? Can we leave our beliefs? Can we leave our moods behind? Can we find a way to drown our sorrows, fist in the river, not for a night, but once and for all? Yes, we can always leave, but we cannot leave ourselves.

I met a man in San Francisco who tried leaving himself every day. I met him playing guitar at an open mic - a beautiful song about....” Time was up.

Another exercise was “Sensory writing”, which was used to enhance our imagery. We threw the rest of the class a noun, verb or adjective, and wrote about what that word looks, smells, feels, sounds and tastes like, with very interesting results. One woman wrote “dancing tastes like hot breath on a cool day.”

My favourite exercise was Melaina’s original “character body”. Drawing a body outline on butcher’s paper, we wrote what they’d loved to touch on one hand, and what they wished they hadn’t touched on the other; what they’d heard and what they wish they hadn’t heard, and so on. After a few of these, an incredibly complex character emerged from the sketch.

I’d highly recommend trying these exercises, and seeking out the next inspiring Melaina workshop.

Dylan & Trumby

northerly magazine | january - february 2015- 11

• summer reading: The Anchoress • This is an edited extract from The Anchoress by Robyn Cadwallader (4th Estate, March 2015).

Cadwallader

© Robyn

England, 1255: Sarah is only seventeen when she chooses to become an anchoress, a holy woman shut away for her entire life in a tiny cell measuring seven paces by nine, at the side of the village church.

This is an absorbing story of faith, desire, shame, fear and the deep human need for connection and touch.

Powerful, evocative and haunting, The Anchoress is both heartbreaking and unpredictable.

I

had always wanted to be a jongleur, to leap from the shoulders of another, to fly and tumble, to dare myself in thin air with nothing but my arms and legs to land me safely on the ground. An acrobat is not a bird, but it is the closest a person can come to being free in the air. The nearest to an angel’s gift of flying.

But that was as a child, when my body was secure, like that of a boy, and I felt myself whole and able to try anything. That was before my arms and legs grew soft and awkward and my woman’s body took away those strong, pliant surfaces of skin, before I knew I could bleed and not die or, worse still, carry a life inside me and die because of it.

In spite of my body, the dream remained. It was the idea that I loved; I understood enough of the world to know that I could never be a jongleur.

I remember Roland especially, though in my child’s fancy I called him Swallow. He was part of a travelling troupe that visited our town one market day and began to perform in the middle of the crowd, the music and the colours of the costumes nudging us to stop and watch. A circle formed, with Swallow as its centre. His costume was grey striped with red, his face painted with blue on his cheeks and forehead and red on his nose. He balanced the hilt of a sword in each hand, the blades standing tall above him, and danced, lifting his knees, pointing and scooping his feet in front and behind. When he stopped, his confrere gently placed an apple on the tip of each blade. Making sure they were still, the balance certain, Swallow stepped right then left, forwards and backwards, a slow and graceful single carole, smiling at us all.

Finally he threw the swords up and caught them in one hand — though someone shouted, ‘Blunt, you fraud’ — and gathered the apples with the other. He bowed deeply and ran to join his companions who were building a tower, three on the bottom then two on their shoulders. With dancing feet, Roland climbed from leg to arm to leg to arm and onto the shoulders of the men

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on top. He stood still for a moment, arms in the air, stretching out to the heavens, face tilted up, then leapt and tumbled. I gasped to see him swoop like a swallow in the grey sky beyond.

He landed surefooted and still on two slippered feet and the six men formed a line, bowed deeply, then turned around, pulled down their breeches and farted at us, one at a time. The crowd laughed and cheered but I was still leaping in the air with Swallow.

When I saw him later that day with his face cleaned of colour, I saw his nose was not at all like a swallow’s beak, but sat to one side of his face as if it had been dough flattened by a rough hand.

He told me he had fallen when learning to tumble; his own knee had broken his nose as he landed.

The day after I was enclosed I thought of Swallow. I’d thrown away everything in this world and leapt into the air, lighter than I’d ever been, flying to God, who would catch me in his arms. Here, like Swallow, I was a body without a body. Even inside the thick walls of my cell I felt I could see the sky all around me, blue and clear, and I thought I had what I wanted.

I didn’t know then that I had landed on hard ground and broken my bones with my own body.

Robyn Cadwallader has published numerous prize-winning short stories, as well as a book of poetry and a non-fiction book based on her PhD thesis concerning attitudes to virginity and women in the Middle Ages. Formerly an academic at Flinders University, she now lives among vineyards outside Canberra. “...The anchoress’ struggle with the men who seek to control her life is not a simple one — she is no feisty, wilful woman — but the pressure of circumstance, her own intelligence, and the effects of her isolation lead her to a discovery of her own weaknesses, and with that, the source of her own strength.“ ~Robyn Cadwallader

• summer reading: Dirty Chick • This is an extract from Dirty Chick: Adventures of an Unlikely Farmer (Text Publishing) by Antonia Murphy, a hilarious and heart warming memoir about a San Franciscan couple sailing across the pacific to set up a hobby farm in rural New Zealand, all the while adjusting to life with a newborn son facing incredible development difficulties.

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t first Silas was nothing but a joy in our lives. He sat up on time, giggled and chortled at all the right moments, and loved being cuddled and kissed. Some things about him were different, but I didn’t know they were wrong. He never pointed or gestured. He never imitated the sounds I made. And when he cried, there were never any tears. At nineteen months, he still wasn’t walking or talking, and soon after, we learned why. Silas has a minute typographical error deep in his genetic code, just a tiny section missing, a flaw so small that it took specialized computers in Australia to find it. It’s no one’s fault. It’s just a fluke.

Silas has a global developmental delay, which means that he’s behind in most areas and probably intellectually disabled, though no one knows by how much.

At five years old, he could say a few hundred words, but he used only a handful of them, and then only one at a time. “Mih,” he would say for milk, and “pees” for please.

Most of the time I was okay with this, because Silas was also an affectionate little imp. He’d crawl into my bed first thing in the morning and throw his arms around my neck, and when I cuddled him back, his face lit up with joy. The one toy he loved more than anything was a little blue handheld mp3 player, which we called the Dart.

I’d loaded this player with recordings of my own voice singing to Silas and reading his favorite books, as well as a selection of Broadway musicals.

The music was so calming for him that watching him use the device was like watching a lion get shot with a tranquilizer dart. When his favorite songs came on, when his eyes grew wide with wonder and he hopped up and down with the sheer pleasure of song, I thought to myself that talking wasn’t the only way to communicate.

But there was no denying that he made our lives more complicated. It was hard not knowing how Silas would turn out, and it broke my heart to think his life would be limited.

There were stacks of paperwork involved in coordinating his care: medical specialists, therapists, teacher aides, and all those appointments for scans, checkups, and tests. And while we took care of Silas’s many needs, we still had our savage daughter to tame.

Miranda was born two years after Silas. A typical three-yearold, she chatted nonstop about party dresses and princesses.

She also loved riding bikes, jumping on the trampoline, and Photo: Cristina Smith

hacking her own hair off with dull scissors, which meant we usually kept her in a cute little pixie cut.

Our daughter was both sweet and relentless in equal measure.

“Mama?” she’d ask, “can I have a juice? Mama, can I have a snack?”

Then, once she’d been fed and watered, the real questions began. “Mama, when a crocodile would bite me, would you get a gun and dead him?”

“Of course,” I’d say, “of course I would.” Then I’d pop another antidepressant, pour a second glass of wine, and dream about moving to the country.

Five years into our life in New Zealand, we finally did it. And Silas was the reason.

Until we became parents, Peter and I both had led the sort of devil-may-care lives where a normal thing, at thirty, was to get on a sailboat and go cruising for a few years. Neither of us was rich, but we were both from comfortable middleclass families whose parents had paid for our educations and thought everything we did was wonderful.

Majoring in English and History?

“How marvelous!” Backpacking through Central America? “Oh, how rugged!” Working a shitty job in retail to help pay the bills? “What madcap adventures you’re collecting for your novel someday.”

We’d always been lucky, with the sort of privileged confidence typical of our middle-class, American lives. From the day we met, Peter and I were best friends, compatible in everything, from our taste for good food and travel to sex. We didn’t need anyone.

And then we had Silas. When your kid is born disabled, you need. You need help navigating the labyrinth of public services available, from medical treatments to therapies. You need help deciding which interventions to pursue, which might be useful and which will just bankrupt you and disappoint. You need counseling, antidepressants, and wine.

Correction: you probably don’t need any of those things. I did. And do. And most of all, what I needed was to know that people in the world would accept my son. For that, we needed a community.

Antonia Murphy is an award-winning magazine journalist, author and adventurer. A San Francisco native, she took off on her sailboat in 2005 and never came back. Today, she lives and works in Whangarei, New Zealand, with her husband Peter and their two children, Silas and Miranda. northerly magazine | january - february 2015- 13

• summer reading: Mateship • This is an edited extract from Mateship by Nick Dyrenfurth (Scribe).

A ‘mate’ is a mate, right? Wrong, argues Nick Dyrenfurth in this provocative new look at one of Australia’s most talked-about beliefs.

I

n the first book-length exploration of our secular creed, one of Australia’s leading young historians and public commentators turns mateship’s history upside down.

Did you know that the first Australians to call each other ‘mate’ were business partners? Or that many others thought that mateship would be the basis for creating an entirely new society, namely a ‘socialist’ one? For some, the term ‘mate’ is ‘the nicest word in the English language’; while for others it represents the very worst features in our nation’s culture: conformity, bullying, corruption, racism, and misogyny. So what does mateship really mean?

against earth and sky, man and beast’.

Aside from navel-gazing, mateship has appeared more pragmatically in order to sell a diverse range of products: cars, cigarettes, beer, mobile phones, and financial services. In March 2001, for example, a Bendigo Bank advertisement

In Australia, the term ‘mate’ is also a ubiquitous form of address, indicating friendliness and equality. It’s frequently used with casual acquaintances or strangers, sometimes with a touch of sarcastic hostility.

One wag provided a tongueincheek definition for The Lingo Dictionary of Favourite Australian Words and Phrases: the salutation ‘mate’ is used to ‘greet someone whose name you can’t remember’. Mateship also has its dark side, carrying a suggestion of corruption — who, for instance, could forget High Court justice Lionel Murphy’s infamous quip, ‘And now, what about my little mate?’ For some, the very use of the word ‘mate’ is enough to induce scepticism regarding a person’s real motives.

In Mateship: a very Australian history, Dyrenfurth explains why Australians from all walks of life have been so fixated on mateship and claimed it as a uniquely national value. He brings to life mateship’s extraordinarily rich and paradoxical history, showing how over more than 200 years of white settler history, shearers and soldiers, brickies and bankers, poets and politicians, and even the odd feminist, including the former prime minister Julia Gillard, have all identified with the national creed.

Over the past two centuries, Australians of all ideological persuasions have written millions of words about mateship. Our literary, political, and cultural commentary is littered with references to it. Historians have not been immune. David Walker claims that most practitioners have ‘felt the necessity to comment on the nature of Australian man and all he stands for’. Such lamentations inevitably gravitate towards mateship.

Manning Clark, perhaps Australia’s most famous historical scribe, expressed surprise at the belief of late-19th-century Australians that ‘material progress and mateship could be their only comforters

likes of William Lane has long-existed; however, most Australian citizens would more likely associate mateship with wartime service — in particular, the Anzac tradition forged on the shores of faraway Gallipoli during April 1915.

Public commentary on the Anzacs almost always contains a reference to Australians’ proclivity to all things matey.

announced the availability of ‘mates rates on personal loans’ — loyal customers would be rewarded in ‘true mateship style’.

But what does mateship actually mean?

Most simply, it describes the bonds of loyalty and equality, and feelings of 4 Mateship solidarity and fraternity that Australians, usually men, are typically alleged to exhibit. Much of the rest of the world thinks of this practice as friendship, pure and simple. Yet, in Australia, mateship evokes more than mere friendship. A left-wing or workingclass ideal of mateship voiced by the

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In the words of one heretic, the poet Les Murray, ‘It’s a word of great menace in some cases. People who say mate never practise mateship.’

Dr Nick Dyrenfurth is an adjunct research fellow in the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University in Melbourne. He is a leading media commentator for The Age, The Australian, The Saturday Paper, and The Monthly, as well as a commentator on television and radio.

• community events• Dr Paul Atterbury of BBC TV’s Antiques Roadshow comes to ADFAS Byron Bay On Monday 3 March ADFAS Byron Bay begins its 2015 program with an illustrated presentation by Dr Paul Atterbury titled ‘At Home in the Twentieth Century.’ Paul has been a member for over twenty years of the team of experts on BBC TV’s Antiques Roadshow. He is an expert on British antiques, specialising in the art, architecture, design and decorative arts of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Paul’s presentation ‘At Home in the Twentieth Century’ will examine the development of the domestic interior through the Art Nouveau, Art Deco periods, the 1950s, 1960 and Modernism, reflecting on the impact of both avant-garde and mass market design ideas. He will explore how people lived through changing times, their attitudes and aspirations and the role of technology in these changes. He will also explore the cycles of fashion, nostalgia and the cycles of collecting during these times.

This is ADFAS Byron Bay’s first presentation for the year. It will be held as usual in the A&I Hall, Station Street, Bangalow on Monday 2 March. The presentation begins at 7.30. Doors open at 6.30 for a welcome drink. 2015 memberships will be available ($130/individual, $230/couple). Guests are most welcome - $25 per person. Entry includes a welcome drink and a light snack and drink after the presentation.

Grassroots Writers’ Weekend, Coffs Harbour Community Village 8 – 10 May 2015 Hosted by the Coffs Harbour Writers’ Group Only $25 (accommodation and optional dinners extra) Pre bookings are essential as numbers are limited Proudly supported by the Coffs Harbour City Council Community Arts & Cultural Development Small Grants Program 2014/2014 The aim of this weekend is to conduct an affordable, hands-on practical weekend of workshops for the beginning, the aspiring and the published writer. We will provide practical ‘doing’ workshops for everyone from school students to the senior members of the community who enjoy writing.

The Weekend is entitled ‘Grassroots Writers’ Weekend’ to indicate the workshop ‘back to basics’ nature of the event – not a Readers and Writers Festival of speakers.

This event follows on from the highly successful inaugural Grassroots Writers Weekend hosted by Dorrigo Writers’ Centre over the Anzac weekend in 2014.

Program details are available on the Grassroots Writers’ Weekend website, go to: www.grassrootswriters.org.au Join our Facebook page; https://www.facebook.com/groups/1439064633047824/ For more information contact: Lorraine on 0404163136, e-mail: lmproject@bigpond.com or Leonie 0412668315, e-mail: leonie@henschke.net.au

northerly magazine | january - february 2015- 15

$20,000 reasons to like Writersandfilmmakers.com Writers judge filmmakers and filmmakers judge writers. It’s that simple! We fund you to collaborate.

filmmakers never judge filmmakers. Each group wants the best of the other to shine through.

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Writer entrants are given approximately 15 assignments.

Filmmaker entrants are given approximately 15 assignments.

Writers score films on 1) Directing 2) Cinematography 3) Audio 4) Editing and 5) Set design. Filmmakers score scripts on 1) Creativity/Originality 2) Cost of shooting 3) Ease of shooting Our collaborative funding/production model has so many benefits. As entries rush in, more and more individuals will become fans of each others work. More and more people will be able to collaborate on future projects. And the winners will have a newly built fan base.

Imagine a community that reads your script, provides you with abundant, meaningful feedback and provides the potential for your work to be translated onto the big screen. Writers and filmmakers.com goal is to democratize film production and film funding.

The community decides which works are best, not a select few on a judges panel. No need for connections, free from nepotism and bias political judging. Writers never judge writers,

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Hanging out to see what’s on at NORPA this year?

The launch of the 2015 NORPA Season is at Lismore City Hall on Friday 6 February when they reveal all the fantastic shows in store for you this year. This is a free event from 6pm with special guest performances and a sneak peek into the world of theatre. The diner will be open from 7:30pm if you want something scrumptious to eat while you pore over our 2015 Season brochure and decide what shows to dive into.

This is your chance to beat the rush and nab the best seats for the Season and the Box Office will be open till 9.30pm. You can purchase tickets to individual shows, however you only need to purchase tickets to any 3 shows in the Season to become a NORPA Subscriber and enjoy a 20% saving as well as a swag of other benefits.

NORPA 2015 SEASON Launch Friday 6 February, 6pm, Lismore City Hall Live performances, bar and diner, Free event – all welcome Please RSVP to rsvp@norpa.org.au by 2pm, Monday 3 February.

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New book highlights plight of North Coast koalas

A new novel for 8-12 year olds, by Myocum author Jesse Blackadder, was inspired by the koalas in trouble in her own neighbourhood, and the koala rescues carried out by Lismorebased care group Friends of the Koala after ex-tropical Cyclone Oswald in 2013.

Dexter The Courageous Koala is published by ABC Books and has arrived in bookstores this week. It is the third novel in her series, inspired by real-life stories of humans and animals.

“After moving to a rural property in Myocum, seeing koalas in my back yard was thrilling, but I realised that many of our local koalas are isolated in small areas, and a number have Chlamydia, which is fatal,” said Jesse.

“Friends of the Koala in Lismore eventually captured ‘Elsie’, an ill koala that we’d been watching for weeks, but she was beyond help and had to be put down.

“I learnt that she wasn’t an isolated case. Friends of the Koala responds to hundreds of calls and rescues more than 300 koalas each year, with support from a local vet who volunteers his time to examine every koala.”

The impact of ex-tropical Cyclone Oswald on the district’s koalas in 2013 provided inspiration for the story of “Dexter”, in which 12-year-old Ashley finds herself trapped by flooded creeks and fallen trees – with two koalas who desperately need help.

Friends of the Koala rehabilitates some ill or injured koalas at the care centre, while others (including all joeys) are looked after by highly experienced individual carers. The nearest specialist wildlife medical facility, Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary Hospital, also sees more than 300 koalas every year. Both organisations helped Jesse with her research for the book.

According to Byron Coast Koala Habitat Study there are only around 240 koalas in the coastal strip between Billinudgel and Broken Head and they are threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation, fire, dog attack, disease and road mortalities.

There is a real risk that the population is not sustainable, and will die out.

“Understanding the plight of the koalas also prompted me to join Tweed Byron Koala Connections program, which is planting thousands of habitat and food trees for koalas across the two shires,” said Jesse. “Thanks to the program we now have a small forest of 400 trees – and many of the properties around us have joined it too.”

northerly magazine | january - february 2015- 17

• Kid’s Page •

In The Writer’s Studio with Samantha Turnbull Samantha Turnbull is an awardwinning journalist and slam poet.

She is also the local author of The Anti-Princess Club series (Allen & Unwin), launching in February. Sam is a staunch advocate for strong girls and women. There are no fairies or damsels in distress in the Anti-P books. Here, she invites us inside her writing space and process.

How important to you is the space in which you create?

It’s not that important. I find I can write anywhere. I’ve been stuck a few times recently in airports sans computer and resorted to, shock horror, writing with a pen and paper and I’ve really enjoyed it. It takes me back to the days when I first decided I was going to be a writer (when I was about nine) and we didn’t actually own a computer or even use one at school. Wow, that makes me sound ancient. I swear I never wore an onion on my belt (Simpsons reference).

Do you transform your space in any way for each project?

Hmmm, well, usually at the end of a project I find it’s time for a bit of a clean-up. You know, things like wiping coffee cup rings off the desk, shaking the cupcake crumbs out

of the keyboard and binning a few chocolate wrappers. Once again, I’d love to answer this question by saying I relocate to the beach if I’m writing a surfing scene, or I jet off to the Greek Islands when I write about baklava… but, alas, it’s more about time than space for me. If the kids are snoozing and I’m at home, that’s my opportunity to write.If I change anything, it’s the artwork. My desk is surrounded by masterpieces brought home from pre-school by my future Picassos.

How has the place that you write evolved or changed since you first began writing?

Pre-kids I had a space inside the house for writing, but since they arrived and, more to the point, since all of their craptastic toys arrived, me and the computer desk have been relegated to the garage.If I go back further, as a primaryschool kid I was a big fan of writing in secret diaries under the doona with a torch.

I had many a lockable journal filled with rants about how annoying my brother was, plots to bring down my schoolyard enemies and, of course, confessions of undying love for boys I never actually spoke to.

Now, I’ve taken to spilling personal

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details for all the world to see on my blog: samanthaturnbull.com.au/blog What time of day are you most creative?

Night time. It’s not so much by choice, but it seems to be the only alone time I get these days. The kids are up with the roosters, so unless I wanted to rise around 3.00am, I’d never get writing done in the mornings.

Do you have a morning ritual? Roald Dahl was said to sharpen pencils.

What settles your mind for writing?

My morning ritual consists of changing nappies and packing lunch boxes to the not-so-distant sounds of Peppa Pig blaring from the television.

When I ‘settle in’ for a writing session, I wait for the signal from the rest of the family - otherwise known as their snoring - and then I usually grab a treat of some description (chocolate, bowl of ice cream,whatever’s going) and begin to type. I don’t usually ‘plan’ my stories, I just see what comes out and hope for the best!

The Writer’s Studio is part of an ongoing series of interviews with children’s and young adult authors at Tristan Bancks’s website: ww.tristanbancks.com

• From the reading chair • How to Live?

On Essays: Hayley Katzen explores the literary essay

E

ver since 1570 when Michel de Montaigne described his writings as essaireaders and writers have wondered what this genre is. Most would agree what the literary essay is not. It’s not the dreary five-part high school composition or academic paper. Nor is it a dogmatic assertion of views – as Montaigne said, ‘If I had even the slightest grasp upon my faculties, I would not make essays, I would make decisions.’ Nor is it the newspaper article about a timely topic.

Yet it is a malleable literary form: sometimes behaving personally, sometimes journalistically, sometimes like a short story or a poem. Flick back through time and you’ll find Seneca and Montaigne writing reflective or intellectual essays. Nextyou’ll see the influence of the ‘New Journalism’ with writers likeDidion and David Foster Wallace mixing memoir with researched information.

Today contemporary essayists stretch the genre’s imaginative possibilities often blending poetry and nonfiction and exploring experimental structures and fragmented narratives.

For instance, Eula Biss, author of Notes from No Man’s Land, describes her influences as Didion and the ‘personal is political’ assertion of confessional poets such as Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich.

The distinction between the essay and other first person forms perhaps comes down to purpose and attitude. Whether personal or lyric, a meditation or narrative, the deeper thematic question ‘what’s it really about?’ is usually at the heart of the essay. The form of the essay – with its roots in essai (to try or experiment) is the essayist visibly mining what they want to say while they are trying to say it.

The essayist is not seeking to inform but rather to gain insight: ‘what happened’ is the starting point; the how and the why are the purpose. The ‘what’ may be remembrances of things past, encounters with the immediate and seemingly mundane, or observations aboutthe internal or external world.The process of

reflection – of facing the ‘what’ – leads the essayist to Montaigne’s question ‘what do I know?’ which in turn leads to mining the ‘I’ and to reaching outside the self to discover others’ views.

In an essay, according to Robert Atwan founding editor of the Best American Essays series, ‘the writer’s reflections on a topic become as compelling as the topic itself, when he or she searches for the larger theme behind an isolated issue or event, or when the craft and handling of material reveal a keen sense of a subject’s true complexity’.

An essay may amalgamate self-reflection, lived experience, literary and cultural snippets, and historical comment but at its centre is an intellectual investigation that grows out of personal interest rather than expertise. As Montaigne observed ‘Every man has within himself the entirety of the human condition.’ The essayist takes themselves as their subject not because they’re a ‘star’ or have a fascinating life story but simply because they, with all their longings, inadequacies and contradictions, are just like everyone else – and are interested in ‘how to live’.

As readers, we may not agree with or even like the essayist, but thewindow into the essayist’s consciousness gives us a deeper understanding ofher point of view and leads us to explore our own experiences. We may come to appreciate how much we share with another, and be jolted into new ways of seeing and understanding. When Eula Biss in her essay ‘Time and Distance Overcome’ writes of howblack men were hanged from telephone poles, America’s history of racial prejudice become vividly real and we see telephone poles for what they are: the symbol of the violence whites have perpetrated against blacks. Similarly from reading Joan Didion’s portrait of American life in the ’60s in her collection, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, we appreciate the personal impact of living through revolutionary change.

Essays rarely provide answers but they may arrive at deeper truths or fresh interpretations. For Meghan Daum, author of The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion (2014), ‘To me, having ‘material’ for an essay means not only having something to write about but also having something interesting and original to say about whatever that might be”.

Hayley Katzen’s essays have been published in Australian Book Review, Griffith REVIEW and on www.narratively.com.

Her essays have been short-listed and long-listed for the Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay.

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

Joy and Peace in Bali

by Margaret McDougall A Balinese man with sad teeth and soft, brown eyes traced the lines on my hand in the Kuta market. I felt him lightly touch the centre of my palm.

‘There is a small break here…there is loss…but you will be ok.’

It was December, 1976. I was very young and easily reassured. Only the immediacy of this strange and wonderful Asian destination mattered. Everything else could wait for another time, a different episode of my life. I was sun burnt, had swollen lips, coral infected cuts and Bali Belly. Yet, with each day’s adventures, my heart sang.

Perhaps it was the languid, tropical air but I found the Balinese people so gentle. They pestered and pursued you to buy but always smiled when you said no. When I made feeble attempts to say I had no money in Indonesian, they laughed and walked away waving.

Their merriment was contagious. On Christmas Day, a friend and I were lying bruised and bewildered on the roadside, after trying to climb a steep hill on my old, bag of bones motorbike. It was the peals of laughter I heard first. Sari clad women appeared from nowhere calling out ‘Bagus! Bagus! I was told it meant ‘very good’ but it could also be loosely translated as ‘hello’, ‘great’, ‘yay!’ Their concern for our welfare was so cheerful, they could just as easily have been wishing us a Merry Christmas.

‘And the same to you!’ we called back.

The Balinese are followers of the Hindu faith, but the joy and peace

Betty Ford – Sharon Fearnside Going fast again bearing the rough ride because she loves the one hundred The dull, stained white coat suits her not delicate or ornamental hard work, heavy loads long distances between drinks a flash of red will let you know!

She nearly killed me one night threw a shoe on a desolate road but rose triumphant with jack and brace and hustled me back to her warm refuge She has carried my lovers and my babies escaped with me at midnight and rolled back contrite When her mechanisms cool down the soft tic tic tic a gentle reminder she runs hot these days But her bright eyes shine on steadfast and strong 20 - northerly magazine | january - february 2015

that we link, almost mindlessly, with the Christmas season, seemed to abound on the small island. The clattering of cowbells, the crowing of the local roosters and, sometimes, the whisperings of children playing cards on my porch, were my wake up calls. When I walked outside to collect breakfast, there was always a small offering of fresh leaves and flowers. Like beautiful thoughts, they were scattered throughout each day, on the dashboards of cars, on the roads, in the markets, and on the sticky, grey sand at the beach.

Softly and quietly, the simplicity of life in that little village by the sea, worked its way into my spirit and calmed my churning, Western mind. I would miss so much when I went home, the relentless cahcah of the monkey dance and the beautiful, brown eyes swimming around me, the hush of the sea and the soothing chatter of the geckos before I fell asleep, a little boy who grabbed my hand when he beat me at cards, the smell of rain in the afternoon, the warm lights at sunset as you rode home, even the dogs who, frustratingly, would always begin to fight in the middle of the road as I dodged and weaved to avoid them.

My flight home landed in Sydney on the 18th of January, the day after a train from the Blue Mountains derailed and knocked down the supports of the Granville Bridge. A close friend from school was in the third carriage and I thought of the palm reader in Kuta and his premonition of loss. But Bali had given me special gifts that Christmas. It taught me there was the potential for joy in every moment and that peace is found in the simplest of things. Life, in all its manifestations, could still be ‘bagus’.

Real Life - Elspeth Findlay Today the heat begins Jasmine floods the warm breeze and honeyeaters are nesting in the Eupatorium Clouds wander over as swallows feast in space and friends appear spontaneously Today the phone is lost the laptop lies abandoned and our talk is a slow sing song An echidna works at turning stone we eat, we drowse, we are asleep in the afternoon until a cacophony of bats mob the mango Evening dark deepens through the foam trees fire flies wink through lantana lattice and we float half awake through the gloaming Today somehow we just forget to worry savouring slow time at moonrise drifting like leaves on the bright stream of incarnation

• Book Review • Here Come the Dogs by Omar Musa reviewed by Dusk Dundler

Here Come The Dogs hits live and direct.

It is the Australian Hip Hop Novel. A new breed, bringing the rawness of stark reality to a surreal and out of reach politics.

As the charismatic Samoan ex-basketball player, Solomon, phrases his part of the story, a grim resonance eases forth. The verse style gives clout and energy to the narrative and in this vein some of it is truly meant to be read out loud. It hammers, procreating Musa’s Spoken Word prowess. The other parts, written in prose, focus on Solomon’s half-brother, Jimmy’s haunted journey of dislocation and also their best friend, Aleks’ heavy choices, family scene, and yearning for his Balkan homeland.

In a way Musa could have attempted a full verse novel, but this mix and accessibility have given him a far greater and rounded scope for the drama. And his straight prose is imaginative and compact. Like, “Jimmy is lying on his bed, feeling flimsy, a photograph developing in a bath of chemicals.”

Their faults are not hidden, from the very beginning, they are wide open and ugly, biting, from spit in the face to downtrodden drug fuelled dejection.

Maybe the characters couldn’t care less if you liked them or not -but their journey compels.

The story runs the risk of falling off the map though. We can feel where we are (Queanbeyan, aka Struggletown), and know the boys are really doing it tough, and though there’s personal growth, there’s also a churning towards some disaster, that begins to loosen and become overly mysterious. However Musa provides a sense of place too, and maybe it is this sense, and the power of cyclic nature, that makes these risks worth taking. His beautifully woven passages about the Bogong Moths provide a mythic (and historical) proportion that is welcomed. And he manages to pull many threads into frame, as a central part of the story unfolds, being Jimmy’s longing to know his real father.

The frequency of these focus changes, as short chapters, is quick and easy to pick up on. And with Solomon’s poetic voice you can read it fast. It’s a great mix of being able to move between the speech rhythms spaced out on the page, to later thoughts, actions and histories in the longer prose pieces.

Musa plays with these themes of cultural identity, crime, and socio-economic disadvantage. And the brother’s appropriation of a Greyhound carries through as a great emblem that also brings the reader closer to them in their journey’s. He also hangs a wreath of petrified politics in the background;

riots; refugees; ‘no-such thing as climate change’; etc. But these are things that are just there. It is the friends lives and surrounding partners and family that he gets close to. The telling of their reality, straight up.

The Dogs is really a peak into a masculine world, of strength gained and tight bonds laid down through hip hop. In this sense, and through the diversity of its characters, it is living culture.

‘I feel like dreams are inescapable’ -Omar Musa, Poet and Rapper, Poetry Slam Champion, Public Speaker, Novelist.

Members News Congratulations Stephanie Dale (pictured left)! The Byron Bay based author was awarded the Women Out West Award for Outstanding Arts and Creativity, at a gala event in Dubbo in November. Stephanie was acknowledged for her latest initiative, The Write Road, which takes writing and communications workshops to Australians in remote areas.

Check out The Write Road at www.facebook.com/thewriteroad

Sonia Friedrich has announced the launch of my new book 11 Steps to Healing – for Multi-Millionaires & Business Owners.

This has been an absolute joy to write. I was inspired to write this book because of mentoring sessions I had with clients. They were multi-millionaires or business owners and some aspect of their life was not working; or they no longer wanted to be in the business they were in; or they were exhausted from living a life that was not who they are. It made me realise that there might be others out there who could benefit from some easy ways to find their purpose and change their life. My aim was to produce a book that allows individuals to begin their journey of change and take the mystery out of it all to take the first, second… eleventh step. I truly hope this helps you or anyone you know who is on the cusp of life change. I sincerely thank you for your support. northerly magazine | january - february 2015- 21

workshops • workshops • workshops 20 Workshops in Four Years… What they all have in common.

With: Polly Jude When: Wednesday, 4 February, 5.30pm-7.30pm Where: NRWC Office, Level 1, 28 Jonson St, Byron Bay To RSVP please email penny@nrwc.org. au by 3 February Since joining the NRWC in 2010, workshop junkie, Polly Jude, has attended over 20 workshops and they all have 5 things in common. Come along to this FREE seminar to get the inside story and some practical skills to help you stop procrastinating and start writing.

This practical, hands on seminar will give you insights into the writing process, the opportunities available through the NRWC and Polly will share her experiences as an emerging writer and some of the tips she’s picked up along the way.

Polly Jude is a local, emerging writer and teacher. She was a Pitch Perfect finalist at the Byron Bay Writers Festival in 2013 and she was one of the Residential Mentees at the NWRC Residential Mentorship in 2014. She has 15 years teaching experience.

Cooking up a synopsis

Narrative Structure

With: Laurel Cohn When: Saturday, 14 February, 10am 4pm Where: Byron Community College 107 Jonson St, Byron Bay Cost: $75 or $95 non memebers, book at www.nrwc.org.au

When: Thursday 26 February, 5th, 12th & 19th March 5.30pm-8pm Where: NRWC Level 1, 28 Jonson Street, Byron Bay Cost: $195 NRWC Members or $220 non-members , restricted to 9 places book at www.nrwc.org.au

Writers often moan and groan about synopses, but there’s no escape – if you intend to apply for a competitive mentorship scheme, would like a literary agent to represent you, or wish to submit your work to a commercial publisher, you can’t avoid it. Even self-publishers need to know how to encapsulate their book to grab a potential reader’s attention. A good synopsis can be the key to publishing success.

Many writers find tackling a 500 word synopsis more daunting than an 80,000 word manuscript.

This workshop explores the role of the synopsis and offers practical tips and tools to help you understand the key ingredients and the method to put them together. Cooking up a synopsis can be a very useful exercise not only in honing a submission package but in helping the writer understand their own manuscript.

We will look at synopses that have been successful for first-time Australian authors (fiction and non-fiction) and hone synopsis-writing skills through practical exercises, with the aim of coming away with a well-worked draft synopsis.

Multi-award winning novelist and non-fiction writer Melissa Lucashenko will deliver a Narrative Structure workshop to a small group limited to nine participants. The focus over the four weeks will be on identifying the best structures for what you want to say, then building pieces of fine work, be they fiction or literary non-fiction, that have ‘good bones’ as well as beautiful sentences. Narrative structure is the underlying, almost always unspoken, message of your work: but getting the structure right is essential for crafting novels, essays, poems and short stories that really pack a punch.

Find out over these sessions how to let your work sing within the framework it deserves, from a Walkley-award winner whose most recent novel, Mullumbimby, was awarded the prestigious 2013 Deloitte Qld Prize for Fiction. Bring along your first drafts, your free-range ideas, and your willingness to engage one-on-one with one of Australia’s leading writers.

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• calendar of events • 2015 Program-at-a-Glance (see website for more details) January January 20 – Nature’s Beauty: Silk Painting Workshop with short story composition for 9 - 13 year olds presented by Kim Toft (limited to 8 places) January 30 – Book Launch for Lisa Walker’s book: Arkie’s Pilgrimage to the Next Big Thing. 6pm at NRWC Office. RSVP required.

February February 4 – Free for Members: Workshop junkie, Polly Jude, has attended over 20 workshops and they all have 5 things in common. Come along to this seminar to get the inside story and some practical skills to help you stop procrastinating and start writing.

February 12 – ‘In Conversation’ with Lee Holmes, author of Eat Clean, Green and Vegetarian and Belinda Jeffery. Light refreshments served. (Limited to 30 places) February 14 – Cooking up a Synopsis with Laurel Cohn. Bring your synopsis for feedback from Laurel. (Limited to 15 places) February 25 - Literary friends and stellar authors Elizabeth Gilbert and Rayya Elias will head to Byron Bay for a unique event at the Byron Theatre.

February 26, 5th, 12th & 19th March – Narrative Structure with Melissa Lucashenko. ‘Let your work sing within the framework it deserves.’ Evening classes, 5.30pm-8pm, over 4 weeks you will receive personal attention as the numbers are limited to 9.

March March 25 – Applications close for Residential Mentorship Program March 26 – Free for Members: How to start a Writing Group. Sarah Armstrong and Jesse Blackadder will take us through the process and provide practical examples of giving feedback.

April April 11 – Kathryn Heyman presents: Starting to Write. An intensive, craft focused workshop, exploring the elements of technique and imagination to get new writers started April 14 - Young Writers (ages 14-19) will have a chance to develop their writing further with Jesse Blackadder.

April 15 - Make a Movie in a Day: Kids (ages 10-14) will develop their skills in script writing, editing and film making with experienced author, actor and filmmaker Tristan Bancks.

April 30 – Tim Cope shares his epic adventure On the Trail of Genghis Khan at Club Lennox and introduces us to Tigon, his dog that accompanied him on his journey. Meal included in the cost.

May May 2 – Travel based creative writing workshop with Tim Cope May 16 – Memoir: Jim Hearn inspires and guides memoir writers.

May 23 – An introduction to Romance Writing and getting published with Jennifer St George.

June June 13 – Double Dip into the Surf World Culture. A chance to spend the day with Craig Parry and Tim Baker, two surf culture legends. Learn from their experience and gain practical tips on how to get into the industry.

June 18 – Free for Members: How to start and run a Book Club. Learn the tricks to keep a group committed and interested from someone who’s been running a successful group for years.

July Applications due for Pitch Perfect at the Byron Bay Writers Festival August August 1-6 – Road, River Rail Author Tour of Regional NSW presenting events and workshops.

August 7-9 - Byron Bay Writers Festival September September 19 – Matthew Condon presents a half day workshop: Creative Non-Fiction - Bringing Real Life to the Page.

October October 22 – Free for Members: Applying for Grants. The Where, What and How to successfully apply for grants with Teresa Walters. northerly magazine | january - february 2015- 23

opportunities • opportunities • competitions Submissions are now open for Griffith REVIEW’s The Novella Project III competition Winning novellas will share in a $25,000 prize pool and will be published in Griffith REVIEW 50: The Novella Project III (November 2015). See attached media release for more information.

In 2012, Griffith REVIEW 38: The Novella Project played a major role in enabling Australian and New Zealand authors to gain a foothold in the English language revival of the novella underway internationally. It was a bestseller at independent bookshops and widely praised by reviewers. In 2014, Griffith REVIEW 46: Forgotten Stories – The Novella Project II published five novellas with an historical dimension in a confronting, moving and provocative collection. Print and digital editions and eSingles of the individual novellas are available at Griffith REVIEW’s online store. Both editions were supported by the Copyright Agency Limited’s Cultural Fund.

Interest in novella-length fiction continues to grow. Ian McEwan recently wrote in The New Yorker: ‘I believe the novella is the perfect form of prose fiction.

It is the beautiful daughter of a rambling, bloated ill-shaven giant (but a giant who’s a genius on his best days). And this child is the means by which many first know our greatest writers… I could go even further: the demands of economy push writers to polish their sentences to precision and clarity, to bring off their effects with unusual intensity, to remain focussed on the point of their creation and drive it forward with functional single-mindedness, and to end it with a mind to its unity.’

The Novella Project III will give Australian and New Zealand writers a chance to perfect this ‘form par excellence’.

For more information: https://griffithreview.com/the-novellaproject-iii-competition/ Submissions close: 29 May

CWA Debut Dagger For 15 years the UK-based Crime Writers Association has been encouraging new writing with its Debut Dagger competition for unpublished writers. The submissions are judged by a panel of top crime editors and agents, and the short listed entries are sent to publishers and agents.

The Debut Dagger is open to anyone who has not yet had a novel published commercially.

Winning the Debut Dagger doesn’t guarantee you’ll get published. But it does mean your work will be seen leading agents and top editors, who have signed up over two dozen winners and shortlisted Debut Dagger competitors.

But entering the Debut Dagger is more than just entering a competition.

You can also join our community, via the Facebook Group giving you the opportunity to ask questions, share your experiences and helping out your fellow writers.

The CWA Debut Dagger is kindly sponsored by Orion Books.

For more information and to submit your entry please visit http://thecwa.co.uk/debuts/debutdagger/ Submissions close 31 January The Tasmanian Writers’ Prize 2015 Open to residents of Australia and New Zealand, The Tasmanian Writers’ Prize 2015 is for short stories up to 3,000 words having an island, or island-resonant, theme.

The competition is run by Forty South Publishing, the largest book publisher in Tasmania and publisher of the prestigious Tasmania 40° South magazine.

Judges for the 2015 prize are Chris Gallagher, director of the Tasmanian Writers’ Centre, and David Owen, noted Tasmanian fiction and non-fiction writer.

The winner will receive a cash prize of $500, and the winning entry will be published in Tasmania 40° South.

A selection of the best entries will be published in 40° South Short Story Anthology 2015. www.fortysouth.com.au Entries close January 31

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Russell Prize for Humour Writing Fancy a crack at Australia’s humour writing prize?

The State Library of NSW has announced the launch of the inaugural Russell Prize for Humour Writing, the only award of its kind in Australia.

Light or dark, fun or farce – published works of fiction, memoir, poetry and verse by Australian writers will be considered for the biennial $10,000 prize, with entries now open.

The Prize has been made possible by the generous bequest of the late Peter Wentworth Russell, a farmer, businessman and passionate reader.

Administered and presented by the State Library of NSW on behalf of the estate, the prize aims to celebrate, recognise and encourage humour writing, and to promote interest in this genre.

As a proud and long-time supporter of Australian literature, the State Library of NSW and its Foundation are thrilled to announce this unique new prize as part of its large stable of awards and prizes it administers, including the NSW Literary and History Awards and the National Biography Award.

Works nominated for the 2015 Prize must have been first published in between 1 January 2013 and 31 December 2014, and commercially available within this period.

Authors whose works are nominated must be Australian citizens or persons holding permanent resident status. h t t p : / / w w w. s l. n s w. g o v. a u / a b o u t / awards/humour_award/ Entries close 6 February Josephine Ulrick Literature & Poetry Prizes 2015 Among the richest poetry and short story prizes in the world, the Griffith University Josephine Ulrick prizes in 2015 are worth $30,000 in total prize money.

As a leading educator of creative writing, Griffith University strongly supports the future of Australian poetry and fiction by funding and administering these prestigious prizes, in agreement with the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Foundation for the Arts.

Literature Prize 2015

competitions • competitions • competitions For a short story up to 2000 words: First Prize: $10,000 Second Prize: $5,000 Poetry Prize 2015 For a poem up to 100 lines: First Prize: $10,000 Second Prize: $5,000 http://www.griffith.edu.au/humanitieslanguages/school-humanities/newsand-events/josephine -ulrick-prizes General enquiries: creativewriting@ griffith.edu.au Entries close 13 February 2015 National Biography Award The State Library of NSW invites entries for the 2015 National Biography Award.

The National Biography Award was established to encourage the highest standards of writing in the fields of biography and autobiography and to promote public interest in these genres. The Award’s growth and success recognises and reflects the continuing interest in stories about ordinary people with extraordinary lives.

The award is administered and presented by the State Library of NSW on behalf of the award’s benefactors, Dr Geoffrey Cains and Mr Michael Crouch AO. In 2012, the total prize value was increased to $31,000 – $25,000 for the winner and $1,000 each for shortlisted authors – making it the richest national prize dedicated to Australian biographical writing and memoir.

The 2014 award went to Alison Alexander for The Ambitions of Jane Franklin (Allen & Unwin).

The 2015 winner will be announced at the State Library of NSW in August 2015.

Entry forms and guidelines are available online at www.sl.nsw.gov.au/ nationalbiographyaward If you have any queries, please email awards@sl.nsw.gov.au or telephone 02 9273 1582 Entries close 20 February 2015 Bragg UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing From the furthest reaches of the universe to the microscopic world of our genes, science offers writers the kind of scope other subjects simply can’t match. Good writing about science can be moving,

funny, exhilarating or poetic, but it will always be honest and rigorous about the research that underlies it.

To recognise the best of the best, UNSW Press has established an annual prize for the best short non-fiction piece on science written for a general audience.

The Bragg UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing is named in honour of Australia’s first Nobel Laureates William Henry Bragg and his son William Lawrence Bragg and is supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

First prize is $7000. Two runners-up will each receive a prize of $1500.

Winning entries will be included in NewSouth’s anthology, The Best Australian Science Writing. Other shortlisted entries may also be included at the discretion of the editor. http://www.newsouthpublishing.com/ scienceprize Entries close 31 March.

Parenting Express Short Story Writing Competition Once again parents and carers are invited to submit an 850 word story for publication in My Child and Parenting Express.

All entries must be unpublished, creative nonfiction (no poetry) with a theme relating to pregnancy, birth or the first five years of raising a child, and aim to move the reader emotionally, whether to laughter or to tears. $1000 first prize. http://www.parentingexpress.com/ Short-Story-Competition.htm Entries close 31 March 2015 Text Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing Awarded annually to the best manuscript written for young adults and children, the Text Prize has unearthed extraordinary, multi-award-winning novels and launched international publishing careers.

The Text Prize will be awarded to the best manuscript written by an Australian or New Zealander for young adults or children of primary school age. Both published and unpublished writers of all ages are eligible to enter with works of fiction or non-fiction. The Prize is judged

by a panel of editors from Text Publishing and the winner receives a publishing contract with Text as well as a $10,000 advance against royalties. The 2014 Text Prize was won by Brisbane writer David Burton for How to be Happy . https://www.textpublishing.com.au/ text-prize Submissions open: 2 March 2015 Submissions close: 2 April 2015 2015 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize Entries are now open for the 2015 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. The 2015 Jolley Prize is worth a total of $8,000, with a first prize of $5,000 and supplementary prizes of $2,000 and $1,000. The Jolley Prize will be judged

by ABR Deputy Editor Amy Baillieu, poet and academic Sarah Holland-Batt, and author Paddy O’Reilly.

Entries must be a single-authored short story of between 2000 and 5000 words, written in English. Stories must not have been previously published or be on offer to other prizes or publications for the duration of the Jolley Prize.

Entry costs AU$15 for current ABR subscribers or AU$20 for nonsubscribers. Entrants who are not current ABR subscribers can choose to subscribe when submitting their story for the special combined rates listed below: Online entry + ABR Online subscription $50.00 Online entry + Print subscription (Australia) - $95.00 Online entry + Print subscription (NZ and Asia) - $140.00 Online entry + Print subscription (Rest of World) - $155.00 ABR will publish the three shortlisted stories in the 2015 September Fiction Issue and announce the overall winner at a special event during the 2015 Brisbane Writers Festival. https://www.australianbookreview.com. au/prizes/elizabeth-jolley-story-prize/ jolley-prize-online-entry Entries close 1 May

northerly magazine | january - february 2015- 25

WRITERS’ GROUPS

Alstonville Plateau Writers Group Meets 2nd Friday of the Month. 10am to 12pm. All genres welcome. Contact Christine 66288364 or Kerry 66285662 Ballina/Byron U3A Creative Writing Meets at 12.00pm every second Wednesday, Fripp Oval Ballina. Contact Jan on 0404 007 586 or janmulchany@bigpond.com Ballina Creative Writers workshops meet 3rd Thursday of month at 10.00am 12.30pm @ Richmond Hill. Focus is on memoir, family history, poetry, personal development and spirituality. Contact janmulcahy@bigpond.com Ph. 0404 007 586 Bangalow Writers Group Meets Thursday at 9:15am at the Bangalow Scout Hall.

Contact Simone on 0407 749 288.

Bellingen Writers Group Meets at Bellingen Golf Club on the 4th Monday of the month at 2:00pm. All welcome. Contact Joanne on 6655 9246 or email jothirsk@ restnet.com.au Casino Writers Group Meets 3rd Thursday of the month 4pm at the Casino Library. Contact Brian on 02 6628 2636 or email briancostin129@hotmail.com Cloudcatchers For haiku enthusiasts, a ginko (haiku walk) is undertaken according to group agreement. Contact Quendryth on 02 6628 3753 or email quendrythyoung@bigpond.com Coffs Harbour Writers Group Meets 1st and 3rd Thursday of month, 10:30am12pm. Contact Lorraine on 02 6653 3256, email lmproject@bigpond.com or visit www.coffsharbourwriters.com Coffs Harbour Memoir Writers Group Share your memoir writing for critiquing.

Monthly meetings. Contact 0409 824 803 or email costalmermaid@gmail.com Cru3a River Poets Meets every Thursday at 10:30am, venue varies, mainly in Yamba. Contact Pauline on 02 6645 8715 or email kitesway@westnet.com.au Dangerously Poetic writing circle Meets 2nd Wednesday of month, 2pm-4pm.

At the Brunswick Valley Community Centre. Contact on Laura, 6680 1976 or visit www.dangerouslypoetic.com Dorrigo Writers Group Meet every 2nd Wednesday from 10am-2pm. Contact Iris on 6657 5274 or email an_lomall@bigpond.com or contact Nell on 6657 4089.

Dunoon Writers Group Writers on the Block. Meets 2nd Tuesday of month, 6:30pm-8pm, at the Dunoon Sports Club. Contact Helga on 02 6620 2994 (W) 0401 405 178 (M) or email heg.j@telstra.com Federal Writers Group Meets 3rd Saturday of month in Federal. Contact Vicki on 02 6684 0093 or email ganden1@gmail.com FAW Port Macquarie–Hastings Regional Meets 1pm on last Saturday of month, Maritime Museum, Port Macquarie. Contact Joie on 02 6584 3520 or email Bessie on befrank@tsn.cc Gold Coast Writers Association Meets 3rd Saturday of month, 1.30pm for a 2.00pm start, at Fradgley Hall, Burleigh Heads Library, Park Avenue, Burleigh Heads, Qld. Contact 0431 443 385 or email info@goldcoast-writers.org.au Kyogle Writers Group Meets 1st Tuesday of the month 10:30am at the Kyogle Bowling Club. Contact Brian 02 6624 2636 or email briancostin129@hotmail.com Memoir Writing Group Meets every month at Sunrise Beach, Byron Bay. Contact Diana on 02 6685 5387 and 0420 282938 or email diana.burstall@gmail.com Nambucca Valley Writers Group Meets 4th Saturday of month, 1.30pm, Nambucca. Contact 02 6568 9648, or nambuccawriters@gmail.com Poets and Writers on the Tweed Meet weekly in the Tweed Heads Library, Tuesdays 1.30pm to 3.00pm. Poets, novelists, playwrights, short story writers all welcome. Fun group meets for discussion, support and constructive criticism. Free membership. Phone Lorraine 07 55909395 Taree–Manning River Scribblers Meets 2nd Wednesday of month, 9.00am– 11.30am in Taree. Call first to check venue. Contact Bob Winston on 02 6553 2829 or email rrw1939@hotmail.com WordsFlow Writing Group Meets Fridays in school term, 12.30pm–3.00 pm, Pottsville Beach Neighbourhood Centre, 12a Elizabeth St, Pottsville Beach. Contact Cheryl on 0412 455 707 visit http://words-flowwriters.blogspot.com

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NORTHERN RIVERS WRITERS’ CENTRE 2015 MEMBERSHIP DISCOUNTS BOOK WAREHOUSE 107-109 Keen Street Lismore 02 6621 4204 BOOK WAREHOUSE 26 Harbour Drive Coffs Harbour 02 6651 9077 BOOK WAREHOUSE Shop 6 Ballina Fair Ballina 02 6686 0917 BOOK WAREHOUSE 70 Prince Street Grafton 02 6642 6355 BOOK WAREHOUSE Settlement City Port Macquarie 02 6584 9788 BOOK WAREHOUSE Yamba Fair, Treelands Drive Yamba 02 6646 8662 BYRON BAY LONGBOARDS 1/89 Jonson Street Byron Bay 02 6685 5244 CLIX COMPUTER CENTRE 3/3 Marvel Street Byron Bay 02 6680 9166 COLLINS BOOK SELLERS Unit 3. 9 Lawson Street Byron Bay 02 6685 7820 CO-OP BOOKSHOP Southern Cross University Lismore 02 6621 4484 CO-OP BOOKSHOP Coffs Harbour Education Campus, Hogbin Drive Coffs Harbour 02 6659 3225 DOLPHIN OFFICE CHOICE www.officechoice.com.au Cnr Fletcher & Marvel Streets Byron Bay 02 6685 7097 DRAGONWICK PUBLISHING www.dragonwick.com 02 6624 1933 EARTH CAR RENTALS 18 Fletcher Street Byron Bay 02 6685 7472 EBOOKS NEED EDITORS www.ebooksneededitors.com 15% discount to NRWC members Call 02 6689 5897 for further details HUMBLE PIES Pacific Highway Billinudgel 02 6680 1082 KEEN STREET COMMUNICATIONS www.keenstreet.com.au 50 Bulmers Rd Hogarth Range 02 6664 7361 MARY RYAN’S BOOKSTORE Shop 5, 21 -25 Fletcher Street Byron Bay 02 6685 8183 NORPA www.norpa.org.au PO Box 225 Lismore 02 6621 5600 PAGES BOOKSHOP Park Beach Plaza Coffs Harbour 02 6652 2588 THE BOOKSHOP MULLUMBIMBY 39 Burringbar Street Mullumbimby 02 6684 1413

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