Northerly july august 2014 by Byron Writers Festival

in this issue ... 02

Noticeboard

A Word From the Director

04 Speaking at Festivals Marele Day 04

Residential Mentorship

Writing Over The Water

William Lane 06

Feros Care

Five Writers, Five Towns, Five Days

Grassroots Writers’ Weekend

Leonie Henschke 09

Visual Storytelling

Asphyxia 10

The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka

Clare Wright 12

Unheard Of!

Poe Ballantine 13

Book Review: David Finkel

Jeni Caffin 14

Publishing: Traditional or Digital?

Amy Andrews 15

Poetry Page

Lisa Gorton 16

SCU page

Book reviews

Lisa Walker 18

Kids’ page: The Minnow

Tristan Bancks 19

From the Reading Chair

Laurel Cohn 20 Workshops 21

Opportunities & Competitions

Writers’ Groups and Member Discounts

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. LOCATION Level 1 28 Jonson Street, Byron Bay POSTAL ADDRESS PO Box 1846 Byron Bay NSW 2481 PHONE 02 6685 5115 FAX 02 6685 5166 EMAIL info@nrwc.org.au WEB www.nrwc.org.au NRWC COMMITTEE CHAIRPERSON Chris Hanley VICE CHAIRPERSON Lynda Dean SECRETARY Russell Eldridge TREASURER Cheryl Bourne MEMBERS Jesse Blackadder, Fay Burstin, Marele Day, Lynda Hawryluk, Anneli Knight, Cathy Tobin, 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: - Finola Wennekes

northerly magazine | july - august 2014- 3

Noticeboard LINER NOTES PRESENTS DAVID BOWIE’S ZIGGY STARDUST A Spoken Word Tribute For the first time, the Festival turns up the volume as the literary cabaret Liner Notes hits town. One of Melbourne’s best-loved spoken word events, this is a poetic tribute to a classic album, song by song. A stellar line-up of writers, poets and musicians explore their personal connection to that glam ham of wham, bam and thank-you-ma’am – David Bowie. Join us as we salute Bowie’s masterpiece of Sturm und Drag, on which he introduced the world to the leper Messiah from outer space, Ziggy Stardust. Featuring special guests Andrew Denton, Missy Higgins, Andy Griffiths and Benjamin Law with Maxine Beneba-Clarke, Asphyxia, Omar Musa, Luka Lesson, Emilie Zoey Baker and Sean M Whelan. MC Michael Nolan will deliver a potted history of Bowie and his flame-haired alter-ego, and the live Liner Notes band will rip through the hits like a stiletto caught on satin flares. Yes, they’ll likely take it all too far, but in their defence, boy can they play guitar...

Come for an unforgettable night of stories, spoken word and songs, as we celebrate a starman surely even Richard Dawkins believes in. Friday 1 August, 8pm at The Byron Theatre, $40 www.byronbaywritersfestival.com Sponsored by Christopher and Lynda Dean

Rob Oakeshott in conversation with Kerry O’Brien Presented by Mary Ryans. Thursday 3rd July @530pm Byron Community Centre, 69 Jonson St, Byron Bay Bookings Essential, please call: 02 66858183

Members News Elizabeth g. Arthur appeared at the 2014 Bellingen Readers’ and Writers’ Festival on the platform with Dominic Knight and Angela Meyer, discussing Men’s Vs Women’s Issues in Fiction with references to her recently released novel, The Women’s Den.

4 - northerly magazine | july - august 2014

Committee Report

he Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre is delighted to welcome three new members to its committee of management. Anneli Knight, Teresa Walters and Cathy Tobin bring a range of experience and expertise to the centre. Anneli is a freelance journalist and writer, and was previously a staff reporter at the Sydney Morning Herald. She co-authored the book Flirting with Finance, has a PhD in creative writing and has taught journalism and writing at UTS, NMIT and for the NRWC. “The Writers’ Centre has always been a favourite place for me in Byron - it’s like walking through the back of CS Lewis’s wardrobe as you travel up those stairs from bustling Jonson Street to a room lined with books. I’m very excited to be part of the committee that is shaping this organisation for the future.” Teresa is a communications and arts marketing specialist having worked in cultural organisations for the last 13 years including the Brisbane Festival and Arts Centre Melbourne. She previously practised as a solicitor and then public relations consultant in the tourism industry in Cairns and London. “I am excited about joining the team at this time with a new

director and fresh ideas and am looking forward to making a contribution from my experiences,” she said. Cathy is a well-known local media worker, arriving in Byron 12 years ago from a stint in Darwin, where she worked as a Media Advisor to the NT Government. Cathy now provides strategy, writing and project management services to the public and private sector. Describing herself as a ‘perpetually frustrated wannabe’ creative writer, she says: “I’m honoured to join a team of accomplished and passionate people who are committed to building the region’s writing culture.” In welcoming the three new members on board, NRWC chair Chris Hanley said they would broaden the skills range of the committee. “They are also important in terms of us ensuring we have the energy, skills and commitment for the long-term future of the NRWC.” he said. Russell Eldridge

A word (well several) from the Director

Dear members, This month, we are thrilled to open the pages on the 18th Byron Bay Writers Festival Program. For the past five months life in the office has been a whirlwind, liaising with authors, publicists and publishers, making logistical arrangements for the Festival, and so much more. While there is still an enormous amount to do, we feel a wonderful sense of achievement in bringing you a rich array of writers, thinkers and creative souls from across Australia and around the world. Festival Founder Chris Hanley captures our mood well. ‘The 2014 Program offers enormous depth. Curating any landmark international literary festival requires knowledge, dexterity and passion. Certainly, this year’s Festival signposts Byron Bay as a destination literary event.’ Securing celebrated UK author, Jeanette Winterson, is undoubtedly a 2014 Festival highlight. She is considered one of the world’s Top 10 writers to see live and will deliver the Festival’s Keynote Address. US author Poe Ballantine will discuss his lauded true crime memoir and will be joined by esteemed international writers including Geoff Dyer, David Finkel and Susie Orbach. In addition, we are proud to have

engaged the contribution of one of the world’s most highly regarded creative writing professors, himself an author, Robin Hemley. After nine years as Director of the prestigious Nonfiction Writing Program at The University of Iowa, Hemley has taken a new position as Writer-in-Residence and Director of the Writing Program at Yale-NUS. Naturally the team see this as a modest Writers’ Centre coup… Of course, it wouldn’t be a festival without food. This year, you can travel the Indian spice route with fêted chef Christine Manfield at a Literary Lunch at the Byron at Byron resort. Or share your Friday supper with iconic broadcaster and journalist Mike Carlton and Geoff Dyer, who has been described as ‘possibly the best living writer in Britain’. Join them as Chris Hanley leads a conversation and reflection upon war and remembrance, 100 years on. You can dust off your Ziggy Stardust outfits to enjoy one of Melbourne’s best-loved spoken word events as Liner Notes comes to Byron for the first time. A literary cabaret, this year the line-up includes among others Andrew Denton, Missy Higgins and Benjamin Law.

some of Australia’s favourite authors led by Andy Griffiths. Plan to take the family to a Byron Bay Festival first as Asphyxia unfolds her magical world of marionettes in one of the marquees. Special mention too this edition for the most successful launch ever held at the NRWC. In May, Victor Marsh brought The Girl in the Yellow Dress to the Centre along with nearly 100 of his friends cheering him on. It’s a spiritual memoir wrapped in a coming-of-age story and is already garnering praise. We look forward to seeing our NRWC members at the 2014 Writers Festival. Your ongoing support helps make it all possible!

Edwina Johnson

Kids Big Day Out adds an extra dimension on Sunday and includes

northerly magazine | july - august 2014- 5

How Writers Feel about Speaking at Festivals

ands up those who enjoy humiliating themselves in public? That’s what a writer runs the risk of every time he or she agrees to talk at a festival. You try to appear calm and relaxed, to listen while fellow panellists deliver witty, hilarious, deep, meaningful and thought-provoking speeches – all without reference to notes. In actuality you’re wallowing in the fear that when it’s your turn you’ll either be struck dumb or reduced to gibberish. It doesn’t end there. After the panel session, when it comes time to sign books, there’s the embarrassment of the short queue. The Famous International Author at the signing table has a queue of fans that reaches to the horizon, while there are only two people in yours and one of them is your cousin. Readers are introduced to writers through their books. They admire the power and originality of the work, its humour, its ability to capture this or that, the larger than life characters. The reader expects the writer will be the same, but when they meet the author, they discover that, like the Wizard of Oz, it’s just a little person

by Marele Day

with a big megaphone. When I was writing the Claudia Valentine mysteries, festival audiences expected to meet a feisty redhead who thought nothing of venturing alone into the tunnels under Sydney, whose hangovers disappeared in the excitement of the day, who could eat a greasy hamburger for breakfast and take it all in her long stride, for whom smart comments and witty repartee flowed naturally off the tongue. Writers are not their heroic characters. Writers are people who sit happily alone for days, weeks, months. The most exciting thing that happens is coming up with an image that exactly captures the essence of a sunset or an old shoe; finding the perfect place for a comma. The heroism of writers is to appear in public at all, especially at a high octane event like a festival. We don’t necessarily expect stand-up comics, actors etc to also write books, but we expect writers to be performers. Perhaps writers could have someone who does the talks and public appearances for them, like warlords who sent doubles into battle while remaining safely out of the line of fire. Writers have agents who do battle

on their behalf with publishers, why not a proxy for the public appearances? I’d be very happy for Cate Blanchett or Rachel Griffiths to stand in for me. I’d even write the dialogue. So why do solitary, introspective writers run the risk of humiliation by agreeing to appear at festivals? Because not to be asked is even worse. Being invited to take part is validation of what you do, that people want to listen to what you have to say, even that what you write has the ability to change lives. If only you could just say yes, and not actually have to go. But writers do keep putting themselves out there, despite their natural inclinations. The reason they do so is more primal than the pressure to promote a new release, to sell a few books. It’s the sense of being part of a community. A festival returns the storyteller to the tribe, the philosopher to the public forum. It is a place where both writers and readers can celebrate, indulge our mutual passion for stories, language and ideas. (an earlier version of this appeared in The Australian.)

Residential Mentorship

ast week, four emerging writers from across the region spent a challenging five days polishing their manuscripts as part of the annual Residential Mentorship for the Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre. They worked under the experienced eye of international award-winning author, Marele Day. “I was impressed by the generosity these writers displayed in giving and receiving feedback, which has allowed all participants to enrich their own writing,” said Ms Day. Polly Jude from Ballina, whose contemporary young adult fiction, Breathe, is about Cinderella in group therapy, stated that involvement in the Residential Mentorship gave her 6 - northerly magazine | july - august 2014

ownership of her writing. Clarence Valley writer, Zacharey Jane, fine-tuned her second novel, The Patchwork Man, a futuristic thriller about religion, body parts and the genetics of love. She said, “A week of total immersion in my manuscript, under the guidance of such a skilled author as Marele Day, was a luxury that few writers can afford and for which I am very grateful.” Sue Reynolds of Stokers Siding worked on The Clay Wife, a novel about demanding power and discovering the cost. She found the opportunity of working face-toface with three other writers under Marele’s guidance to be invaluable.

Diana Jarman, from Kyogle, author of historical novel, Ollie &PompeyTwo, which focusses on king, country and postage stamps, said, “I rediscovered my characters through group discussion and Marele’s innovative insights.” The Residential Mentorship is a key program of The Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre and provides a followup consultation with a publisher from Allen and Unwin at the forthcoming Byron Bay Writers Festival in August. This is the fourteenth year of the program which has supported nowpublished writers such as Jessie Cole, Lisa Walker, Jessie Blackadder, Helen Burns and Sarah Armstrong.

Writing Over The Water

by William Lane into a different program, won me a place at Varuna that year. Having Over The Water long-listed, however, convinced me that I could finish the work, which at that time still had some way to go. I stayed with this novel because there was something in it I needed to say. The years passed, and this rather tyrannical sense of urgency – I have to tell this – never waned. Without this impetus, I don’t think I could have finished my book. I could not let it go until I had learnt how to write it. I had to do the story justice. This is the reason that it took time. Voice, point of view, character, plot, dialogue, description, atmosphere, genre, dramatic tension, rhythm, a sense of form – how many things does someone trying to write a novel have to think about?! And then there’s getting published . . . when I finally did my homework in regard to a potential publisher for the manuscript (I am often late with my homework), it found a place with Transit Lounge.

t seems every story is revealed in its own time and in its own way. Over The Water was in no hurry to show itself. When my first novel is launched at Byron Bay Writers Festival this year, it will have been twenty years in the making. For the first few years I carried the story in my head. I did not think I could write it. The desire to write my novel eventually overcame the fear of failing it. I began to court the characters and the several storylines that form the plot. Almost everything proved elusive, and often I simply had to let time pass before the answer to some storytelling problem grew clear. So the cliché came true – in writing this story, time was my best friend. Sometimes I asked someone to read the manuscript. One such time was in 2001, when I entered the manuscript in the Residential Mentorship program run by the Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre. Being awarded a place in this program proved to be a turning point in the story’s development. For a start, being

recognised for the program gave me confidence. Then, during the mentorship, I developed new perspectives on how the story might unfold. I was lucky enough to have Inez Baranay as mentor. She suggested several new directions the manuscript might take, what might be further emphasized, and what might be downplayed or omitted. I was also fortunate to have three very talented writers chosen for the same program. The four of us went on to form a writers’ group, and although I had to leave the Northern Rivers area soon after, many remarks made in the group, perhaps in relation to other people’s work, stayed with me. Over time, I would see how observations made on writing in the group might apply to my writing, or to Over The Water in particular. I felt supported, and it was invigorating to meet people equally engaged with the nitty-gritty of writing. Every year or so I would rework, or polish, my book. In 2010, a draft of the novel was long-listed for a program run by Varuna. It turned out that another novel manuscript of mine, The Horses, which I had entered

What I love most about the novel form is that not only can it accommodate and give shape to the passing of time, it loves time. It wants more and more time. The characters, the plot, the setting and the atmosphere, all want to acquire more of a past, more of a future. I suppose it should be no surprise, then, that a novel might take time to write. It is an honour to be able to launch Over The Water in Byron Bay. It feels as if the story has come home. Launched on Friday 1 August at 4.00pm, New Philosopher Marquee.

William Lane is a writer based on the north coast of NSW. His novel, Over the Water, will be launched at this year’s Festival. William will be appearing at the Byron Bay Writers Festival in Sessions 9 and 37.

northerly magazine | july - august 2014- 7

FEROS CARE | REWRITING THE BOOK ON THE WAY WE AGE throughout NSW, Queensland, Victoria and Tasmania.

yron Bay Writers Festival sponsor Feros Care is an award-winning aged care organisation re-writing the book on the way we age. Spreading its enthusiastic “Get Bold, Not Old” ethos, Feros Care will maintain its important presence at the Byron Bay community event from 1-3 August, taking advantage of the opportunity to promote its appealing message about ageing with vitality and independence. Feros Care opened its first aged care facility in Byron Bay and proudly continues its tradition of contribution to the vibrant community with its ongoing sponsorship of the annual Byron Bay Writers Festival. Today, Feros Care is a leading, national, not-for-profit, aged care provider offering world-class quality care and lifestyle support services for seniors throughout Australia. Along with its Byron Bay low care residential village, Feros Care has grown to include two other innovative aged care residential villages in the beautiful northern rivers region. The organisation also boasts an exciting range of innovative home care services based on client needs and individual assessment. These services are giving seniors more independence and choice in their later years. Feros Care services are available

8 - northerly magazine | july - august 2014

Embracing and celebrating a bold attitude to growing older, Feros Care is focused on creating a more positive ageing culture. Its innovative programs are based on the Byron Model of Care, which supports seniors to be as healthy, independent, at home and connected to friends and family for as long as possible. Feros Care uses the latest technologies to assist seniors remain in the driver’s seat when it comes to their health and lifestyle. In line with the organisation’s emphasis on keeping seniors connected to their families and communities, Wifi is an integral part of each Feros Residential Village. Feros Care CEO Jennene Buckley said an ever-increasing life expectancy around 83 years -means 65 is no longer considered old. “For many, reaching the age of 65 means another 20 more or so years to live, learn, love and prepare for retirement. Staying both healthy and independent, in our own homes, while remaining connected with family, friends and the community is the goal,” she said. Feros Care’s public support of the Byron Bay Writers Festival reflects its strong philosophy of community involvement. The organisationalso promotes its “Get Bold, Not Old” ethos through the popular Feros Heroes program. This program recognises those independent, community-minded seniors who show dignity and respect for others while promoting healthy ageing. Byron Bay Writers Festival Director Edwina Johnson said she was delighted that Feros Care had confirmed their Platinum Sponsorship of the Festival once again. “Feros Care came on board as a sponsor and critical funding partner of the Festival in 2013. As a fellow not-for-profit organisation, doing such important work in our local community, our values are aligned and this makes the partnership even more significant,” she said.

“The Feros Marquee will again host an eclectic mix of some of the best authors and thinkers from overseas and Australia. It is only with the ongoing support of an organisation such as Feros Care that we are able to host this popular event each year.’

The Byron Bay Writers Festival brings together interesting minds across many genres including poets, songwriters, politicians, historians, comedians, journalists, biographers, literary and mass market fiction writers, bloggers and tweeters. Feros Care was the dream of Byron Bay resident, George Feros, who rallied the community around his bid to build an aged care facility for his parents in the 1970s. Since then, the organisation has built a valued community partnership with many families in the region. Feros now boosts the beautiful Feros Care Byron Bay Residential Village (40 low care beds), Feros Village Bangalow (64 high care beds), Feros Village Wommin Bay (70 low and high care beds) and an extra services 16 bed cottage in the grounds of Feros Village Bangalow. All residential facilities offer short-term care. Respite options include residential respite (high or low care overnight, weekend and weekly), a day care respite and in-home respite, where care is delivered in the home of the care recipient or carer. Recognised with international and national awards for innovations in care models, technology and positive living, culture and leadership, Feros Care has developed a proven track record in pioneering new services and ensuring that all its care and service packages are reliable, flexible and affordable. Included in the Feros Care range of lifestyle options assisting healthy ageing, the organisation also provides quality care and lifestyle assistance to seniors with a range of Feros LifeLinkTelehealthcare, this is assistive technologies and solutions which are providing seniors throughout Australia with the tools to be independent and safe at home.

S R E T I R W FIVE FIVE TOWNS S Y A D E FIV B

yron Bay Writers Festival and the Australia Council are proud to present a literary roadshow: Five Writers, Five Towns in Five Days.

On board the tour bus will be award winning writers Craig Sherborne, Nick Earls, Samuel Wagan Watson, Ashley Hay and Zacharey Jane.

Before the internet, before television, before the written word, we had stories. Writers were called storytellers, messengers and troubadours, and travelled from place to place bringing news and spinning yarns.

Byron Bay Writers Festival Director Edwina Johnson says at each location the writers will take to the streets to ply their craft, sharing stories and secrets with book lovers of all ages. ‘We are thrilled to be able to share some of our finest Festival guests across the Northern Rivers region. We are grateful to the Australia Council whose funding of this tour makes it possible.’ The authors will be accompanied on their quest by exciting young film maker Tim Eddy and blogger extraordinaire Angela Meyer, recording and recounting as they go. ‘For those who can’t join in the fun on location, we will provide a vivid and exciting account of the journey online.’

In this spirit, the Byron Bay Writers Festival is proud to announce Five Writers, Five Towns in Five Days, a literary roadshow starting at the Queensland border and ending when the words run out.

‘Of course, each day ends at the pub for a few hours of literary mayhem and… well, that would be giving away the ending,’ says Johnson ‘you’ll have to join the five writers to find out for yourself!’ The towns where the literary roadshow will tour are: Tweed Heads Friday 25 July Lismore Saturday 26 July Coffs Harbour Sunday 27 July & Monday 28 July Grafton Monday 28 July Lennox Head Tuesday 29 July For more details visit www.byronbaywritersfestival.com or call 1300 368 552. Angela Meyer is an author, editor and literary journalist. In May a collection of her flash fiction was published by Inkerman & Blunt, titled Captives. A link to her Five Writers blog will be available at the end of July: http://byronbaywritersfestival. wordpress.com/

Photo: Cristina Smith

northerly magazine | july - august 2014- 9

Inaugural

Grassroots Writers’ Weekend by Leonie Henschke

hat made the Grassroots Writers’ Weekend so different, so special? Workshops, handson experience; ‘grassroots’, as the title said. It wasn’t trying to be a big-name festival. There are so many of those around now and I’ve attended Ubud in Bali, Adelaide, Byron and Bellingen, and recently, Yamba. All inspire, entertain, challenge, and make you think, “Yes, I can have a go at that.” But Dorrigo was special and this type of weekend has an important part to play in the support and development of writers. It was getting down to basics. You sat down and wrote, wrote for the whole weekend with writing prompts from an array of presenters and facilitators. Everyone joined in. Everyone was on the same playing field. “There was no ‘green room’,” commented one participant. We were all writers, some extensively published, some aspiring, some just putting down memories for the grandchildren. And it was affordable, just $25 for the whole weekend, with a little extra for the dinners! The weekend was stimulating, friendly, well-organised, inspiring. There were 50 – 60 people attending – plus a few day trippers on the Saturday. Most people attended the dinners on Friday and

10 - northerly magazine | july - august 2014

Dorrigo April 2014

Saturday evening. The activities were concentrated in a wing of the Dorrigo High School so there was constant intermingling and chatter. Iris Curteis and her small team from the Dorrigo Writers’ Group carried out the organisation with flair and friendliness and everything went like clockwork. The workshops covered a wide range from Dialogue, Characterisation, World building, Magic Realism and Getting Started to conversation groups on travel writing, journaling and interviewing. There were very strong take-home messages in all the sessions and extensive opportunities to let your pen flow and create! Well-known author, Marele Day pulled it all together with her keynote session on the Friday evening, introducing the theme, ‘we are here to share.’ The Saturday night readings had the room bonded together in laughter. Pieces ranged from an hilarious chicken coop story to a very clever Facebook romance, to poignant poems of loss and love. There was no shyness, no judgement, just appreciation that people were sharing their words, crafted into stories. My group was doubly blessed. Great writing stimulation and stunning

accommodation – we didn’t want to leave. We shared a beautiful stone house set in the rolling green hills of Dorrigo. It had a log fire where we gathered around, mellowed by a few glasses of wine, reflecting on the experiences shared. We even wrote in that peaceful, bucolic setting when we went home each evening. And there was the incident with the bull walking into the car…but that’s another story… So it finally came to an end on Sunday afternoon and we sadly, but carefully, negotiated the bends of Dorrigo mountain down to the coast, heads spinning with ideas, ready to write and write and write…or at least think about it! At the concluding session, the questions had been asked, “Who will take the baton? Who will stage it next time?” And Coffs Harbour Writers’ Group in a burst of enthusiasm and general wellbeing and euphoria from a wonderful weekend said, “Yes, we’ll do it!” So next year, come on down to the beautiful Coffs coast on the weekend closest to Anzac Day for Grassroots Writers’ Weekend 2015.

by Asphyxia

Visual storytelling

he Grimstones is a junior fiction series about a girl with a secret, a mother who sews garments lined with love and warmth, a grandfather who heals people with his magical concoctions, and a baby boy with three legs. The seeds for The Grimstones were sown in Guatemala several years ago. On the street I saw a dreadlocked man, Sergio Barrios, performing with marionettes. I was captivated, for despite the rough appearance of his puppets, they were so expressive that they seemed to be alive. After the show, I stayed, and begged Sergio to share his skills with me. Lucky for me, he did. The first puppet I made was Bronwyn, and she looked just like me. Performing with Bronwyn was like playing with dolls, which it seems I’ve never entirely grown out of! I’d been a circus performer for many years, but decided puppetry would be my way forward. Although my audiences loved Bronwyn, she was too small for some of the larger stages I performed on. I started thinking about another puppet show, something bigger, something gothic… In my teens I was an ardent goth, and it seems that’s also something I haven’t entirely grown out of. Enter The Grimstones. I started scultping with clay, just to see if I could make the kind of face I envisaged for my puppets, with big dark eyes, and my rough versions turned out even better than I dared to hope. I was hooked. I spent the next eighteen months holed up in my loft studio, creating my family of puppets and their miniature home. While I’ve always loved making things, I’ve never had any special training in the making of miniatures, so I had to invent as I went along. I wanted every aspect to be lifelike, and to look as if it had been created a hundred years ago. I knew audiences wouldn’t be able to see each detail from the stage, but I didn’t want the illusion to be shattered after the show, when they might come in close and discover it was all made of foam and cardboard. I wanted them to find more: titles of books, details of spells, little notes tacked to the walls…

Now, having toured extensively throughout Australia and overseas, those very same puppets and handmade details are featured in beautiful photographs in the pages of my book series, The Grimstones. The books are Martha Grimstone’s journals, her story told in her own words, with drawings and collage to accentuate the photographs. Martha longs to cure her Mama of the lake of tears she cries every night, and she longs to get into her grandfather’s apothecary to learn all there is to know about the casting of spells. Martha ends up hatching a plan that is a bit too big for her, that may have disastrous consequences… The stories explore themes of family love and acceptance, which are important to me as a deaf artist. The central message is about accepting those who we consider different, and finding our own unique way in the world. The Grimstones also represent my love of books, the awe I feel about a simple pile of paper pages which, when read, take us to amazing and places and allow us to be immersed in another world. For me, the creation of another world, and extending an invitation to audiences and readers to join me in it, is the greatest satisfaction. Come along to one of my sessions to meet Martha Grimstone in the flesh, as she makes a cameo appearance with her journal. I’ll be talking about the journey from stage to page, writing tips and self-expression, and what’s next for me as a writer and artist. I hope to see you there.

Asphyxia is a deaf artist, a puppeteer and an author. Her book series, The Grimstones, is based on the acclaimed theatre show. Sessions 74 and 96.

northerly magazine | july - august 2014- 11

Preface The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka By Clare Wright

t was William Withers who first generated the myth of the Australian goldfields as an exclusively masculine domain. In his popular History of Ballarat, first published in 1870, Withers made arresting statements like this: the diggers were young and wifeless for the most part, to see a woman was an absolute phenomenon, the diggings were womanless fields. But Withers’ unequivocal descriptions referred to the earliest days of the gold rush, that is, late 1851 and early 1852. It is a historical nicety conveniently overlooked by subsequent historians, eager to romanticise the digging life as one of unparalleled freedom and independence. Such writers—there are many but we can finger Henry Lawson and practically anyone else coming out of the Bulletin and Lone Hand school of radical nationalism—sought to contrast the humdrum existence of their staid metropolitan lives with the bravery, adventurousness and risktaking of the pioneers, symbolised by the classless (and womanless) diggers. In a lecture to the Australian Natives Association in 1889, John Francis Deegan, who had arrived at Ballarat as a nine-year-old boy in 1854, spoke of the diggers as bearing a free and manly gait, and an aspect of self-reliance, begotten of their untrammelled life and independent habits. It was a muscular heritage that the inhabitants of an imperial metropolis on the verge of a depression longed to claim. But is it still socially relevant to maintain the false premise of masculine independence and autonomy, particularly when the voices of women who were actually there can readily drown out the likes of Withers? A mature nation, surely, can continually

12 - northerly magazine | july - august 2014

resift, reconsider and reflect upon the implications of its creation stories. There is a great body of international literature demonstrating the prevalence of women at the forefront of agitation for social and political change: in the American Revolution, the American Civil War, the French Revolution, the 1848 uprisings across Europe, the Spanish Civil War, the Russian Revolution and recent Latin American protest movements. Such works have charted the ways that traditional bounds of female and civic identity are transformed in times of upheaval and conflict. Eureka, by contrast, has dovetailed with other Australian legends (Gallipoli, the bush, the 1890s shearers’ and maritime strikes) with supposedly all-male casts and symbols of national potency to

create an impermeable veneer of masculine dominion. Geoffrey Blainey was right to conclude that ‘Eureka is like a great neon sign with messages that flick on and off with different messages for different people on different occasions’. Yet the Eureka beacon has never before been used to illuminate issues of gender bias in our collective bedtime stories. By examining the lives of women on both sides of the Stockade, we can begin to build an intricate portrait of the Ballarat goldfields in 1854. Instead of a rough and ready outpost of bachelors out for a quick buck, we find a heterogeneous and largely orderly community of ‘working families’ intent on building a new life of freedom and independence. Ultimately, as we’ll see, it was the intimate, ambitious matrix of expectations, associations, disappointments and frustrations that culminated in the brief but bloody moment that aired miners’ grievances and elicited official reprisals. Women’s presence does not just add colour to the picture; it changes its very outline. My aim is not to enter the usual interpretive controversies that have raged about Eureka for over 150 years: which side was to blame for the violence and bloodshed; whether the rebellion was a parochial tax revolt by small business or a republican insurrection; or whether Eureka even deserves the press it gets as a key landmark in Australia’s democratic traditions. Nor am I looking to settle old empiricist scores: who fired the first shot; who amputated Lalor’s shattered arm (historian Robyn Annear has called the rebel leader an octopus, given how many people claim their ancestor lopped off

For Eureka is a story that is already so familiar and so emotive to Australians that successive political giants have seen to fit to either make triumphant speeches on its anniversary or pointedly scorn its relevance. On 3 December 1954, Victorian Premier John Cain Snr addressed the seventy thousand people who’d flocked to Ballarat for the threeday centenary celebrations. From Eureka came the crusading spirit against injustice, he bellowed to the delirious crowd. On 3 December 1973, unveiling the newly restored Eureka Flag in Ballarat, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam hitched the spirit of Eureka to his own progressive agenda. The kind of nationalism that every country needs, intoned Whitlam, is a benign and constructive nationalism [that] has to do with self-confidence, with maturity, with originality, with independence of mind. In 2004, national sesquicentenary events were incommoded by then Prime Minister John Howard’s steadfast refusal to fly the Eureka Flag at Canberra’s Parliament House. It is neither my intention to undermine the centrality of the Eureka story in Australia’s collective imagination, nor to elevate it beyond the ideological rubric of historical authenticity. But following women such as Catherine Bentley and Anastasia Hayes to their Eurekas has forced me to ask questions that will have wide-ranging repercussions, reaching beyond the picturesque frame of the Eureka narrative into the cultural and political heartland of Australian national identity. For the values and attributes that the Eureka Stockade has come to represent—independence, sacrifice, collectivism, unity, autonomy, dignity, dissent, resistance, self-government, the pursuit of democratic rights and freedoms in the face of oppression and humiliation—have largely been considered exclusively masculine aspirations and have been represented accordingly in our public culture. But times have changed. Public accountability to a diverse Australian

community requires socially inclusive models of institutional and popular representation. Knowledge about women’s intrinsic role in the Eureka story will, from a concrete point of view, require our cultural and educational institutions to admit, respect and regard the political legacy of Australian women. Beside the Eureka Obelisk, in the Eureka Stockade Memorial Park in the heart of Ballarat, a plaque is dedicated to the honoured memory of the heroic pioneers who fought and fell on this sacred spot in the cause of liberty and the soldiers who fell at duty’s call. The names of twentyeight white men follow. Today, more than 150 years after the Eureka rebels raised their voices to demand justice and equality for the disenfranchised miner, there is a new plaque in Ballarat, at the entrance to the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka. Its language, thanks in part to discussions arising from the research for this book, is more inclusive:

We honour the memory of all those who died during or because of the events at the Eureka Stockade on 3 December 1854—the men known to us, who are recalled below, as well as the other men and women whose names are unrecorded. There is progress. But still we have to keep reminding the cultural gatekeepers that women were there too, and that their stories are just as vital, just as valid, and just as vibrant as the stories of the men. This is not an ‘either…or’ predicament. It is a ‘not only…but also’ situation. We don’t have to choose. We just have to respect the historical record. Is it possible to imagine a nationalism that is not racist, sexist and otherwise xenophobic? I do, and one of the reasons I can is because I have a picture in my head— indelibly inked there through my research—of men and women from many lands standing together beneath a new flag. The flag bore the symbol of the constellation that located and united them in their new home—the Southern Cross. That flag was almost certainly

sewn by the women of Ballarat. Under that flag the men of the Ballarat Reform League swore an oath to stand truly each other and fight to defend their rights and liberties. Women were at that meeting too. At the time, they called that flag ‘the Australian Flag’. And not only men, but also at least one woman, died beneath that flag in defence of some basic democratic principles: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press. My goal, as I have said, is not to undermine the potency of the Eureka story in Australia’s collective imagination. I have no desire to scoff at its centrality to our national mythology, or to deride those who have devoted themselves to the task of building a legend. Rather, I want to reinvigorate the story: to bring it with renewed relevance to a modern, diverse community for whom talk of ‘democracy and freedom’ should automatically raise questions of gender equity. The great gift of Eureka—its beauty and, in a sense, its terror—is that the story of women’s effort, influence and sacrifice is both politically correct and historically true. Preface courtesy of Text Publishing.

Photo: Virginia Cummins

his limb); the exact topographic location of the Stockade site; whether Scobie was murdered by a blow to the head with a shovel or an axe; even who sewed the flag.

Clare Wright is a Melbourne-based historian. Her second book, The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, won the Stella Prize. Clare will be appearing at the Byron Bay Writers Festival in Sessions 1, 28, 43 and 87.

northerly magazine | july - august 2014- 13

Unheard Of! by Poe Ballantine

rose at four in the morning skipping breakfast and drove the ninetysix miles to Rapid City to catch a twin prop to Denver where I skipped lunch and caught another twin prop to Toronto. They don’t like jets much in Toronto, the signs are everywhere. After running a formidable maze of airport security and showing my passport nineteen times (but not having a cattle prod rammed up my ass as they love to do to you in the States), I missed the hired driver holding up a sign with my name on it. At long last, after finding the guy holding up the sign with my name on it, I made amends and he cheerfully drove me down into the heaving and prosperous metropolis, the largest city in Canada, to a rented three-bedroom suite (cheaper than a hotel for the seven people staying there) on Bathurst, where I met my good pal and collaborator Dave Jannetta, whose documentary based upon my memoir Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere had been accepted at the Hot Docs International Film Festival. We did the crab handshake (pinkie fingers interlocked, elbows pointed at the sky), embraced, voiced many exuberant Italian-sounding greetings (Cazzo! Sotto Voce!) and immediately descended into a whirlwind of taxis, tankards and goblets of alcohol, hobnobbing with the cognoscente, and, of course, documentaries: Swedish, Danish, Romanian, Canadian, American, Ukrainian, and Belgian (dark as their chocolate), one of which, Ne Me Quitte Pas, won the filmmakers’ choice. Perhaps because I was skipping meals (starvation, the great aperitif ) or because I would not normally be able to enjoy fancy food without someone else paying for it, every street in Toronto looked like a page torn out of Larousse Gastronomique. C’est Magnifique! I did not have a bad nibble in my four days in “Queen City,” but three restaurants stood out, Aunties and Uncles, a beatnik diner where every item on the menu comes recommended 14 - northerly magazine | july - august 2014

(I had the Croque Monsieur) but you have to wait since the seating is minimal, the Momofoku Noodle Bar (can three words fit together more delectably?), a pinnacle of Japanese fusion, and Parts and Labour, “the philosophy of Paris,” where we dove into pile after pile of toothsome morsels, mussels, mushrooms, pasta, salmon, steak, whole-fried cauliflower and on and on all washed down with fine wine and followed by shots of Canadian rye and coffee. Dave had already screened his world premiere twice before I got there, and he’d met with teams of distributors, agents, TV moguls, and other visual media prospectors. I arrived for the third screening, Friday night, as Ed Sullivan might’ve called it: The Really Big Shew. The house was packed and the theater was hot, just as its festival advertised. Dave, as he had for his second screening, fled the theater within ten minutes, too nervous to watch. I’d seen a number of rough cuts of Love and Terror but this was my first big screen exposure. The movie was gorgeous. My eyes grew damp from pride. At the Q&A after the showing there were more questions than Dave and I had time to answer and we were pursued by interrogators up the exit aisle and out into the lobby, Dave deftly fending off admirers, me briefly engaged (though we decided not to marry) with a philosophy professor from the University of Toronto. All week, pre- and post-screening, the reviews were enthusiastic. Kurt Halfyard from twitch.com was so taken with the film that he invited us for an interview at Friar and Firkin, a pub on St. John street, where we downed three pints each and talked like apes on Dexedrine for two hours straight. Several times we were recognized on the street. One fellow came up to us and declared: “I couldn’t get your movie out of my head.” Another fellow shouted from ten feet away that seeing the movie had provoked him to buy my book, which was a tremendous

achievement in my view since I was generally regarded in Toronto (and everywhere I go) as “unheard of.” My unheard of status and the delight with which so many reviewers seem to take in proclaiming that they’ve never heard of me (while I’ve been invited to speak at dozens of universities including Stanford and Iowa, published five books, submitted to fifteen interviews in the last six months, won several awards, and consistently hit best-of lists) is puzzling. As an experiment, Dave asked his first audience of two hundred how many people had heard of Poe Ballantine. Not a hand went up. At his second showing with a larger turnout he asked the same question and one gentlemen admitted he thought he had heard of me. At the last screening, two people among nearly four hundred raised hands. Exponential progress! A few traveloguoids (as I have just coined the term): I never saw the legendary Torontosaurus Rex; Canadians are better behaved than Americans and were therefore patient when I pointed out that their hockey team, the Toronto Leafs, should be called the Toronto Leaves (though in fairness, one member of that hockey team can easily be called a Leaf, whereas it’s awkward to call a single player from the Red Sox either a Sox or a Sock); and I almost dodged my strangebeer-wine anaphylaxis until I got a two a.m. pint pulled from a draft handle with a baby’s head on it at a dandy dive bar in Kensington called Ronnie’s Local 069— should have known better! Besides Love and Terror, my favorite documentary among the ten or eleven I managed to see was The Nose: Searching for Blamage, a Dutch film about Alessandro Gualtieri, a hilarious rogue perfumist who thoroughly inhabits and speaks eloquently about the lonely world of art. In one scene at a perfume convention he approaches a woman representing the most expensive

perfume in the world at a hundred and fifteen thousand pounds a bottle. “ Can I smell it?” Alessandro wants to know. “It’s not too expensive to smell?” “Of course,” says the rep, dabbing a splash on his wrist. He sniffs. “It’s a no good,” he says. “Smells like a cat poop.” The Nose didn’t win anything, and neither did we, but what should anyone expect at their first

premium film festival stacked against 197 of the best documentaries in the world? This was only the beginning. We were thrilled and honored to be included, feted, pampered, flocked after, and discussed, and I’m tickled that at least eight hundred people in Toronto now, if only faintly, know who I am.

Join Richard Fidler for a recorded broadcast of his ABC Radio program Conversations. Richard’s guest is the gifted iconoclastic US author Poe Ballantine. when: Friday 1 August, 5.00pm - 6.00pm cost: $10, www.byronbaywritersfestival.com

Denver-born Poe Ballantine is the author of five books, most recently the memoir Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere. Poe will be appearing at the Byron Bay Writers Festival. Sessions 4 and 49.

eni Caffin Book Review by J

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE David Finkel I have a love affair with Radio NationaI. I listen to it while driving: the conversations and the interviews and prepared programs fuel the voices in my head and so many sessions choreographed for the Byron Bay Writers Festival and Ubud Writers and Readers Festival have sprung from a phrase, a notion, a spark ignited by a Radio National moment. In 2009, driving home with my head full of what ifs and imaginary conversations, I was brought totally, shockingly into the present by an extraordinary encounter between RN’s Paul Barclay and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, David Finkel. I was so drawn in that I was compelled to stop my car on Coolamon Scenic Drive, a universe away from what was being discussed and yet I felt that nothing mattered more in that moment than to listen and to know. Such is the power of an empathetic interviewer and such is the power of a superlative writer and speaker. I listened. I cried. I tried and tried to bring David Finkel to the next BBWF and when that failed, and I had moved on, I repeated the attempt for the UWRF. His schedule wouldn’t permit, but please allow me one minute’s glee for the liberty I took as outgoing director of the BBWF when I extended yet another invitation, to this year’s Festival, on the strength of his new book. He accepted. I will be on the other side of the world. Please, be my eyes and ears: listen to this man.

The book that was the subject of that initial conversation I heard was The Good Soldiers. During the war in Iraq, David Finkel lived with a troop of American soldiers during the surge of 2007. The content cannot help but be sensational, but this is reporting of the most heartbreaking, savage and moving sincerity. The trauma, the brutality, the war within as real and violent and gut wrenching as the war without, as people, ordinary people, are forced constantly to make inconceivably complex judgements and decisions, to operate within a value system that bears no relevance to the terrifying and constantly changing circumstances in which they find themselves. And yet such is the ingrained decency of most of his subjects that the desire to be a good soldier, to be honourable, compels them to daily, hourly, in every minute of combat, confront the fear, combat the terror, and endure. Until they can endure no more. We know the names, or at least can nod in recognition, when we hear the generals, the commanders in chief, the decision makers speak their pronouncements and make their weighty judgements and speeches. David Finkel gives voice to those whose stories would otherwise be untold. In his follow up book, Thank You For Your Service, he literally follows up on the lives of some of those soldiers whose nightmare experiences on deployment he had shared in Iraq. The individual narratives are harrowing: the overall statistics are

staggering. Of the 2 million Americans who have served in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq thus far, post traumatic stress disorder is believed to affect between 20 and 30 per cent. And of course it is not the “good soldiers” alone who are affected. Finkel lays bare the trauma and despair experienced by the returning veterans’ partners and families. It’s hell, on a loop. The legacy of physical and psychological wounds is horrendous and the courage and determination needed by each individual to simply survive another normal American day is unimaginable to me. This is not a story with a happy ending. There is no ending. It is, however, a story that needs to be witnessed. The book is highly visual: and what we see is disturbing. The brain being slammed against the skull, the soldier burned to death in a Humvee after it is blown up, the fist sized holes in doors and gouges in walls as servicemen express their frustration on their environments rather than their families. I wish I could say that there is a message of hope at the end of the book. Perhaps in the Disney version, there would be. As an eternal Pollyanna, the hope that I take away is that no matter how grim the story, there will always be a fearless chronicler with integrity and compassion to record it. David Finkel is such a chronicler: I urge you to acknowledge the price these men and women have paid. Listen to their stories.

northerly magazine | july - august 2014- 15

• Publishing Tips •

TRADITIONAL OR DIGITAL? by Amy Andrews

’ve been in this business for ten years now so you could say I’ve learned a thing or two over the last decade – a decade that has seen the publishing industry evolve into an entirely different beast from when I first started my publishing journey. Throughout the years people have asked my advice about writing and getting published and whilst the industry might have changed, my advice has not. First and foremost - be smart. Approach writing and publishing as you would any new venture. Do your research. If I had a buck for everyone who told me they’re writing a book but can’t tell me which publisher they’re targeting, I could afford to put away my keyboard and live in Margaritaville. If you want to write for a hobby, good for you. But if you’re serious about getting published either traditionally or digitally or through the many indie/ hybrid options available today then you need to be smart about it. I only ever targeted Harlequin Mills and Boon. I decided if I was going to ever actually succeed in my goal as published author I wanted it to be with the romance publisher. So, who are you targeting? Don’t know what I mean? What genre is your book? Who’s publishing similar stuff? Read that stuff! Who’s your favourite author? Who publishes them? Read their stuff! What’s your favourite genre, what books have you enjoyed in that genre, who publishes them? Read their stuff too! Find out. Be smart. Do your Research. The good news is it’s so much easier now to target a publisher. Nowadays publishers have websites and often blogs where they tell you exactly

what they’re after. You can submit electronically and a lot of them take online pitches. So haunt publisher websites. Use social media to your advantage. Like their facebook pages, follows their blogs, stalk them on twitter. Be familiar with what they want. Next, go to conferences and industry functions like festivals where publishers abound and are often there to take pitches. Yes, they’re there to see you! You can actually get face-toface with your dream publisher and/ or agent and talk to them about your story. Speaking of agents…do you need one? This is another question I get asked a lot. And the answer to that is - it depends. Agents can be just as hard to score as a publishing contract and with so many publishers open now to submissions from unagented manuscripts does it even give you an advantage? Again, it depends.

writing organisation. Your state writer’s centre (actually join them too!) should have contact details for these groups and the knowledge, advice, camaraderie and networking opportunities you get from them will be invaluable. But please, join the appropriate one. Do not join a more literary group if you’re writing Firefly fan fic or vice versa. You need to find your tribe. I found mine in Romance Writers of Australia. And I would not be published without the things I learned through them. In summary – be smart, do your research, approach publishing with your business hat on, not your creative one. Because writing and publishing are two different things and finishing the book is just the first step. Surviving in the industry, thriving in the industry, is a whole different ball game.

What do you want from an agent? Is it editorial input? Or to get your book in front of a publisher? Do you want a contract negotiator? Or someone looking after your career? Because you don’t necessarily need an agent for any of them and I can tell you, having been around a bit and talked to a lot of writers, you won’t necessarily get them with an agent either. So my advice re agents is, again, be smart, do your research. Ask around – it’s a small industry and authors are a chatty bunch. But mostly, be clear about why you want one and what you want if you get one. Remember, you’re handing over 15%, so you need to be satisfied you’re making a good investment. Lastly, and I cannot recommend this highly enough, join a professional

16 - northerly magazine | july - august 2014

Amy Andrews will appear at the Festival at 12.45-1.30pm, Sunday 3 August on the panel Be Still My Beating Heart: Writing Romance hosted by local comedian Mandy Nolan.

• Poetry Page •

EMPIRICAL I What is a place other than where things happen? A factory, the train line curving off to cross the motorway – between them this falling away of ground – two or three acres where for years the council trucks brought building wreckage – head-high mounds of shattered concrete, brick shards, piping and steel mesh – monuments of the abolished city out here where grass succeeds itself –

The Byron Bay Writers Festival is proud to support the Indigenous Literary Foundation. Look out for the ILF donation boxes throughout the Festival.

II Ground I have seen falling in an instant from the window of a passing train – Now I walk into its wreckage, its tricks of scale – rust weed and wild fennel selfseeding at the level of my eye. Over me split seedheads fray with light. Everywhere couch-grass is setting its pale roots down. I have not seen it yet – a wilderness to me which is to itself indifferently flourishing. The road will come through here – III I have walked out of my life again – for what? Out from the cutting’s side storm water unfolds through almost standing pools down under oil dulled with seeds and insects. Ruinable. What the future will keep of this place will be its innocence –a hunger as undeliberate as rain. No memory here but stones of the house collapsing up through dirt. And it is happeningover and over though not to itself, being to itselfa storm perpetually in the front of light – IV Enough sky here to watch where clouds come in over the motorway on slow dissolves of rain. Rain climbs the hill towards me, striated light, and with single cries some wrens like the reverse of something breaking scatter up out of the grass – The rain is first a prickling sound and then vacancy – single, incandescent, immense – strikes blow after blow down out of the air. There is a right to protest and I am not consoled.

i Lisa Gorton lives in Melbourne. Her second poetry collection Hotel Hyperion features storm glasses, museums and a mythical space hotel. Shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards, it was selected in ABR and the Age as a book of the year. Lisa will be appearing at the Byron Bay Writers Festival. Sessions 33, 60 and 61.

– Lisa Gorton northerly magazine | july - august 2014- 17

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

The Apple Isle by Mike Snee

Sonnet 2 In the ocean is where I found Buried deep within the sound Of my heart, lying there The thought of you for light to bare A love so sweet, pure, true Comes not without the likes of you An angel’s cue – beneath his spell Cupid rings the wedding bell Will it stand? Will it last? It all did take me very fast These tempest tides that pull our strings And dream of what this life may bring Only time, my friend, will tell From where this blessed arrow fell. Joshua Challis

18 - northerly magazine | july - august 2014

There is no way of knowing whether the apple began its journey as flotsam or as jetsam. Either way, it ended up afloat, adrift on ocean currents, tossed about by monstrous swells and buffeted by roaring winds. Its smooth red skin turned salty and scorched and wrinkled. Passing seabirds flew down and pecked at it. Curious fish swam up and nibbled it. Eventually the apple was as weathered and worn as the Ancient Mariner. The first barnacles held on precariously. Sea worms wriggled on its puckered skin, burrowed into its briny flesh. A crab lost at sea clambered on and claimed it for his kingdom. Straggly strings of seaweed snagged on crusty shells, and trailed behind like mermaids tresses. Time passed. Driftwood and kelp tangled together. The carcasses of whales and the skeletons of fish stuck fast and bleached and rotted in the sun. The first seed sprouted. And then another. A spider blew in, and spun a web. A crescent of sand. A coconut. Birds nested and shat and screeched. Turtles crawled up the sand and laid their eggs. Coloured spikes of coral sprinkled the shallows. Waves rippled on the shore. The Apple Isle was born.

• Book Reviews •

NEST by Inga Simpson Reviewed by Lisa Walker ‘She was trying to capture the wild – the essence of leaf, flower and bird.’ Jen, the protagonist of Inga Simpson’s book, Nest is an artist, a drawer of birds. After a relationship breakup and her mother’s death, Jen returns to the town she grew up in. There, she regenerates her patch of land and draws the many birds attracted by her birdbath.

nature writer and her love of wild places comes out through her character’s observations. The birds and the bush are described in warm detail – ‘The limbs of the brush-box tended to horizontal, like a reaching arm, and their leaves were large and flattish. They not only held the sunlight, but emitted a glow of their own, as if illuminated from within.’

Jen leads an isolated life. With the exception of her young pupil Henry, who she is teaching to draw, she has little social contact. It is through Henry that she learns a girl from the townhas gone missing. The loss of Caitlin brings back memories from Jen’s past and another missing child, Michael.

Jen is a complex character whose relationship with Henry is touching and authentic. A lover of nests and tall trees, she learned to climb into the canopy with her former partner, Craig - ‘… once up in the mist, among salamanders and lichens and liverworts barely seen by another human being, she had found her tree legs.’

The mystery of the missing children provides a dark undercurrent to Jen’s simple life on her property. As we get to know Jen we learn more about the hurts she is holding inside. Returning home requires her to come to terms with her own history, in particular the disappearance of her father. Revelations fall one on top of the other as the story unfolds.

Like Inga’s previous novel, Mr Wigg, Nest is a gently told book, written in simple, evocative prose. Despite the missing children, it is optimistic and full of a childlike sense of wonder at our world. The story plays out at a steady pace with the lost children adding a page-turning backbone. Reading ‘Nest’ left me with a hankering to curl up a tree and have the wind blow me to sleep.

One of the delightful things about this book is the way it immerses us in the natural world. Inga is an accomplished

DEEPER WATER

by Jessie Cole Reviewed by Lisa Walker

‘They say every hero has to leave home, but what those first steps are like I’m yet to know,’ reads the first line of Jessie Cole’s second novel, Deeper Water. Jessie draws us at once into the distinct and unusual world of her protagonist, Mema. Already we can intuit that this is a novel about awakening. Mema lives with her mother in an isolated valley in northern New South Wales– a place of green hills and flooding creeks. Home schooled and naive for her age, Mema has an almost pagan attachment to her land, to the creek that runs through it and the animals –native, feral and domestic – which it supports. Men are always passing through Mema’s

world, only the women stay. Her four brothers and various fathers are long since gone, swallowed up by the wider world. But when she rescues a stranger whose car has been washed off a bridge, just like that everything changes. Even though the stranger, Hamish, is the most ‘passing through’ of men he captures Mema’s interest. A tentative longing builds for Hamish and what he represents – the outside world. Despite the beauty of Mema’s creek-side home, it is no rural idyll. Their local town has an ugly side and the ‘knowns and the unknowns’ in Mema’s past form a darker undercurrent to the story. Mema’s relationship with Anja, a wild girl who grew up sleeping in a tree hollow,also adds tension. Threatened by the addition of Hamish to their tight friendship, Anja creates ripples that spread in unpredictable directions. Like Jessie’s first book, Darkness on the Edge of Town, this novel is distinctive for

its careful observations that bring us into Mema’s world. Mema listens to the chickens’ ‘morning clucks’ and imagines her siblings’ fathers ‘washed up like survivors of a shipwreck, lost and beaten by the waves.’ The writing is candid about the pain of first love and longing. But this is not only a story about sexual awakening; Deeper Water also explores environmental themeswith a light-handed touch. Hamish, an environmental consultant, clashes with Mema over his views on cats and cane toads. Gender relationships are also questioned–when seeing Anja, Hamish comments on her beauty.But Anja is many things, Mema thinks, and beautiful is only one of them. Deeper Water is a sensuous portrayal of what happens when innocent desire clashes with the hardened edges of the wider world. Mema will linger in your mind for some time after you close the pages.

northerly magazine | july - august 2014- 19

• Interview •

The Minnow Tristan Bancks interviews Diana Sweeney

Local author Diana Sweeney’s debut novel The Minnow has been variously described by reviewers as ‘extraordinary’, ‘unconventional’ and ‘breathtaking’. The story of a teenage girl dealing with pregnancy, the loss of her parents in a devastating flood, and the peculiar meanderings of her own mind won the 2013 Text Prize. Here, Diana shares the journey of bringing her distinctive tale to life. intricately woven plot. How did you balance the writing and plotting of the story? I didn’t plot the story - if, by that, you’re assuming I knew where it was going. I never knew where it was headed. I don’t write a ‘first draft’ in the strict sense. I edit my work from the beginning, every day. I rewrite it, alter it, then grow it. EVERY DAY. I try not to, but it seems to be how I work. So, when the book was completed, it had gone through hundreds of drafts. I didn’t attempt to structure it. The structure evolved. It was amazing that it worked.

Where did The Minnow begin? The Minnow began with a dream and I learned to trust Tom’s character. It felt as though Tom wrote it. How long did the book take to write and what have you written prior to this? It took five years. Prior to The Minnow, I wrote a PhD and had a few papers published in academic journals. The main difference between the two (academic vs fiction) is that one is a drudge and the other is a complete joy. But, to be fair, the academic writing taught me an incredible amount about the writing process, specifically the editing. To spend a day, or a week, working on a few paragraphs only to be told by my supervisor that they were offpoint (meaning I’d have to delete them), instilled in me the importance of ‘the disregarded’. It’s hard deleting stuff. But it makes for better writing. The story is thematically rich with strong characters but also an 20 - northerly magazine | july - august 2014

Did any particular Northern Rivers locations influence the setting of the book? The setting is not from here, it’s imagined. But, of course, living in this incredible place for 32 years [had an influence], with the space and the countryside and the strange comparisons between the months of never-ending rain (and floods) and the shock changes in the landscape when the rain disappears and it’s dry and brown. All these things certainly set a comfortable ‘knowing’ place from where I could write.

authenticity). And I adore books where I feel lost in the sadness or strangeness, like The Girl Who Stopped Swimming (Joshilyn Jackson), Oxygen (Carol Cassella), The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (Aimee Bender) and The Memory Keeper’s Daughter (Kim Edwards). Aside from a publishing contract, what did winning the Text Prize do for you and your story? Winning the Text Prize has opened a wonderful door. And there’s nothing like having your own editor! OMG. Jane Pearson (my editor) loves The Minnow - truly, madly, deeply - and really ‘hears’ Tom’s voice. She knows deep in her bones if something sounds inauthentic, and she would ask me, in the gentlest way possible, whether I thought something sounded ‘right’. She never pressured me to alter anything. And she was completely open to my reasonings, were I opposed to something. It was a wonderful trust thing.

Did you write outside or take photographs of locations or take long walks? How did you bring the world of the story to life in such palpable detail? I wrote at home. I lived it in my head. As for the detail, I just kept thinking ‘don’t tell, describe’. Were there any particular writers or books that influenced you? Yes, I read a lot, so there are probably a million influences. But I love the single mindedness of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels (I never doubt Reacher’s

Diana Sweey is a university lecturer and a fashion model. This is her first novel. You can catch Diana and Tristan at this year’s Byron Bay Writers Festival.

• From the reading chair •

So you think you can write, but can you rewrite? Editor Laurel Cohn challenges writers to embrace the rewriting.

ow, I have to confess up front that I’ve never watched an episode of the competitive dance competition that rates so highly on TV, So you think you can dance? But I like the shape of the question and the underlying challenge it implies. Not in terms of challenging a writer’s ability or self-belief, but in terms of highlighting the importance of asking yourself the right questions in order to develop as a writer. And the crucial question here is, you may think you can write, but can you rewrite? Successful authors often note that the art of a good book lies in the revision process. Getting your story down (whether fiction or non-fiction) is a great achievement, but the real work begins with rewriting. And rewriting. And more rewriting. I don’t mean to make the process sound like a laborious, dull chore – revising, or ‘re-visioning’, can be incredibly rewarding. There are, in a sense different types of rewriting that every manuscript goes through. After you’ve wrestled your story down on to the page (this may take one or two drafts), you can begin the process of developing it, of honing, shaping, rethinking, improving, rewriting. In the workshop I’ll be running for the Byron Bay Writers Festival, So you think you can write?, we’ll be working with various strategies, tips and tools that are useful in the manuscript development phase. Learning how to revise your own work is an important part of the craft of being a writer, but underlying this, is the ability to see yourself as separate from your work. In the long journey from first draft to publication, a book is shaped by not only the writer’s ideas, but also by the feedback the writer receives along the way from friends, family and fellow writers, and also from professional readers such as assessors, mentors,

editors and publishers. Sometimes too much feedback can be confusing, especially when you receive conflicting ideas about how the manuscript can be improved. And sometimes a critique can feel devastating because of the way it is delivered. It is important to choose your prepublication readers carefully. Ask around, check testimonials for professional readers you will be paying, and find out the feedback styles of commissioning editors and publishers you may wish to approach. The pitching competition at the Byron Bay Writers Festival provides a great opportunity to see how some publishers engage with writers about their work.

second novel rejected by the publisher who took on her first novel with comments about the need to rethink certain characters. After getting over the temporary dint to the ego and pushing through her initial resistance, she took the ideas on board, made further changes, presented the manuscript to a different publisher and was signed up for a two-book deal. So embrace the rewriting challenge, and let those fingers do the dancing. LAUREL COHN is an editor and mentor passionate about communication and the power of narrative to engage, inspire and challenge. Since the late 1980s she has been helping writers develop their stories for publication.

www.laurelcohn.com.au

Of course feedback is only going to help you if you are willing and able to digest it and take it on board. Some writers do themselves a disservice by getting defensive about their work and arguing the case. That is the writer’s prerogative, but being closed to critical feedback will not support the development of their skills, or the progression of their manuscript, particularly if they are employing the services of an editor or assessor. Other writers are unhealthily bonded to their work and take criticism of their manuscript personally. This can be paralysing for a writer and aside from being emotionally exhausting, an inability to see your writing as separate from yourself will hamper your development as a writer. Of course we all want to be told that our writing is fabulous, but more importantly we want to be told the truth (which is why friends and family may be unreliable readers!). Committed and successful writers understand that receiving feedback is an opportunity to rewrite, and that in the rewriting process, the work improves and is taken to another level. It doesn’t mean that experienced writers find it easy to receive negative feedback, just that they can move on from it in a constructive and timely manner. A friend of mine had her northerly magazine | july - august 2014- 21

• Workshops • VENUES: Green Building Centre, 1 Brigantine St, Arts & Industry Park, Byron Bay SAE Institute, 373 Ewingsdale Rd, Byron Bay Byron Sport & Cultural Complex, Ewingsdale Rd, Byron Bay Byron Community College, East Point Arcade, Jonson Street, Byron Bay (across from Woolworths)

MONDAY 28 JULY

10.00am – 4.00pm Brave New World of Book Publishing Roz Hopkins Green Building Centre, $100/$85* Options abound in the brave new world of book publishing – ebook, print-ondemand, DIY publishing, traditional publishing. These terms trip off today’s aspiring author’s tongue – but how do you know what’s right for you? This hands-on workshop will help you unpick the options and explore how they might work for you, bearing in mind the type of person you are, the style and genre of your writing, and your motivations for writing and getting published. We’ll consider the key elements involved in creating a professional book – one that stacks up just as well as a book published by one of the major publishing houses. And we will explore in detail the business end of publishing, ensuring that you understand what’s involved in distributing and promoting your book, and the financial return you might expect. Every project is different and in this workshop we will base our discussions around attendees’ individual writing projects, so that each participant can expect to leave with an overview of how to move forward with their book. 1.30pm – 4.30pm Understanding Your Creative Rights Sally McPherson SAE Institute, $20/$15* Copyright is a quintessential entitlement for creators and authors. What is it? Who owns it? What rights do you have if you do own it? For how long? And significantly, how do you derive commercial benefit from it? An intangible and perpetuating asset, copyright is also a powerful creative authority vital to the livelihoods of writers, artists and performers.

22 - northerly magazine | july - august 2014

This seminar will traverse the fundamentals of copyright (including joint authorship), and importantly, examine options for copyright owners to make money from its authorised use. How can a work be commercialised, exploited and protected simultaneously? And what are the implications of the internet and social media? How can a 1968 statute possibly offer any protection?

TUESDAY 29 JULY

10.00am – 4.00pm So You Think You Can Write Laurel Cohn Byron Community College, $100/$85* So you think you can write, but can you rewrite? Successful authors often note that the art of a good book lies in the revision process. Getting your story down (whether fiction or non-fiction) is a great achievement, but the real work begins with rewriting. And rewriting. And more rewriting.

10.00am – 4.00pm Write to the Bone: Turning tragedy into triumph Mandy Nolan Byron Sport & Cultural Complex, $100/$85* For the last 30 years comedian and writer Mandy Nolan has been using her personal struggles as her creative resource. Nolan believes that it is in the magic of the everyday, the humdrum of the mundane where some of the most profoundly human insights lie sparkling amongst the dross of success and achievement. In her one-day workshop, Nolan will encourage participants to use their own stories and experiences, and in particular their greatest personal challenges, to inform their writing.

In this workshop, designed specifically for writers with a completed draft of a book-length work, editor Laurel Cohn explores the three key aspects to the art of revision: stepping out of writer mode and into revision mode; identifying the heart of the narrative; and shaping the text to honour the story. Each of these aspects requires a different perspective and particular tools and strategies.

‘I think the most important story that storytellers need to uncover is in fact their own. Whether writing fiction or non-fiction, your own narrative becomes your primary creative touchstone. The trick is being able to pick it up when required and skim it across to the pond. You want to make your stone bounce … not sink!’

Participants to bring: 10,000-word extract from current working draft of their manuscript, preferably the opening plus the synopsis (up to 500 words).

10.00am – 4.00pm Spoken Word & Performance Poetry Luka Lesson SAE Institute, $100/$85* Luka Lesson has facilitated spoken-word poetry workshops in nine countries with poetry aficionados, school students and word beginners alike. His unique style allows writers to harness their own voices and create new work that can be developed further in their own time using the tools Luka so generously provides. Advice is given on generating text, separating the inner creative from the critic, and how to perform with a clear intent and a strong presence. With over seven years of workshop experience, Luka creates a nurturing and safe space for participants and the results are ever inspiring.

Through the day, you will be encouraged to pull back from your work, and then dive deep into the heart of it. Learn how to enhance your underlying themes, hone your voice, structure your story line, pace your narrative and tighten your text. The art of revision is fundamental to the craft of writing. Embrace this and you will improve your chances of publishing success.

10.00am – 4.00pm Writing as Therapy David Roland & Claire Dunn Green Building Centre, $100/$85* David and Claire wish to provide a gentle environment in which they explore ways of using writing to move through difficult emotions, integrate past events, and heighten positive experiences. Life writing creates narrative, and narrative can lead to resolution, by turning the brain’s implicit memories into explicit ones. Exercises will include James Pennebaker’s writing to heal exercises, journaling with a purpose, narrative integration, selfcompassion and gratitude exercises. The presenters, a psychologist and a journalist, are both memoirists, and will share their personal experiences of using writing in these ways. Be prepared to spend a large part of the day writing and giving feedback about your writing process. Your level of skill is unimportant and there will be no pressure to read out what you have written. Please bring plenty of writing materials. You will leave this workshop with a bag full of new writing tools.

• Workshops • WEDNESDAY 30 JULY 10.00am – 4.00pm Getting Published: Insiders reveal how to get your foot in the door Annette Barlow Byron Community College, $120/$100* Annette Barlow is a Publisher with Allen & Unwin. A one-day course offering aspiring writers the opportunity to find out what really goes on inside a publishing house, how publishers make their choices and how to improve one’s chances of publication. The program will include sessions on surefire proposals, editing your first page, opening chapters, how to write a great covering letter and the top 10 reasons manuscripts are rejected. The day will include group sessions along with individual feedback – for this you are required to please send in the first two pages of your manuscript (double-spaced, Times New Roman, size 12) with your name, the title and the genre in the header or footer at least two weeks ahead of the course date. Please send your two pages to info@nrwc.org.au. Please note that Getting Published is targeted at writers with unpublished manuscripts suitable for the adult market; either fiction or non-fiction. 10.00am – 4.00pm Flash Fiction Angela Meyer SAE Institute, $100/$85* Very short stories have been around a long time. Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway all have stories that can be read in a matter of minutes. Australian authors such as Rodney Hall, Josephine Rowe and Paddy O’Reilly have published very short stories. Stories under 1000 words are now commonly referred to as ‘flash fiction’. Other terms include ‘microfiction’ and ‘sudden fiction’. The publication of flash fiction in both print and online has expanded in recent years, as have competitions accepting flash fiction submissions. Angela Meyer, whose debut collection of flash fiction Captives was released in May, provides an introduction to the genre through lessons, examples, and activities. Angela will encourage you to delight in brevity, and allow you to experiment with notions of character, conflict and resolution, and evocation of place and mood, in few words. She will also show you how to polish your short pieces to make them the best they can be. 10.00am – 4.00pm Writing the Story of My Life

Benjamin Law Byron Sport & Cultural Complex, $100/$85* If you’ve ever considered writing about your life – in columns, personal essays or as a memoir – but weren’t sure where (or how) to start, then join this indepth exploration of writing the most important story you’ll ever tell: your own. Learn key techniques for writing about not only yourself, but the people, places, and experiences of your life in a way that remains true to memory and excites readers. Learning outcomes: • how to identify the elements of your life that are most interesting to readers • how to refine and distill your storytelling voice • how to find the comedy in tragedy, and tragedy in comedy • how to stay on task and time-manage the epic task of writing your life on the page • how to write over 15,000 words about your life in a single month – the start of a good memoir, or a collection of magazine columns.

10.00am – 4.00pm Secrets of Travel Writing Claire Scobie Green Building Centre, $100/$85* Blogs, online travel sites and social media have changed the game for professional travel writers. While writers for print media hone new skills to stand out among the virtual crowd, bloggers are learning the craft of traditional journalists. Meanwhile everyone is thinking about their brand, their content and their writers’ platform. But award-winning author Claire Scobie (Last Seen in Lhasa and The Pagoda Tree) emphasises that the aim remains the same: write compelling stories. This one-day workshop will teach aspiring travel writers – or writing travellers – how to navigate through this new world. Whether you’re writing for newspapers, magazines or online, you will learn how to craft an idea into a polished story and how to evoke a sense of place. We will also cover: the range of online options and how to build a following; the use of eye candy; how to hook your reader and how to pitch, revise and structure your work for different media. Filled with plenty of practical exercises, Claire will give you the tools to stay ahead of the game.

THURSDAY 31 JULY

9.30am – 12.30pm Writing for Children Sally Rippin

Green Building Centre, $60/$50* Join prolific children’s author Sally Rippin for a fun and practical workshop on writing for children aged 6–12 years. Discover what it takes to hook your young reader in, keep them turning the pages and make them fall in love with your characters. Find out how to write with authenticity by remembering who you were as a child, and make sure you target the right age group for the story you want to tell. 9.30am – 12.30pm Writing & Place Sophie Cunningham Byron Community College, $60/$50* For most writers, ‘where?’ is the very first question they must ask themselves before they begin. A sense of place – of landscapes both external and internal – is everything, intrinsically linked to voice, story and character. But creating these textures is no easy task. How do you write about places far away without falling back on travel writing? Why is writing about home the hardest thing of all? How can you use history to inform your sense of place? How do you write a place from the inside out? How does using place in fiction and non-fiction differ? This workshop will involve writing exercises, workshopping and discussion of these issues. 10.00am – 4.00pm Getting the Crime ‘Right’ P.M. Newton Byron Sport & Cultural Complex, $100/$85* For many writers getting the crime “right” is an intimidating prospect. This workshop will look at the opportunities that a crime provides. It can work as a framing device for the spine of the plot as well a way to develop character and setting. This workshop will explore three questions: What would be needed to solve this crime? This involves thinking about the elements or legal proofs of the crime – clues, evidence, witnesses, physical material, alibis, motives, means etc? It requires a little research and assembling of the ingredients. How will my characters solve this crime? This involves making decisions about who knows what, who did what, who will discover what, and how they will discover it. We consider what obstacles the characters will face in solving the crime and how to weave the crime into a story and a plot. Why tell the story of this crime? What does the choice of crime tell you about the characters, about the setting of the story? This involves thinking about the

northerly magazine | july - august 2014- 23

Workshops • Opportunities • Competitions crime as more than just a plot device that pushes your characters around a chessboard. The crime should arise out of the characters and the place and be intrinsic to them. 1.30pm – 4.30pm The Situation vs The Story: Getting to the heart of the matter in non-fiction writing Sian Prior Green Building Centre, $60/$50* If you want to craft an authentic, engaging piece of non-fiction writing, you need to do so much more than produce a faithful description of ‘what happened’. But how do you find the ‘story’ at the heart of the ‘situation’ you’re exploring? Leaving stuff out can be even more important than putting stuff in. Whether you call it finding an angle, offering an insight, or arriving at a poetic truth, it’s a task that requires structure, discipline, a clear voice and an empathy with your readers. In this workshop we’ll look at how to convert a bunch of facts into a gripping tale. Sian Prior has been a writer and broadcaster for over 20 years. Her memoir, Shy, was published by Text in May. 1.30pm – 4.30pm Nature Writing Inga Simpson Byron Community College, $60/$50*

“When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world” ~ John Muir. This workshop is ideal for fiction and non-fiction writers with a passion for the natural world, as well as professional writers in environmental fields. You’ll focus on techniques for bringing landscapes, flora and fauna to life for your audience, including: evocative description, effective use of emotion, and the importance of story. You’ll also consider issues such as anthropomorphism, culture versus nature, and the challenges faced when writing with an environmental message. The workshop uses a combination of instruction, inspiring examples of nature writing, practical writing exercises, and plenty of opportunity for group discussion. You’ll come away with a stronger understanding of nature writing – past and contemporary, Australian and international – and a practical toolkit for sharing your love of nature on the page.

24 - northerly magazine | july - august 2014

Opportunities:

Fiction Competitions:

Tasmanian Geographic - Your stories, photos, enthusiasm and ideas are kindly requested! Tasmanian Geographic is a free online digital magazine. They are seeking stories and images of exploration, research, science, adventure, education, mapmaking, documentary filmmaking, ecological toursim, historical musings, museum studies, project updates and more. See the magazine and how to contribute: http://www.tasmaniangeographic.com/

4 July - The 2014 Grieve Writing Competition. First prize of $1,000 (and minor prizes) for a story up to 500 words long (or a poem) on any experience related to the word ‘Grieve’. Full details and online submission: http://www. hunterwriterscentre.org/grieve-writingcomp.html

Momentum Monday - Momentum, Australia’s first major digital imprint, is open to submissions. Momentum accepts submissions weekly on Mondays between 12.00 midnight and 11.59 pm Australian Eastern Standard Time via email only. Momentum is open to publishing fiction and non-fiction in most traditional and non-traditional genres. This includes new and previously published shorter length stories, essays and journalism between 15,000 to 50,000 words, genre novels and non-fiction between 50,000 to 100,000 words and longer and complex narratives of over 100,000 words. Writers can be based anywhere in the world. Details: http:// momentumbooks.com.au/submissions/ HarperCollins’ Unsolicited Submissions Portal - The Wednesday Post. HarperCollinsPublishers ANZ has an online unsolicited submission program, The Wednesday Post. Their goal is to uncover, develop and promote the most outstanding voices writing today. The new portal can be accessed at www.wednesdaypost.com.au and will also link from the HarperCollins homepage. Submissions are accepted every week on Wednesday only. Aspiring authors will be asked to present synopses of their work and the first 50 pages of a manuscript. HarperCollins are looking for writers at every stage of their career, from closet scribes to those who have a history of publication. Adult and YA books are the focus for this initiative, and they will be accepting manuscripts in both fiction and non fiction genres, particularly exceptional contemporary women’s fiction. The Wednesday Post will respond to authors within three weeks. All submissions will be considered for print and e-book publication as well as digital-only publication. www.wednesdaypost.com.au

16 July - The Albury City Short Story Award is now open for story submissions Australia-wide. Stories may be up to 3,000 words. First prize is $1,000 cash. This year there are eight artworks to choose from as story-starters. For further info visit: http://www.writearoundthemurray.org.au/ competition/ 18 July - The Nib: Waverley Library Award for Literature 2014 - This prestigious award offers a first prize of $20,000 plus a trophy. The Award will be presented for excellence in research in the creation of a literary work (in any genre) first published between 1 July 2013 and 30 June 2014. Guidelines and Nomination Forms are available by calling (02) 9386 7709 21 July - Yarram Community Learning Centre Short Story Competition. Open theme. Short stories (1,500-3,000 words). First prize $200, second prize $100. Entry fee $5. Entry forms available by calling (03) 5182 6294. 21 July - Writers’ Unleashed Picture Book Writing Competition - 500 word limit. Open theme. Original picture book manuscripts only. 1st prize $200, 2nd prize $100 and 3rd prize $75. Winners announced at the 6th Annual Writers’ Unleashed Festival. http://shirewritersfestival.weebly. com/competitions.html 31 July - The 2014 Henry Handel Richardson Writing Prize celebrates Richardson and her work and is sponsored by Text Publishing. First prize of $1,500 plus books for a short story or essay up to 5,000 words. Judge: Helen Garner. As the Society aims to stimulate enjoyment, study and general interest in Richardson’s work, any links to her and/ or her work in entries are welcome but not mandatory. Full details: http://www. henryhandelrichardsonsociety.org.au/ ng_competition.html

Competitions • Competitions • Competitions 31 July - Orlando Prize for Short Fiction - is for stories up to 1,500 words and is open to women writers worldwide. First prize is US$1,000 and publication in The Los Angeles Review. Prizes are also offered for creative non-fiction, poetry and flash fiction. http://aroomofherownfoundation. org/awards/orlando/ 1 August - The 2014 Olga Masters Short Story Prize. Offers a first prize of $1,500 for a story of between 2,000 and 5,000 words on the subject of family life in rural Australia. Open and under 21 sections. http://www. olgamastersshortstoryaward.com.au/ 1 August - New England Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Fiction: First Prize: $500, for a story of up to 2,500 words. Open to writers all over Australia, whether published or unpublished. Sponsored by The School of Arts, University of New England. http:// www.newc.org.au/netpcw.htm 31 August - Positive Words Mini Competition - Must contain the word Elvis. Short story of 100 words or poem up to 10 lines. Entry: $1.40 in unused stamps. Prize: Six months subscription to Positive Words. Post entries to: The Editor, Sandra James, PO Box 798, Heathcote, Victoria, 3523 1 September - The Motherhood Short Story Competition - Write a story ranging from 1,000 to 3,000 words, first narrative, about your relationship with ‘Motherhood’. The winning stories will be chosen on the degree of creativity and the novelty of the idea. Strange and unusual ideas are strongly recommended. http://beingfeministblog.wordpress. com/2013/12/25/motherhoodshortstory/

Non-Fiction Competitions: 31 July - The African Film Commission International Screenwriting Competition encourages screenwriters around the world to enter three categories: Africa (focused on stories and people from Africa), Go Green (sustainability and environmental issues) and International (no limits on subject matter or content). The feature length, short and documentary winner in each category will win prizes and a trip to the African Film Conference in Mozambique. http://www.africafilmcommission.org/

community/screenwriting-competition/ 31 August - The Great Aussie Book Prize for an unpublished memoir - a true story centred on Australian family and home. Prize includes print, eBook and audio book publication with a reputable Australian publisher and an Australian agent. Barnardos Australia and Australian Voices in Print are seeking either extraordinary – or wonderfully ordinary – stories that will touch the hearts of Australians everywhere, stimulate reading, and at the same time serve to support our most vulnerable Australian children. The winner of the Book Prize will receive: agency epresentation from Australia’s most renowned literary agent Selwa Anthony and guaranteed print, eBook and audio book contracts from well-known Australian publishers. http://www.barnardos.org.au 1 September - 2014 Scribe Nonfiction Prize for Young Writers - presented by Express Media, in partnership with Scribe Publications. Celebrating longform nonfiction writing of all styles, this prize is a fantastic developmental opportunity for young writers aged under 30. Alongside a cash prize of $1,500, there is also the opportunity to develop the piece with Scribe offering ten hours of editorial time with someone from their editing and publishing team. http://expressmedia.org. au/express_media/prizes-grants-moneyfor-writers/the-scribe-nonfiction-prize-foryoung-writers/

Poetry Competitions: 4 July - Blake Poetry Prize. Presented by the NSW Writers’ Centre and the Blake Society, the $5,000 Prize is named for visionary artist and poet William Blake, and was established to give Australian poets new possibilities to explore religion and spirituality in the twenty-first century. For an unpublished poem or suite of poems up to 100 lines, with a spiritual element. http://www.nswwc.org.au/whats-on/ competitions/blake-poetry-prize-2/

7 July - The 2014 ACU Literature Prize for a poem on the theme: the language of compassion. First prize $7,000, with minor prizes. http://www.acu.edu.au/about_acu/ our_university/catholic_identity/acu_ literature_prize 10 July - Arts Queensland Val Vallis Award for an Unpublished Poem. Named in honour of a distinguished Queensland poet, the Arts Queensland Val Vallis Award is committed to encouraging poets throughout Australia. Now in it’s 15th year, this prestigious prize for an unpublished poem (or suite of poems) of 100 lines or less comes with a total prize value of $4,000. http://www.queenslandpoetryfestival.com 31 July - Bruce Dawe Poetry Prize offers $2,500 for a poem up to 50 lines. As an Australian poet, your contribution shapes our Australian culture. None believed this more so than Emeritus Professor Bruce Dawe AO, one of Australia’s most acclaimed contemporary poets. Professor Dawe believed that universities should support the study of Literature and promote the Arts in Australian society. His decision to sponsor this prominent Literary Prize is ongoing, living proof of his conviction. http://usq.edu.au/bruce-dawe-prize 1 August - Ipswich Poetry Feast An annual poetry writing competition giving poets of all ages the opportunity to compete for over $7,500 in prizes. http://www.ipswichpoetryfeast.com.au/ competition.htm 31 August - The Aesthetica Creative Writing Award. Prizes for a poem up to 40 lines include publication in the Aesthetica Creative Writing Annual, a compelling anthology of new writing loved by audiences internationally; £500 prize money; editorial coverage for a selection of finalists on the Aesthetica Blog and a selection of books. Entry fee £10. http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/ creativewriting

4 July - The 2014 Grieve Writing Competition. First prize of $1,000 (and minor prizes) for a poem up to 36 lines (or a story) on any experience related to the word ‘Grieve’. http://www.hunterwriterscentre. org/grieve-writing-comp.html

northerly magazine | july - august 2014- 25

WRITERS’ GROUPS

Alstonville Plateau Writers Group Meets 2nd Tuesday of the month. 10am to 12pm. All genres welcome. Contact Christine on 66 288 364 or email gcpioneerina@ hotmail.com 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, 6:30pm8pm, 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 Ocean Shores Writing Group Meets fortnightly on Tuesdays, 7.00pm. Contact Louise on 0401 567 540 or email louisepm¬ccabe@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, 1.00pm–3.30 pm, Pottsville Beach Neighbourhood Centre, 12a Elizabeth St, Pottsville Beach. Contact Cheryl on 0412 455 707 or email jazzsinger@gmail.com visit http://words-flowwriters. blogspot.com 26 - northerly magazine | july - august 2014

NORTHERN RIVERS WRITERS’ CENTRE 2014 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 THERE’S ALWAYS MORE HAIRDRESSING Shop 5, 14 Middleton Byron Bay 02 6680 7922

NRWC Membership Membership expire 12 months after date of payment Organisation Name (if applicable) First name

Surname

Phone

Mobile

Email Address Postal Address Please indicate:

male

female

age range:

7-16

17-30

31-45

46-64

65+

I identify as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander I am from a non-English speaking background I do not want my details passed onto other arts organisations I am interested in volunteering at: Writers’ Centre Byron Bay Writers’ Festival

Membership Rate $60.00

INDIVIDUAL

$50.00

CONCESSION (Govt cards only) CRN #

$40.00

STUDENT (Proof must be shown) Student #

$120.00

ORGANISATION

$90.00

FAMILY (2 adults and up to 3 children under 18yo) names________________________________________

NEW ECO OPTION - Enjoy all the usual NRWC member benefits, but opt to receive your copy of northerly online (rather than a print copy) and help care for the planet. Tick this box for the ECO OPTION and we’ll take $10 off your Membership rate

Payment Details TOTAL AMOUNT PAYABLE

Payment method

$ Cheque/money order

Cash

Credit card

(Please make cheques payable to the Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre)

Credit Card:

Mastercard

Visa

Card no: Name on Card:

Expiry date: Signature

Please send with your payment to: Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre, PO Box 1846 Byron Bay NSW 2481 or call us on 02 6685 5115 or apply and pay online at www.nrwc.org.au