Northerly: Spring 2022

Byron Writers Festival Member Magazine Spring 2022

JACKMAN MATTHEW EVANS CRAIG MCGREGOR

WRITING

02 6685 8466

Features

008 Dirt music

An interview with the author of Soil, Matthew Evans.

012 Switching off

Christine Jackman interviewed about her book, Turning Down the Noise

014 Critical skills

Rebecca Ryall considers the ongoing importance of studying the arts and literature.

016 Award-winning writing

Read the winners of Byron Writers Festival competitions for young authors: The Susie Warrick Young Writers Award and The Jesse Blackadder Prize.

northerly is the quarterly magazine of Byron Writers Festival.

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

Held on the lands of the Arakwal Bumberbin and Minjungbal peoples of the Bundjalung Nation, we pay respect to the traditional owners of these lands and acknowledge them as the original storytellers of this region.

LOCATION/CONTACT

P: 02 6685 5115 F: 02 6685 5166

E: info@byronwritersfestival.com

W: byronwritersfestival.com PO Box 1846, Byron Bay NSW 2481

EDITOR Barnaby Smith, northerlyeditor@gmail.com

CONTRIBUTORS Jenny Bird, Freddie Breen, Laurel Cohn, Jo Darvall, Misha Fligelman, Daniel James Grant, Per Henningsgaard, Kate Holmes, Nic Margan, Craig McGregor, Kurt Petersen, Diane Pineda, Rebecca Ryall

BYRON WRITERS FESTIVAL BOARD

CHAIRPERSON Adam van Kempen

TREASURER Cheryl Bourne

SECRETARY Hilarie Dunn

MEMBERS Daniel Browning, Marele Day, Lynda Dean, Lynda Hawryluk, Grace LucasPennington

LIFE MEMBERS Jean Bedford, Jeni Caffin, Gayle Cue, Robert Drewe, Jill Eddington, Russell Eldridge, Chris Hanley, John Hertzberg, Edwina Johnson, Fay Knight, Irene O’Brien, Sarah Ma, Jennifer Regan, Cherrie Sheldrick, Brenda Shero, Heather Wearne

MAIL OUT DATES

Magazine is published in MARCH, JUNE, SEPTEMBER and DECEMBER

instagram.com/byronwritersfestival

Artistic Director’s note

On Friday 26 August I sat at the edge of the Southern Cross University Marquee at Byron Writers Festival. The venue was packed with people eager to hear a discussion on the ‘Power of Rage’. Dylin Hardcastle, local writer and author of Below Deck, read a passage from their novel. As Dylin read from the page, a powerful energy pulsed out from the stage and rippled across the audience. I know because I watched as people sat back, sat up and breathed in their words – words of intense vulnerability and power.The effect was like a ripple across the sea of willing ears. It was more powerful than rage. It was a moment of intense exchange where writer and readers felt mutually seen and heard.

And I was reminded why the public square of writers festivals is so important, essential in fact, to our wellbeing as a community. Reading is generally a solitary pursuit, but writers festivals bring authors away from their desks and readers out of their nooks to meet, exchange ideas and join in a celebration of the art of storytelling. They are a place where curious minds can discover fellow travellers and where newer ideas or less familiar experiences can find light.

Following two years without meeting, we know now how special and irreplaceable this exchange is for us all. This year I was truly enthralled with the appetite amongst our audience to engage with our theme of ‘Radical Hope’. The act of listening is, I think, one of the most powerful steps we can take towards change and as I walked the festival site, I saw time and time again many of you listening, deep in thought and engaged in the life of the mind. What a pleasure it is to be tasked with bringing you all together to take part in this important act.

As the dust settles on our 2022 festival, the Byron Writers Festival team and I are turning our minds to what 2023 may bring. A delicious array of new books awaits us and we look forward to pointing you towards our favourite discoveries in the coming months. I have just read Peggy Frew’s Wildflowers and cannot recommend it highly enough.

In October, we’re delighted to be presenting Craig Silvey in conversation with Sarah Armstrong at the Byron Theatre. They’ll be discussing the wonderful Honeybee alongside his latest work Runt

Finally I hope you enjoy this issue of northerly, and all the books you picked up at the festival bookshop!

Zoë Pollock Artistic Director, Byron Writers Festival

Photo: Kate Holmes

Byron Writers Festival celebrates a triumphant return

Byron Writers Festival 2022 was a resounding success, delighting audiences with a triumphant return after two years of cancellations. The three-day program of panels, conversations and feature events, curated around the theme of ‘Radical Hope’, filled hearts, nourished minds and sparked much-needed joy for audiences and authors alike.

Indigenous authors dominated book sales, with Paul Callaghan’s The Dreaming Path in the topselling spot, alongside Trent Dalton’s Love Stories. Other First Nations bestsellers included Evelyn Araluen’s Dropbear, Krystal de Napoli and Karlie Noon’s Astronomy: Sky Country, Bruce Pascoe and Bill Gammage’s Country: Future Fire, Future Farming and Corey Tutt’s The First Scientists.

Enthusiastic crowds filled marquees throughout the weekend with popular sessions including: Brave New Green World with Damon Gameau, Tim Hollo, Saul Griffith and Sarah Wilson; The Mungo Panel with Kerry O’Brien, Margaret Simons and Barrie Cassidy; Abandoning Afghanistan with Andrew Quilty, Mariam Veiszadeh and Mark Isaacs; Love and Other Stories with Trent Dalton, Nigel Featherstone, Hannah Kent and Alex Adsett; and Country: Future Fire, Future Farming with Bruce Pascoe in conversation with Cheryl Leavy.

A common theme throughout the festival was one of hope with authors, staff and audiences all relishing the significance of reconnecting after the upheaval of the pandemic and devastation of floods in the region. ‘We all needed

this so much, and I don't think we realised how much until we got here,’ said author Arnold Zable, (pictured above with Jill Eddington). Sessions galvanised audiences to take action on the issues that matter, with much of the focus of discussions being on the power of community. ‘I accept that our system is fundamentally flawed, but I will never accept that our people are. That is where infinite hope lies,’ said Bundjalung climate activist Mia Thom.

Conversations turned time and time again to the power of taking action for a better future world. This year’s festival is a testament to the importance of the arts to the national conversation. Thank you to all who joined us. It’s so wonderful to be back.

Margin Notes

News, events and announcements from Byron Writers Festival

Craig Silvey live at Byron Theatre

Byron Writers Festival is thrilled to present one of Australia’s most beloved authors, Craig Silvey (below), who will appear in conversation about his latest book

Runt as well as his bestselling 2020 novel Honeybee

Runt is a heart-warming, funny, beautifully told story in the tradition of Babe, Matilda and The Castle. Craig’s third novel, the criticallyacclaimed Honeybee, is a tender, profoundly moving story, brimming with vivid characters and luminous words.

Join Silvey at Byron Theatre on Friday 28 October as he discusses both novels in one enthralling event, in conversation with Sarah Armstrong. Tickets via byronwritersfestival.com/whats-on

Thank you to our festival volunteers

Hats off to our incredible team of festival volunteers, who were instrumental in delivering the 2022 festival to such an outstanding standard this year. Notes of praise for their generosity and professionalism peppered the reams of heart-warming feedback received from authors, industry and patrons, with author Christos Tsiolkas remarking ‘They were astonishing: so good-spirited and helpful and inviting. I want them to know that we writers think them terrific!’ Your tireless contributions do not go unnoticed, so thank you!

Donations help floodaffected schools

Thanks to the generous donations from festival 2022 ticket-buyers, 260 students from flood-affected schools were able to attend the festival’s primary and secondary schools program at no cost.

‘I just wanted to thank you and the team at Byron Writers Festival for supporting us to get to the Primary Schools Day to see the two authors, Corey Tutt and Isobelle Carmody,’ said Gaye Titcume of South Lismore Public School. ‘They were really great! Thank you for organising the tickets for free and also paying for the bus to get them there and back. Our school is appreciative that you have allowed our children the

opportunity to immerse themselves in this kind of experience.’

Digital Schools Program 2022

Byron Writers Festival will once again be presenting a free Digital Schools program, scheduled for release on 7 November. The program will feature Isobelle Carmody and Corey Tutt (Primary) and Emily Bitto and Gary Lonesborough (Secondary) and be available to stream on demand for two weeks in term four. For more information please visit byronwritersfestival.com/digitalschools. The program is supported by Southern Cross University.

Congratulations to our Student Writing Prize winners

A big congratulations to our winners, runners-up and everyone who submitted their stories to our annual Student Writing Prizes. We received ninety submissions across the three categories of the Susie Warrick Young Writers Award and the Jesse Blackadder Prize.

Winners and runners-up were presented with their awards at Byron Writers Festival by acclaimed author Christos Tsiolkas. A huge thanks to our judges, Siboney Duff, Sarah Armstrong and Will Kostakis who said that “such work leaves us all excited about the future of writing in this country.”

Cover story

The artwork for the cover of this issue of northerly is Black Moth by Jo Darvall. Darvall is an established painter and printmaker whose art is driven by the joy of conveying stories about places and people. Darvall is skilled in techniques including watercolour, acrylic, pastel and oil, as well as encaustic monoprints, sculpture and installation. She has exhibited in such disparate sites as churches, long corridors, backlit warehouse walls and white-walled galleries. A keen collaborator with other artists, Jo has exhibited in solo and group shows around Australia and in Singapore. She illustrated the art book The Rose, the Butterfly, the Bee and the Moth, by writer Jane Harrison, which also inspired an original score by Mimi Duo. The published book was collected by the State Library of Victoria in 2016.

Themes ranged from societal issues such as anxiety and homophobia through to the impacts of the recent floods.

Poets Out Loud director Sarah Temporal said the standard of entries was very high, and the nine finalists were thoroughly deserving of the rapturous applause showed by a very appreciative audience.

‘This was a fantastic opportunity for these young writers to perform live in front of a big audience and express themselves on issues which are important to them,’ Ms Temporal said.

Through our mentoring service we can help you achieve your writing goal, however long it takes. Congratulations to Dina Davis on the publication of A Dangerous Daughter (Cilento Publishing).

‘I’ve been meaning to write to you for ages, but have been flat out with the promotion and launch of A Dangerous Daughter. You’ve been an enormous help and inspiration to me all through the painful months of draft after draft, keeping me going when my confidence flagged, and finding flaws that I missed myself. Thank you again for all your help.’

It was an evening which firsttime poetry performer Boaz Blennerhassett (pictured above) won’t forget after being judged the winner.

Head to page 16 for the winning stories.

Young poets bring Radical Hope

Young poets from the Tweed and Northern Rivers were heard by record crowds at the Poets Out Loud Youth Slam held in Murwillumbah recently.

The Youth Slam, a satellite event of Byron Writers Festival, was held at The Regent in Murwillumbah and presented nine outstanding young poets from across the Northern Rivers.

More than 200 people were treated to performances by the young writers who delivered their original works with emotion and passion, to the festival’s theme of ‘Radical Hope’.

'To be honest I only entered for the free pizza,' Boaz said. 'But now I see that performing poetry is something I can do.'

He managed to not only enjoy some free pizza but also was presented with $400 and a trophy.

The evening also featured a performance by slam poetry champion of Australia, Huda Fadlelmawla.

Dina Davis

Feature Poet: Craig McGregor

Paperbark

Silvered dew drops Danced down from the paperbark trees Black bunyips swam around the swimming pool White dingos howled the suburban night away I woke and watched the sunlight sliver Into millions of shared remembrances Of tent ropes, guys and guitar strings And blackened campfire ashes And possums scrabbling like children And the faerie majesty of rock faces Which loomed through our nightmares And white cockatoos screaming like banshees And elves that spluttered like Irish playwrights And the mythical stories that Grandpa told While drinking whiskey from his homegrown still About Aboriginal initiations on the South Coast And the bash of Brogo rain on the chaff shed And Hexham mosquitoes as big as bananas And frost as bitter as memories And cold wind slashing like a harvester And bonfires that burnt the tussocks to death And kids that cried in the night for no reason And others for all the evil in the world And flying angels that bled like Raphael And Celtic tales of love and redemption And brute lust and shame And how we all sang hymns of forgiveness And poets who rhymed our fears away And humming birds that sang with their wings And dragonflies which skimmed the surface of dreams

And nightbirds that hallowed the moon And the sweetness of sweat on your flesh As I traversed your footsteps and your lovers And we tried to reclaim the world as our own And I thought of all that stuff writers imagine And decided…this will have to do Until you return. To me.

Iluka

Along the beach the fishermen stand Like sentries, spaced for distance, Each with his regulation hat and rod Copycat silhouettes against the sun show Harvesting the surf, or trying to.

A stranded tree trunk, silver-white as driftwood, Waits for seagulls. Sandcrabs burrow the littoral With holes like burnt-out craters and constellated sandballs Like miniature Mount Olgas. There’s shattered timber everywhere Destroyed detritus like Dresden But less hellish, from the last cyclone Which erased Woody Head of its name.

But I’m tired of lyric poetry About riverboats and runabouts And jetties and tiresome tinnies And red-green strobe that guide the trawlers Past the sandbar to fish the coast. Out there are islands, which seem like islands, But they conjoin beneath the earth’s curve And form an arc which, broken Barricades the ocean – the real sea.

I fear for the fishermen who dare that so-called Pacific A liquid desert as endless as the maps Which failed to chart its ever-retreating horizon And as dire, in its way, as the North Sea Which fashioned Cook in Yorkshire gales And who set out, in an old coal tub, To conquer the sea-girt world.

Cook! who left behind, two centuries later, In Whitby, the smell of fish-and-chips And a whitewashed attic room Not unlike the Captain’s Where we set out on a risky adventure of our own.

Much-loved local author and friend of northerly and Byron Writers Festival, Craig McGregor, died earlier this year at the age of eighty-eight. Prior to his experiencing a stroke in 2018, Craig, an award-winning journalist, novelist and critic, wrote these two poems, which we are pleased to publish posthumously here.

Earth song: An interview with Matthew Evans

Matthew Evans’s latest book Soil is an expansive, accessible meditation on the life-giving qualities of the dirt beneath our feet – and the threats it faces. A farmer, cook and activist, Evans appeared at Byron Writers Festival 2022.

What was the initial inspiration for Soil? What in particular were you curious about?

I was inspired by how much we, on our farm, relied on healthy soil, and then I discovered that there was so much amazing stuff going on in soil that humans are just beginning to understand. Ninetyeight per cent of what lives in soil is still a mystery, but we know enough to be astounded. Like soil’s role

in antibiotics, and weather, and mental health. I also became aware of how imperilled our soils are, and wanted to find out if there are good ways to improve and even replenish soils. The good news is, there are!

What other authors or books did you turn to as models or influences for Soil?

Mostly I read scientific papers, rather than books, because many books are for the nerdy end of the market,

like soil scientists, and have a very narrow focus instead of the broad appeal I was looking for. That said, I really enjoyed Dirt: The Erosion of Civilisations by David Montgomery, and For the Love of Soil, by Nicole Masters, which is a great resource for farmers.

In what key ways was the writing of Soil a different experience to writing your many other books? What particular creative challenges did you face?

For Soil I had to go back to scratch. For a recipe book, every mealtime is research, as you test and eat and test and eat. For something like this, I had to learn to decode complex scientific reports, cover plant biology, climate science, the human microbiome as well as soil biology as well as geology. Making the topic really interesting for the lay person, for everyone who eats, was my goal, and that was sometimes a challenge, but one I really relished. Can you tell us about your intentions with the tone of the book, and striking a balance between being humorous yet informative, entertaining yet scientific?

I’m one of those people who went to uni and slept through a few of the more intense lectures. I think of reading a book myself, how my brain is tired from my day-to-today existence, and how reading a book is part of how I spend my time off. I want to be entertained, maybe learn something, and feel inspired. I also want to have a reason to care. So all of that was my intention. And the response is astonishing. I get amazing feedback from people all over the world who expect a dry tome, and are delighted by the tone, so I feel I’ve achieved that on some level.

Was there anything that especially surprised (or frightened) you in your research about soil?

I think I was in denial about the parlous state of the world’s soils. We lose topsoil multiple times quicker than it is made by nature (nature is constantly making it).

The fact Australia has lost half its topsoil (the magic bit that does all the land’s growing) since European colonisation, and we’re due to lose the next half in decades for much of the continent, really made me sit up and take notice. And I was also shocked to find that growing grains and vegetables is often quite a good way to deplete soils, despite some of the more plant-based headlines you read in the popular press. We know that on our farm it takes way more effort and input in the garden to improve soil, but it was a surprise to find that is the case more generally. It shouldn’t be a surprise, considering soil evolved around animals, and that removing them can be bad for soil, but I hadn’t really considered the ramifications for farming more generally.

Are you happy with the way the book has been received? Do you think it’s been understood and appreciated?

I’m stoked at the book’s reception.

I get contacted by people who now envisage soil differently, who shop differently, who garden differently.

The book has been reprinted multiple times, and it got a five-star review in the UK, and sold out on release. It was one of three books shortlisted for the UK Guild of Food Writers’ Food Book Award, too. So, yes, who would have thought a book on soil could fire up imaginations? (Well, I really hoped it might, but …)

What was the pathway to publication of Soil like for you, and how was the process of interacting with your publishers?

My publisher Jane Morrow was super supportive. It took years of discussion, a lot of convincing other people at the publishing house, Murdoch Books, of its merits, and I did a massive re-write and cull to get the book into the shape that it is. I really wanted it to be for the general population, not just for growers, and it’s been a great leap of faith for the publishers to get behind something like this. Their faith has been rewarded, however, and we’re very excited by the response. I have to pinch myself at the way it’s gone, actually, to remind myself it’s not a dream.

What is your next project?

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m not working on another book at the moment, because I’ve just sent a fully revised book off to the press. It’s called The Real Food Companion, written as a love letter to my unborn child over a dozen years ago. It’s the what, why, and how of choosing and cooking food – 65,000 words plus 200 recipes to demystify what to put on the plate. The book was a real winner when it came out, but it’s been out of print for years. This new edition is due out with Murdoch in November. And after that, I think I’d like to do an illustrated children’s book on soil (with someone else doing the drawings!) … though I’d also like to go fishing for a bit.

Soil is published by Murdoch Books.

From the Reading Chair: Balancing backstory

Getting the right level of backstory for characters in your fiction is a delicate business: too much, and you overwhelm or bore the reader, too little and your characters seem flimsy. Here, Laurel Cohn examines how to achieve the perfect backstory balance.

Have you ever been stuck at a party or event with a stranger who wants to tell you, unprompted, all about themselves? Even if that person looked interesting from afar, they can quickly become boring. Too much backstory!

The same is true with characters on the page. Readers don’t need to be regaled with great slabs of personal history about characters in order to care about them, or in order to understand what’s happening. And it’s not just characters, but also settings, both physical and social; while a sense of place is needed so that your characters aren’t interacting in a vacuum, particularly in speculative fiction genres where world-building is key, there is a point where too much information is distracting.

Often, in an attempt to set up the story, in time and place as well as character and key event, a writer will get bogged down in the backstory. Particularly in the opening chapters. And let me be specific – in chapter two after a dramatic event in chapter one. It’s almost as if the writer is saying to the reader, ‘I’ve started with something to grab your attention, but hang on a minute, let me pause to fill you in.’ I understand why writers do this. It is vital they are intimately familiar with the history of their characters and sometimes also the locations where the action takes place. This backstory is needed to create compelling and believable characters and three-dimensional settings. However, the reader

doesn't need to know that level of detail to follow the story, to care about the characters, or to be curious about what happens next.

On the flip side, sometimes writers don’t put in enough backstory, leaving the reader unclear about characters’ motivations and their frame of mind in different scenarios. If a character is two-dimensional, the reader struggles to be interested in what happens to them. Backstory detail helps your characters become threedimensional, complex beings. It’s a balancing act – you need a certain amount of backstory for a reader to engage and identify with characters and places, but need to steer clear of what are called ‘info dumps’, slabs of information that slow the pace or stall the narrative. Whether you are writing fiction or narrative non-fiction such as memoir, the trick is to be able to distinguish between the information the reader needs to know in order to follow your story thread at that moment, and all those other fascinating things you could say about the characters and places, that can be omitted. The problem writers often have is recognising which bit of backstory is necessary for the reader to know and where to put it. From my experience, it's a lot less than you think. And, a lot later than you think.

Let the reader discover who the characters are over time, much like we get to know people in real life. We all have a backstory. What we choose to reveal to others, and when, depends on context – where are we,

who are we with, what is going on around us. And the context itself provides information. We can glean a lot of background information about people – and characters – by the contexts in which they appear, and by what they say and do.

Think in terms of inserting snippets of backstory in context. Look for places where the context of the scene creates an opportunity to reveal a particular backstory detail, where you can ‘salt’ the manuscript with backstory using dialogue, narrated action, description and imagery. Backstory snippets can help the reader understand a character’s frame of mind and motivations in different scenarios. Done well, these snippets reveal just enough, and not too much. They give the reader a piece of the puzzle of who the character is, keeping the reader curious, but also building empathy.

The choices you make about what the reader knows directs their emotional response to the characters. While it is crucial that you the writer understand your characters’ motivations so that their actions and choices ring true, you can also choose to conceal the backstory that has shaped these motivations. You, the writer, can manipulate the way the reader sees the characters on the page for dramatic effect. What the reader knows, and doesn’t know, about the backstory can drive dramatic tension and narrative momentum.

There is no one right way to handle backstory – it depends on the story you are telling – but there are two

important principles to understand. Firstly, you, the writer, need to know the backstories of your characters to understand their motivations and goals, both of which fuel their emotional journey which, in turn, shapes the plot. Secondly, you need to find the right balance of not too much, not too little, and consider carefully how backstory can support and strengthen the drama of your narrative.

It can take many drafts to get backstory right in your manuscript. You may start with too much, or you may start with too little. You may realise that you need to adjust a character’s backstory to amplify the themes you are exploring or to create the dramatic tension in places. The more awareness you bring to your use of backstory, the more effective it will be. It takes practice. To explore this further, join me via Zoom for a full-day workshop on Balancing Backstory on Saturday 12 November. For details, email info@laurelcohn.com.au.

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

Solace in silence: An interview with Christine Jackman

What was the inspiration to write Turning Down the Noise? How did it initially take shape in your mind, and what questions were you trying to answer?

By many metrics, I was living the dream: a well-paid executive career, living in harbourside Sydney, travelling regularly and meeting lots of ‘important’ people in politics, business and the media. But I was always in a rush, under-slept and unhealthy. I began to feel overwhelmed by the noise in my life:

not just the audible noise of phones, constant meetings and email and text alerts, but the insidious digital noise that has crept into most of our lives.

At first, I was just trying to work out whether I was the only one feeling this way! But the more I explored the topic, the more I began to suspect that the rising incidence of things like anxiety, depression, insomnia and general social dislocation in our communities was in part being fuelled by how overstimulated and over-worked we are.

Can you outline some of the biggest challenges you faced with the book – either on a creative level or in the publishing process, promotion and so on?

My first book [Inside Kevin07] was written really quickly, in five months after the 2007 federal election. The political news cycle moves so swiftly, you have to move fast to stay relevant. But Turning Down the Noise was a very different proposition. For a start, it was a more personal, experiential venture. A few months

Christine Jackman’s Turning Down the Noise sees one of Australia’s most seasoned journalists tackle the increasingly important issue of how to regain clarity and peace of mind amid the deafening clatter of digital distractions and the myriad demands of contemporary life. Jackman appeared at Byron Writers Festival 2022.

in, I realised I had to stop writing about things at arm’s length, in that comfort zone of apparent objectivity that journalism encourages, and be more honest with readers about my own personal experiences and struggles.

But here’s the irony: this was a book about noise and the multiple demands in our lives – and while I was writing it, all of those demands were still happening! My father was diagnosed with advanced melanoma and we moved back from Sydney to Brisbane, partly so I could be closer to him and so we, as a family, could really slow down and take some of the external pressures off. Meanwhile, there were major changes at my original publisher; fortunately, my brilliant agent Alex Adsett was able to negotiate a move to the wonderful Murdoch Books. But that took a while. And then I developed a very rare eye condition; I was hospitalised and for several months I was unable to read and write because of light sensitivity. So, as I said, life got in the way a bit. What books or authors served as inspirations or influences for the writing of Turning Down the Noise?

Back when I was a Sydney commuter, I started listening to a brilliant podcast called On Being, with Krista Tippett. One evening, she introduced an acoustic ecologist named Gordon Hempton. I didn’t think I’d be interested in the interview but within thirty seconds of listening to Gordon I was hooked. He is a mix of poet, scientist and modern-day mystic and he’s evangelical about the importance of preserving spaces that are free from the intrusion of man-made noise. His book One Square Inch of Silence documents his campaign to protect the peace of the Hoh River Valley in Olympic National Park in Washington state; I ended up hiking the Hoh River trail as part of my research.

I also gained a great deal from reading the works of several monks from Buddhist and Christian traditions that observe vows of silence, including Thomas Merton, Father Michael Casey and the late Thich Nhat Hanh. In the book, I write about staying at several monasteries and hermitages, here and in the US, where silent contemplation is a core part of daily life. What I’ve learned is that, in silence, we can transcend a lot of humanity’s petty differences and appreciate instead how closely we are all connected. It’s worth noting there is also a rich tradition of something called ‘deep listening’ in Indigenous cultures in Australia.

Can you identify some of the key skills and insights from your stellar career in journalism that were particularly important to writing this book?

Thank you for the compliment! First, when you spend over twenty years writing to tight deadlines, as I did, you learn not to be intimidated by the empty page (or screen). There is no time for writer’s block! Second, my work in longform feature writing particularly taught me that story is everything; even in non-fiction, you need to give your readers a strong narrative arc, ideally one where they can find characters to empathise with as they overcome the challenges they face.

Can you tell us a little about your writing practice, perhaps in relation to the themes in your book – how do you carve out space and time to devote to writing amid life’s many demands?

I’d love to say I now maintain a state of balanced, Zen-like calm! However, as in the meditation practices I learned while researching the book (for example, I went to a ten-day silent retreat in the Tasmanian bush), the key is not removing all intrusions and interruptions but learning how to deal with those inevitable challenges as they arise.

I’ve learned that creativity (and happiness!) flows best when I prioritise sleep, when I meditate daily and when I get out regularly into nature. I also try hard to limit my use of social media and often use a productivity app called Freedom that blocks the internet (or parts of it) while I’m working to restrict intrusions.

Lately, I’ve also been embracing something called the ‘nifty 350’, made famous by thriller writer James Scott Bell. It’s based on the idea that anyone can write 350 words, even if life is really busy. Setting such a bite-sized goal removes a lot of the pressure that stalls writers – and once you’ve started, you usually discover you can write more. But even if you just write 350 words a day, you will finish an 80,000-word draft in about eight months. It’s like the old saying: 'How do you eat an elephant? One teaspoon at a time.'

What is your next project? What are you working on at the moment?

Confession: having sworn I’d never write another political book, I was very tempted to write one after the last federal election, about the rise of the teals and other community independents. I suspect we’re undergoing a long overdue and potentially really exciting change in how politics is ‘done’ in Australia. But meanwhile… I’m about 20,000 words into my first novel. After the release of Turning Down the Noise, I’d been planning to start work on another non-fiction project. But while I was tinkering with that a couple of characters arrived in my head from nowhere and they’ve refused to leave. Creativity works to its own mysterious ways!

Turning Down the Noise is published by Murdoch Books.

Everything is a text: Why the arts still matter

What value the arts?

In my family of origin, the arts and humanities were considered ‘Mickey Mouse’ subjects. I’m not sure of the reference, but the implication was clear – the important information and skills were to be found in the more relevant pursuits of science and mathematics. When I first entered tertiary education, it was to study naturopathy, and it was important for me that I was studying this field at a university, as the approach taken was scientific and the institutional setting seemed to legitimise the field of study. I spent years studying anatomy, physiology, pathology, clinical diagnosis – a rigorous and demanding program compared to that of the arts students, most of whom didn’t even sit exams.

My next foray into the tertiary sector happened many years, children and life experiences later when I enrolled in an Associate Degree in Creative Writing, at the age of fortytwo. At the time, study represented a pause in my life, an opportunity to regather myself after some challenging life circumstances. I enrolled in four units, believing, as they were ‘only’ arts subjects, I could easily accommodate the demands of study in the context of my ongoing parenting and domestic commitments.

What I failed to take into account were the inherent differences in knowledge integration between

the arts and the sciences. Studying biochemistry years before, I could sit down for three hours of deep concentration, then close the book and return to my family life. The arts and humanities are a completely different kettle of fish. The learning here occurs laterally and infiltrates every aspect of life.

Because that’s what the arts do; this is their value in the world.

The arts encourage us to look at the world in different ways, acknowledge the existence and value of diverse ways of seeing and being, and accept multiplicities as a given, and all whilst stirring the dinner or driving the kids to school.

My very first class was an introductory writing unit, in which I learned an important lesson. I approached the class as I meant to continue – having read all the required texts, as well as the optional ones, and come to class with annotated printouts, eager to discuss the content. The tutor asked: ‘What do we know about the author of the article? What year was it published and in what publication? What type of article is it – scholarly, editorial, opinion?’ Dutiful mature-aged student that I was, I had engaged with the content, but the frame of the information was invisible to me, at this time.

I have always had an antiauthoritarian streak. Encountering the arts and humanities at uni, I began to understand the value in

questioning, not just authority, but also the sources of the knowledges that both I, and the authority, draw upon in reaching our conclusions. After decades of living and unknowingly participating in social and political structures, these suddenly became visible to me.

Understanding of my own context in these structures followed. Through exposure to cultural studies and Indigenous studies as part of my arts degree, I became aware of my own privilege and complicity with ongoing colonial and patriarchal systems which exclude and oppress so many. This continued exposure has fundamentally changed my understanding of myself and my place within society and our shared physical environment.

Literary studies provides access to not only worlds and experiences different to our own, but also a theoretical framing through which to understand these diverse positions. One learns to be a critical reader, who pays attention to the context in which a text is produced, the position of the writer in a particular time and place, and the place from which we, as readers, receive the text, from our own individual time, place and culture. In this way, everything becomes a text for analysis – advertising, children’s books, television programs – all have arisen in a particular time and place and either subvert or contribute to norms and expectations particular to that time and place.

Local writer and academic Rebecca Ryall reflects on the importance and the function of studying the arts, literature and humanities amid a cultural landscape in a constant state of flux, ecological collapse, and power structures that look increasingly fragile.

Critical thinking skills gain importance, the more information we are exposed to. Everyone these days knows about ‘the algorithms’ which determine what kind of information is delivered to us through online networks. These algorithms feed us more of what we engage with, ensuring that, unmediated, we exist inside an echo chamber that reinforces our own world view. With a focus on ‘fake news’ and in an environment of 24hour news cycles in which everyone is pushing their own agenda, critical reading and thinking skills must not be undervalued.

Combining the aforementioned analytical tools with practical attention to genre, technique and the craft of writing, equips a writing student with the tools to powerfully express these insights, illuminating damaging norms and structures and their potential to harm, as well as imagining or exploring alternatives to the abiding narrative.

Far from being ‘Mickey Mouse’, the arts and humanities are integral to our capacity to relate to others

– human and non-human – and to reach for understanding of the many different positions we take as humans. Critical and collaborative thinking skills are those which support our coming together, in societies of diverse individuals, underpinning our production of knowledge.

My Associate Degree swiftly changed to become a BA, which was followed immediately by honours and flowed into my current PhD research. I feel a grudging respect from my family, working towards a doctorate. If I wasn’t engrossed in exploring the post-humanities, I might just invest my time in exploration of the heterocisnormativity of Disney films.

Post-script

I attended an exhibition opening in Lismore in early August. Teetering on the Edge was a group show of mixed media, hosted by the Metropole Hotel. It was a cold Wednesday night, and the pub was heaving. The artworks – diverse and striking –were hung on the walls of the public bar and dining room, requiring one to get up close and personal with

the patrons in order to read the information cards.

And in early September, I was fortunate to be in the audience of a sold-out performance of NORPA’s latest creation, Love For One Night, at the Eltham Hotel. This was storytelling at its best and most absorbing, a credit to the creators, designers, performers and a beautiful showcase of, not only the graceful pub, but also the lives of its myriad patrons.

These events served as an illustration that, in the wake of disaster, it is the arts practitioners who remind us of our shared humanity and bring us together to explore our common experience. It was the creative types who drove the Lismore recovery from the devastating floods of 2017 and, it seems, it will be the creatives who lift us all out of the mud to rise above the disastrous events of 2022. Thank you Northern Rivers creatives, for telling our stories and giving us opportunities to connect with one another.

NORPA's latest site-specific theatre work, Love For One Night, was located at the Eltham Hotel.

Photo: Kurt Petersen

Young writer awards: The winners

This year, Byron Writers Festival hosted two writing competitions for young writers for a second time: The Susie Warrick Young Writers Award and The Jesse Blackadder Prize. These competitions celebrate the art of the short story, encouraging aspiring young writers in years 5-12 who reside within the Byron Writers Festival footprint to pursue and explore their talents.

Students were asked to write a short story on any theme of between 500 and 1000 words, depending on the category. Judging was difficult with many competitive submissions. It is with great pleasure that we share the winning stories with you on the following pages.

Susie Warrick Young Writers Award

Susie Warrick was a much-loved staff member at the Northern Rivers Writers Centre (now Byron Writers Festival). This award celebrates the art of the short story and supports emerging young writers in furthering their career with a $500 cash prize for first place per category.

Prize Category 1 (year 10-12)

First place: ‘Empty Promise’ by Misha Fligelman, Cape Byron Steiner School

Prize Category 2 (year 7-9)

First place: ‘Diamonds in the Sky’ by Diane Pineda, Dorrigo High School

Empty Promise

By Misha Fligelman

Judges’ comment

'This was a beautifully crafted piece that explored notions of identity and judgement from a mature perspective.’

‘Mothers and daughters exist as wretched mirrors of one another: I am all you could have been and you are all I might be.’ – Author unknown

The air was cold and dry. The kind that burned your throat and splintered your eyes. Memories of my last outing here returned in fractures; drunken laughs, giggles bubbling up from stifled silence. Echoes of the freedom we’d felt. The relinquishment of responsibilities to parents who’d paid our way through life. We were just kids. Kids who secretly still slept with stuffies and clung desperately to the idea of true love. Freshly eighteen and legal, celebrating just for the fun of it, the fun of forgetting. In hindsight, we hadn't had much to forget about then. Not much to regret.

Standing on the verandah, as lights danced over slick streets, I could taste the beer on his tongue. As stubble scratched my cheeks I remember thinking he needed a better razor. I briefly thought of recommending him the ‘Gillette Proglide’ I’d seen my dad use. An aggressive hand on my ass yanked me back to reality. I’d thought him mature, sensible, intelligent. Philosophical in the

patronising way he talked. Really, he was just a uni drop-out, wired on nicotine and Reddit forums. A man doting on girls half his age, not yet self-aware enough to realise they were the only ones stupid enough to fall for it.

Goosebumps poked their heads in long lines across my bare skin. Following diligently the arcs made by his fingertips. Buzzed from shoplifted vodka mixed with rebellion, I’d let him have me that night. Smiles charmed with lies of adoration. In love with the idea of love. The first of my adult regrets. The first that mattered.

Mum took me to a new doctor’s office later that week. Our regular GP was booked out for months in advance. The hard plastic of the chairs left ribbed indents on my thighs, my foot toyed with the layers of peeling carpet. Next to me, in a voice hushed for the illusion of privacy, my mother read to me the new doctor’s qualifications. The pauses placed before each credential served as a reminder of her disappointment. The loud contrast between directions in our lives. I remember her pride when I announced my aspirations of becoming a doctor. At the ripe old age of five I was already fulfilling her dreams for me. Her smile used to be big and garish, with whoops that flushed me hot with embarrassment in school assemblies. The carpet flicked down again with a thud. The desk lady couldn't suppress her scowl. I tried to remember the last time I felt embarrassment like that. It was probably only yesterday, over something so insignificant it had already slipped my mind.

We left the appointment that day with a packet of pills, and a stench of smug security encircling my mother. It was a bit pathetic really, getting Fem-tab at eighteen, with your mother. Yet this was her personal way of showing me she still cared. She wasn’t ready for grandchildren. Her lips tipped upwards at the corners, sacks of loose skin pulled taut around her cheekbones. It was sickening. Privately, I never saw myself passing thirty. I tugged at the wrinkles on my forehead. Maybe it was time for Baby Botox. Immediately, I could hear my mother’s reaction, disgust at my willingness to give into the ‘trap of attractiveness’, her rants about how women never get to age peacefully, always normalising men’s preferences towards youth. When I told her his age she was disgusted. “That’s a milder form of paedophilia!” she’d exclaimed. A line perfectly regurged from some purple-haired Feminazi on Instagram – someone who’d never experienced the guilty satisfaction of being desired.

I don't think my mother ever saw me as anything other than her second chance. A re-do. My promise could erase every failure, every C, the unexceptional

outcomes that plagued her childhood. She was determined that I was never going to be just someone’s wife, a Mrs. Like her. But her hopes for me, once so full of helium, were soon deflated and left to be filed alongside her own disappointments. She used to spend Sunday nights waiting on our living room sofa. Lights dimmed, back stiff, lips pursed. I don't even remember half the times I came home desperately crunching a packet of Tic-Tacs on the driveway, trying to hide the smell. My mother remembers every single time. A wretched mirror of her own adolescence. The car park outside the Call Centre was tacky with summer heat, the skin between my toes slippery with sweat. 4:33pm. Earlier that morning, breath heavy with sleep, he’d whispered his grand plan, spit spraying in a way that made my stomach churn. A date on the beach, cheap champagne and chocolate strawberries. Meet him after his shift. “Just like those smutty romance books you love so much.” The accompanying sneer told me he was only half joking. 4:45pm. I blew the seeds from a dandelion plucked from the gravel. He wasn't coming. I don't know why I even showed up. Another empty promise masked by sickly sweet cologne – the stuff you buy killing time in the pitiful boyfriend section of Victoria's Secret. His charm only the result of my festering disbelief that anyone could ever find me attractive. Despite his transparent attempts to appear otherwise, he was still the unevolved f-boy, somehow still managing to fruitlessly grasp at the strings of superiority. We all still wanted his attention, his flattery, to feel like we were his to subdue. To our mother’s post-millennial, feminist disappointment, all their daughters wanted was to be desired. It's all we’ll ever want.

The scratch in my throat threatens to turn into a coughing fit. The pub inside looks just like it did when I was eighteen. The guy behind the bar catches my attention. I smell it before I see him. That same claustrophobic scent. Fine lines ringing his eyes, beard still not fully shaved. Too old now to pass as 2000s heroin chic. My skin crawls, tracing the arcs he once made. A girl clings to his jacket, mouth moving a hundred miles a minute. A flurry of bobby pins and hairspray, all closed lip smiles and tacky lip gloss. Her phone lights up. Clicks shut. Eyes hazed with a guilty conscience.

And I know who’s waiting for her on the living room sofa. Lights dimmed, back stiff, lips pursed. A wretched mirror of my own adolescence.

Young writer awards: The winners

Diamonds in the Sky

By Diane Pineda

Judges’ comment

‘We were really impressed with how the story built, using ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ to pull the reader through to an emotional gut-punch of an ending.’

Jaime

Twinkle…

Jaime perched warily on the roof of an old building, cold legs swayed over the edge. The stunning evening sky was busy with a familiar feeling, she inhaled the scent of fresh homemade cooking as a cold flurry blew against her thoughtful face.

Twinkle…

“Mum... It’s my birthday. I wish you were still here.”

“There you are!” Allen called, making Jaime jolt in surprise, the familiar voice coming from a silhouette.

“Allen,” A kind smile lifted her lips as she glanced at him.

The tall figure ambled towards her and sat down, “What are you doing up here?” His tone, soft-spoken.

Jaime's smile deflated, the corners of her mouth turning down.

“Just needed to think... ” Allen didn't respond, his silence meant that he understood. That was one of the things she valued about him, he gave her time.

Little star…

They gazed at the shining stars; one outshone the others.

“I don’t think I can hold on any longer. It hurts. The world is harsh Mum. I want to be with you…”

Hours passed until the full moon towered over them.

Allen looked down at his watch with a dimpled smile, looking back to meet her green eyes “Jaime, Happy Birthday."

Her eyes watered; he was one of the reasons she didn’t want to give up.

Allen

Everything appeared fine, until it wasn't…

After sixteen lonely years, there was never a moment where he imagined Jaime would consider leaving. Allen would never forget how his heart throbbed with guilt and pain, always wanting to be her support. He guarded all the good memories in his heart, and she would stay there safely locked away.

After five years of repeated attempts, he was restless. Stress, over time, had formed on his face, lines were drawn along his forehead like the creased pieces of paper. He ran his fingers through his white-blonde hair, wiping off the beads of sweat that formed along his forehead. A fly buzzed around the room, landing on a piece of metal that was positioned in the time machine; the TIMESCAPE.

“Rick-kick-kaka- BANG!” Dust flew in different directions, a piece of the half-made time machine discarded. A ragged cough resonated from him, swatting away the smoke that filled the dreary laboratory. The large, tinted windows flew open, drawing out the thick vapour.

He picked up the metal chip that lay on his table, waiting to be picked up. “When? When will I see you again?” Allen sighed and inspected the overcast weather. Rain poured on the neighbour’s large

capsule house roof, formulating a brown noise. Allen turned around, grey eyes locked on the TIMESCAPE, within a second it started ticking loudly. His breath halted, heartbeat quickening as he stood before the machine. It rested proudly against the wall, upright and glimmering as if welcoming him in embrace.

“Year. Date. Location. Time...” He secured the clock face, making the last arrangements. Stepping back, Allen drew in a breath and stepped into the large opening. “Jaime, I did it!”

Goosebumps ran along his spine, every nerve alert whilst at the same time, numb as he anxiously entered the TIMESCAPE.

A dim light crept through the open windows, blurring his sight, squinting as he felt his feet touch the ground. The air was fresh, the wind blowing against his clothes, sweeping past his skin.

The slow tip tap of footsteps echoed through the old building. Allen gaped, at what stood before him as if he witnessed his own re-enactment. He watched closely as a younger version of himself blinked, mirroring shocked expressions.

How I wonder what you are...

“Allen, it’s me. Well, you,” He nervously chuckled, observing the younger Allen. “You must think you’re dreaming, huh?”

“What… Who are you?” The younger boy scanned the corridors, before he turned to him again. “You do look like me, but older?”

Allen hastily explained about how he arrived by time travelling, “I’m here because of Jaime. We must save her.”

Up above the world so high...

“There you are!” young Allen exclaimed, breathless. Jaime’s figure expresses so many things in so many ways, by the way her head is always tilted down at the ground, how her posture is slumped and the tone in her voice…

“Allen...” The cold wind blew against her face, fluttering her purple and black hair.

Allen sat beside her, greatly troubled by the news he now knew. “Can I talk to you? Why don’t we go somewhere else?”

Their footsteps were in sync as they walked along the wide concrete path. Older Allen followed closely, still in shock. The murmurs of by-passers made Jaime’s ears ring until the voices were blocked out. Her blue eyes glazed with restrained tears, she felt a small droplet of rain on her face, as if persuading her to say the unspoken words she needed to say. Young Allen stopped in his tracks, looking down at Jaime beside him, ready to listen.

She finally looked up, “If I.. told you about the darkness inside of me would you still see me like I’m the sun?”

Like a diamond in the sky... Young Allen sighed, his heart ached, and his throat suffocated with emotions, “You’re like a diamond in the sky Jaime. Precious and beautiful at heart, the one I love and the person I can’t live without.”

Behind them, older Allen’s lips quivered as he glanced at the sky as the rain started to shower. “Sometimes we have to take risks for those we love.” He gazed at younger Allen and Jaime; their conversation converted from whisper to a mumble. His vision flashed before him, becoming a blur.

Twinkle, twinkle little star... New memories were added to his old ones, a little happier.

Her sweet voice, “Allen, where’s the cats’ food?” Jaime peeped over the door frame with a questioning look, a glistening diamond ring on her third finger.

“On the bottom shelf, love.” Allen looked up from his book, his loving eyes meeting hers. How I wonder what you are…

Young writer awards: The winners

The Jesse Blackadder Prize

The Jesse Blackadder Prize was created in 2020 in memory of Jesse Blackadder, cherished board member, author, and founder of Byron Writers Festival’s StoryBoard program. The prize celebrates creativity and imagination in Stage 3 writers with a $300 cash prize for first place.

Prize Category 1 (year 5-6)

First place: ‘Eric and Oropos’ by Freddie Breen

Judges’ comment

‘The writer’s voice in this quirky, timeless tale was wonderfully confident.’

Eric and Oropos

By Freddie Breen

Once upon a time, in the largest apple tree in the largest apple orchard in Tasmania, there lived an elf. Not one of those tall, man-sized elves. He was only about two feet high, and he had long, glossy black hair and he wore a forest-green robe which swept about his bare ankles whenever he was running around his treehouse in a passionate frenzy.

His name was Eric, and he was a potion-maker by nature.

He was always boiling up a solution or a paste of some sort, sending thick wafts of steam and smoke up into the air, much to the puzzlement of the apple-pickers. Often they would set up ladders and climb up the mighty trunk to see what was happening.

They would appear at the top, at which point a spell, placed very cleverly by Eric would go off, causing the apple-picker to forget the purpose of going up there in the first place.

Eric lived a quiet and peaceful life in his tree. He never had any shortage of food, for apples were always sprouting from the branches, and if he wanted bread or cheese, he could make a Deli Draught, which provided

Eric with delicious smoked cheddar and warm sourdough bread.

But the one thing that pained Eric the most was the fact that he had no friends living with him up so high in the treehouse. No elf friends, that is.

Elves are very social creatures, like humans, and if there are no other living creatures to interact and make friends with, they become very gloomy.

So one day, Eric decided to make himself a friend.

The art of golem-creating is a fine one, and only the wisest and the patient can learn it.

Eric was a very knowledgeable elf and not a bad spell-caster either, but he was not experienced in the conjuring arts, as one should be when creating something as intricate as a nature golem.

Still, Eric desperately wanted a friend, even if it was not an elf. So he set about planning what it was he would create, and how he would do it.

‘A leafling,’ he muttered to himself, ‘is probably the easiest nature golem to conjure up. Yes, I think that is what I will do. And I have all the items required to do such a task!’

For Eric possessed a very heavy and dusty book, which he had inherited from his father called Golems and How to Create Them, by Aggleside Frumptoss, a world-

famed mage and an expert in the conjuring-arts.

Eric flipped to the page about nature golems (sending up a great cloud of dust as he did so). He saw clay, fire, ice, stone and even moss golems before he found the leaf variety.

He read the list of items required for the ritual, and then he set the book down on his kitchen bench, before going to his store-cupboard, which was where he kept his ingredients for potion-making and spell-casting. He withdrew from the cupboard four eucalyptus leaves, ten gum-nuts and three owlfeathers. Then he went back to the book.

He read the next paragraph, which told him how to lay out the special items. He followed the instructions, then he rubbed his hands together.

‘Now the fun begins,’ he said to himself. ‘Now I speak the incantations.’

Eric drew himself up, gazing around at his handiwork with the leaves, the gum-nuts and the owl-feathers which were laid about his kitchen-floor. He smiled and began the verses:

“The summoning ritual has begun, I wish to speak as one, I desire a golem, a leafling so kind, Thoust shall listen when I speak my mind. I summon thee, you leafling yea, And you will see, you will see.”

Eric heard a great WHOOSH! and a WHIZZ! He fell to the floor in a daze, scattering the gum-nuts everywhere.

Eric heard an owl hoot, a pig squeal and suddenly— THUMP.

Eric looked up. Standing in the middle of the kitchen floor was a—thing.

A three-foot, pure black, humanoid thing. Eric couldn’t believe his eyes.

‘Y-you’re not a leafling,’ he stuttered. ‘State your name, creature!’

The thing stared at him with shining white eyes.

‘I am Oropos,’ it spoke with a voice like the wind. It whistled and it wailed, it hissed and it hurrrrred. With every word it would alter its volume.

‘Well, Oropos,’ said Eric briskly, ‘I did not go to effort of practicing the conjuring arts to create you. Now, be off!’

Oropos’s shining marble eyes flickered. Slowly it turned away from Eric and looked up at the store-cupboard, which was still wide open. Suddenly it took a great leap and landed right in the cupboard. It grabbed the nearest jar (which contained ground bunyip teeth) and threw it out of the cupboard and onto the kitchen floor, where it exploded, in a cloud of glass fragments and white powder.

‘No!’ cried Eric as Oropos turned around to pick up a bowl of dried sage, ‘no, no, no, NO!’

But Oropos was not listening. He was too busy grasping every item in Eric’s store-cupboard, stacking them up, and then throwing them onto the floor, where they would SHATTER.

Eric burst into tears as the malevolent creature broke his possessions.

‘I’m sorry!’ he cried out. ‘I’m sorry I ever conjured you in the first place! That was foolish of me! I’m a potionmaker, not a conjurer!’

Oropos stopped in the stacking of many jars and pots. It leapt down from the store-cupboard and walked towards Eric. It rested a hand on his shoulder.

‘There’s a first time for everything. You’ll get there in the end,’ it said.

Eric glanced up quickly. Oropos was gone. The shattered plates were gone. He saw that sun was shining through the top leaves of his tree. Eric smiled.

Subliminal insistence

What Fear Was by Ben Walter

Review by Nic Margan

Readers of Australia’s major literary journals are likely to be familiar with Ben Walter’s stories, recognisable by their musical sentences, vivid descriptions of the Tasmanian bush and narratives where dread and longing often creep. Perhaps more continuous still is the subliminal insistence in Walter’s work that stories should bend and fizz and leap more often than they do. They seem averse to storytelling that covers and re-covers old ground, insistent that literature needs authors to be brave enough to ask readers to stretch a little more. What Fear Was represents a great achievement in this sense – the publication of a collection of stories that take risks is uncommon, but important.

Walter displays impressive formal range – here gothic and there comic, dipping variously into postmodernism and magic realism, but always writing in his distinctive style, which rings as true as a fine bell. The best stories are riveting and will be reread in this household.

Propelled by original turns of phrase, vivid details and tight narrative structure, Walter’s prose glistens and rears upright, undeniably vital. These stories carry you physically and emotionally to foreign places and make them suddenly familiar. At times, they read as lyrically as long poems – using language more like a musician than a mathematician. Everything non-human can be alive with intent and meaning. The narrative turns left unexpectedly. The vitality of characters is established in neat, economical sentences. Geology is described as a way of measuring tension in loping hills, frost is a tide of aching, economic collapse looks like newspapers circulated with nothing printed on them. There is much to love.

This is a collection that rewards attentive reading, but some stories may appear overly cryptic. This is not necessarily a faltering. The resistance of the text may encourage the kind of active, lateral reading that the author is interested in. This isn’t a book for reading in the drowsy moments before sleep, nor would it suit lolling about in the sun on holiday. Its twenty-two stories are short and rich. They are better read like espresso in the morning or, as would suit the author, taken on a hike to be handed around and discussed.

The collection’s subject matter is varied but always handled adeptly. The text works not in straight lines but by circling back to put a new shade on lingering forms – bushwalking, grief, fear, relationships, environmental events and human settlement – to accumulate compelling themes. The boundaries between human action and natural forces blur and one is inseparable from the other. The built and natural environment are no blank slate on which grief or division are experienced – they are an active part of experience and meaning. Apocalyptic moments of fire, water and pestilence elevate this to a religious pitch. There is a nod, in this, to the older Australian literary tradition of the tyranny of the bush, and yet (as is appropriate for a contemporary take) that outlook is reframed as a social response. And then, quite gracefully, the inherent drama of a meaningful landscape is sometimes leavened by a comic moment. But many of the stories are quite dark. The title story is among the best and one that manages to simultaneously compel and ask something of the reader. Depicting the terror of bushfire, it consists of only three sentences and two of those are immense, stretching things, where dialogue and action and setting lap against one another in a

breathless panic. Between these two stands the third, much shorter sentence, a moment of dreadful clarity: ‘A great pillar of smoke in the south-west.’ The only flaw of this piece is that it ends so soon.

If there is a story that holds the diverse styles and subjects of the collection together it is ‘Landscapes Within Landscapes’. Here a meek author (simply named ‘the useless man’) goes to be judged on his attempts at writing about the landscape by three incarnations of it. The author has a view to eternity, but not the kind set in statues on city streets, but the kind that the landscape itself embodies – everchanging and yet continuous – which he might participate in through a writing harmonic with it. The story displays the sense that an attempt to capture the sublime of the natural world is an act of impertinence (like a butterfly in a jar) and, simultaneously, elocutes the ability of the natural world, even (and perhaps especially) in its harshest moments to present a Siddhartha moment. This is brief; the judges and the moment are washed away by weather, a force of nature apparently only voiceless for lack of a wider lens. In this sequence, the awareness of what Walter elsewhere describes as ‘the poverty of words’ is acknowledged, dispelled, and then bowed to. The bickering of the judges is transcended by the interceding rain. Walter’s useless man is no more useful, but wiser. In doing so, he proves the very wealth of words.

Puncher & Wattmann / RRP $29.95 / 176pp

Diamonds of sunlight

Leaping Into Waterfalls: The Enigmatic Gillian Mears

by Bernadette Brennan

Review by Jenny Bird

After Bernadette Brennan finished her award-winning A Writing Life: Helen Garner and Her Work, she realised that she was ‘a bit hooked’ on archives and biography. She wanted to do it one more time.

She chose to write a biography of the late Australian writer Gillian Mears, who died with dignity in 2016 after a long struggle with multiple sclerosis, aged fifty-one. Leaping Into Waterfalls: The Enigmatic Gillian Mears was published in 2021.

Brennan has said of her reasoning for selecting Mears as a subject: ‘There’s a huge generation of great writers born in the 60s and early 70s who came after Helen Garner, Kate Grenville and Beverley Farmer. But their work is being left off print runs and they risk being forgotten. And I thought well, who was a really great writer from that time, and I started rereading Gillian Mears.’

Brennan, an academic, author and literary critic, found herself in front of a formidable archive. The Mears collection – 154 boxes in all – stretches along an extraordinary twenty-seven metres of shelving in the State Library of NSW. It is second only in size to the Fairfax family archive. Throughout her writing life Mears either donated or sold tranches of archival material to the Library, often in order to feed herself.

A compulsive recorder of every detail of her life, Mears had her eye firmly on curating and preserving her own story. In her diaries (sometimes she wrote thirty pages a day) she would often directly address an imaginary biographer of the future.

With Mears gone, Brennan added to the archive boxes sixty-five interviews with family, friends, lovers, fellow

writers and publishers. Many were still grieving the loss of Gillian.

Leaping Into Waterfalls is a literary portrait that focuses not only on Mears’ extensive body of writing and the arc of her stellar writing career, but on ‘the lived experience which produced it.’ Brennan quotes David Malouf: ‘Often the gap between the social person and the writing is great. In Gillian it was very close.’ Mears’s work is largely autobiographical fiction and the porous membrane between her life and her work offers Brennan both opportunities and challenges as a biographer. On the one hand she can tack seamlessly between the life and the work. On the other, Brennan confesses to sometimes getting confused – had she read that in a diary entry, a letter or a story? Does it matter? In the end aren’t all our lives curations to some degree?

As a twenty-year-old writing student Mears’s tutors (the likes of Julianne Schultz, Drusilla Modjeska, and Steven Muecke) recognised her talent. In 1986 Bruce Pascoe (then editor of Australian Short Stories), published her first story ‘The Midnight Shift’. Pascoe begged her for more, and her first short story collection Ride a Cock Horse was published in 1988. She was twenty-four years old and never looked back. Publishers wanted her writing. Her output was prolific. Yet most of the time she lived a precarious existence on the edge of poverty.

Mears wrote about Australia with an unflinching female gaze. She wrote about the underbelly of small country town life, the constraints on girls, power and gender and sexuality, death and disability, and the love and cruelty that subsist within families. For me,

in my thirties, reading The Mint Lawn and The Grass Sister in the nineties was revelatory. Then in 2011 came Foal’s Bread, which stands for many among the great Australian novels. Publishers fell over each other, with superlative feedback: ‘wondrous’, ‘magnificent’, ‘beautiful and astounding’, ‘breathtaking’. It won four major Australian literary awards.

A side benefit of Leaping Into Waterfalls is that it also reads as a who’s who of the Australian writing and publishing world between the 1980s and 2015 (when Mears published her last book, the children’s fable The Cat with the Coloured Tale). Mears was not only a compulsive diarist but a compulsive letter writer, leaving a treasure chest of correspondence with other writers, editors, critics, judges of literary awards and publishers. Brennan notes that for Mears, letters were a ‘means of establishing herself in the Australian literary community’.

Mears wrote letters to everyone, all the time, and forged friendships with the likes of Claire Arman, Gerald Murnane, Bruce Pascoe, Dorothy Porter, Helen Garner, David Malouf and others. Mears’s letters were also ‘a form of flirtation’, and she took her fair share of literary lovers.

But the cruel inevitable march of Mears’ multiple sclerosis thrums through every chapter. Brennan offers us a portrait of an athletic woman who loved dancing and sex and bushwalking and transgressive freedoms. Mears’s heroic pursuit of life, love, sex and writing never abated, nor her brutally honest chronicling of her betraying body.

We on the Northern Rivers of NSW can rightly claim Gillian Mears as one of our tribe. She lived in Goonellabah until she was nine, then in Grafton in the old ferryman’s house on the Clarence River. As an adult she moved away often but always returned to the Clarence Valley where her father and some sisters continued to live. She is buried beside her mother in the little bush cemetery at Copmanhurst, upriver from Grafton.

Her last public event was at the Beach Cafe in Byron Bay where she launched The Cat with the Coloured Tale. It was November 2015, and Gillian sat in her wheelchair, backlit by diamonds of sunlight bouncing every which way off the water in the blue bay. She inhabited her wheelchair as if it were a throne. The MS had forced her limbs into uncomfortable angles and her voice was tremulous and reedy, like the high notes of a clarinet. When she spoke, her words were magical, tangential and surprising.

With our grandchildren in mind, I bought two copies. Gillian signed them, her handwriting spidery and frail. She died six months later.

If you already know the work of Gillian Mears then reading Leaping Into Waterfalls is a triple-layered delight. A biography written by a fine writer about a fine writer whose writing you love. If on the other hand you don’t know her work, then this biography serves, as Brennan intended, as a beautifully rendered reminder that we should keep reading her and give Mears her due as a great Australian writer.

Allen & Unwin / RRP $34.99 / 360pp

In Nimblefoot, Robert Drewe returns to historical fiction after more than 25 years

In an article first published at The Conversation, Per Henningsgaard of Curtin University casts a critical, appreciative eye over the latest novel from local Northern Rivers author, Robert Drewe.

Nimblefoot is the eighth novel by Robert Drewe. His first, The Savage Crows, was published in 1976. He is the author of four collections of short stories, two memoirs, and numerous works in a variety of other forms.

He is also the recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for The Bay of Contented Men (1989), and he has been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award twice – for his historical novels Our Sunshine (1991) and The Drowner (1996).

Nimblefoot is Drewe’s first work of historical fiction since The Drowner In the intervening years, his interests have tended towards portraits of contemporary Australian life – some might even characterise these portraits as satirical. Whipbird (2017), for example – his previous novel –tells the story of a family reunion that takes place over one weekend at a family member’s vineyard. The book contains raucous debates between vegans and meat-eaters, the old and young, and even fans of rival football clubs.

Of course, Drewe established himself early as a social commentator on Australia’s middle class with the

publication of his first short story collection, The Bodysurfers (1983), and he undoubtedly honed this skill in his decades-long career as a newspaper columnist.

A return to historical fiction

Drewe’s return to historical fiction in Nimblefoot has not been an easy transition. In the book’s acknowledgements section, he writes about “the difficult period of this novel’s writing – the most challenging of [his] career”. This struggle perhaps accounts for the four years that have elapsed between the publication of Whipbird and Nimblefoot . It is also possible to find traces of the struggle in the novel itself.

Nimblefoot tells the story of Australia’s first international sporting hero – a real-life person named Johnny Day, who competed around the world throughout the 1860s in a popular sport known as pedestrianism. Similar to the modern sport of racewalking, pedestrianism was a 19th-century form of competitive walking, sometimes over great distances, other times against the clock. Gambling was a big part of the

sport’s allure for spectators, while substantial prize money attracted competitors.

Day won his first race at the age of eight, competing against adults. In his three-year career, he won more than A$8 million in today’s money.

Following the end of his pedestrianism career, Day went on to become a jockey. In 1870, at the age of 14, he won the Melbourne Cup riding a horse named Nimblefoot. Despite his remarkable achievements at such a young age, he then vanished from the historical record.

The first 66 pages of Drewe’s novel dramatise these seminal events in Day’s life. The novel gains momentum, however, when Drewe is released from the strictures of recorded history and begins to imagine why a teenage superstar like Day would simply disappear at the height of his fame. Without giving too much away, Drewe finds his answer to this puzzle in a murder witnessed by Day.

So begins Day’s life as a fugitive. He eventually leaves behind the state of Victoria and (unsurprisingly for fans

of Drewe’s work) makes his way to Western Australia, where he moves between various locations and regularly changes employment to conceal his identity. Readers are thus afforded glimpses of a wide variety of historical settings, ranging from a seaside hotel and a quarantine hospital to a sheep and cattle property and a timber camp.

Balancing fact and fiction

While the murder and its repercussions are figments of Drewe’s imagination, he nonetheless attempts to balance fact and fiction. Day’s journey intersects with many historical figures and incidents. Readers are treated to extensive descriptions of the first visit to the Australian colonies by a member of the British royal family – Prince Alfred, who visited in 1867–68, 1869, and again in 1870–71. Other notable historical figures who play an outsized role in this novel include the poet Adam Lindsay Gordon and the novelist Anthony Trollope. Occasionally, it seems Drewe could not let his research go unused. For example, he writes:

He might also have mentioned that leeches had three mouths, both sexes, thirty-two brains and five million teeth and that Shakespeare wrote sonnets about them – but that might have been my fever.

Even the purely fictional elements are imbued with an excessive penchant for period research. Drewe quotes extensively from (fictional) newspaper articles, promotional posters, speeches, letters, a tub of ointment, and more. These excerpts are thoroughly convincing as historical documents, but more often than not they interrupt the narrative momentum.

Another consequence of this shaky balance between fact and fiction is that certain basic storytelling

techniques have not been given due care and consideration. Foremost among these is the novel’s changing point of view. When Day is not present, the story is told using the third-person omniscient point of view. When Day is part of the action, sometimes the story is related in the first-person point of view, while at other times, for unaccountable reasons, it is told in third-person limited point of view.

It can be disconcerting when these point-of-view shifts occur midchapter and mid-scene, with only a section break for warning:

Johnny reminds himself who has the best form. Nimblefoot and he had won the Hotham Handicap only five days before.

He takes a big breath.

*

I give him his head. I’m balanced over his withers so that I won’t throw off his forward surge.

There is no doubt that these shifts in point of view are intentional, but their purpose is unclear. As an experimental technique, it does not resonate with the novel’s themes. In almost all other respects, Nimblefoot is a traditional bildungsroman

The hallmark of a bildungsroman is that it follows the growth and development of its young protagonist. It is therefore essential that this character is engaging. Day does not disappoint in this regard. His slow maturation endears him to the reader, and his journey to adulthood is full of surprises.

Furthermore, Drewe’s descriptive prose is as gorgeous as ever:

As he walked the cliffs, the same pedestrian route every day, to the lighthouse and back, he noticed how summer bushfires had burned everything, even the least flammable vegetation – the pigface and saltbush – down to cliff edge and high-tide mark. The

fires had pared trees into gesturing sculptures, melted seashells and limestone pebbles and cuttlebones.

There is little doubt that Nimblefoot deserves to – and, moreover, will – be met by an appreciative audience. Many readers will welcome Drewe’s return to historical fiction after more than a quarter of a century.

But those who enjoy Drewe’s contemporary fiction, including its satirical contributions to social commentary, might be left wondering why he has chosen to fictionalise this particular chapter from Australian history. More to the point, they may wonder about the contemporary relevance of Johnny Day’s story.

Our Sunshine reimagines the life of the infamous bushranger Ned Kelly, and The Drowner is about the celebrated engineer C.Y. O'Connor’s quest to build a 500-kilometre water pipeline to the inland city of Kalgoorlie, but Nimblefoot features a relatively unknown historical figure. Shining a light on Johnny Day’s story does not have the same potential to, for example, reveal new truths about Australian identity and myths of nationalistic progress. Perhaps as a result, Nimblefoot , though entertaining, does not linger in the imagination.

Guided Writing Group

with Sarah Armstrong

WED 12, 19, 26 OCTOBER & 2 NOVEMBER

6.00PM — 7.30PM

In person at the Byron Writers Festival office $180 /140 Members & Students

Byron Writers Festival is pleased to present the second seasonal block of its newly established Guided Writing Group with author Sarah Armstrong. Every Wednesday evening for four weeks, participants will meet for 1.5 hours of power. Sarah will prompt the group in writing exercises with the simple aim of putting pen to paper. Most of the time will be dedicated to writing with time for feedback from the group on a couple of short pieces each week.

Sarah Armstrong has written three adult novels, including Salt Rain which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. Big Magic, published in May of 2022, is her first children's novel. Sarah is an experienced writing teacher, mentor and manuscript assessor.

Intro to Agents, Publishing & Pitching with Alex Adsett

SAT 26 NOVEMBER

10.00AM — 1.00PM

In person at the Byron Community Centre, Wategos 1 $45/40 Members & Students

In this three-hour seminar with literary agent Alex Adsett, you access a rare behind-the-scenes look at the publishing industry – how the different publishing departments fit together, what an agent can and can’t do for you, publishing scams to watch out for, the different ways to pitch to publishers (and what not to do).

Alex Adsett is a literary agent and publishing consultant with 25 years’ experience working in the publishing and bookselling industry. She has managed Alex Adsett Literary since 2008, and has helped hundreds of authors review and negotiate their publishing deals.

Image: by Elise Derwin

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