northerly autumn 2018

northerly Byron Writers Festival Member Magazine | Autumn 2018

AN INDIAN ODYSSEY LISA WALKER LITERARY HOAXES LINDSAY TUGGLE

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Contents Autumn 2018 Features 006 Sensory overload Q&A with South Australia-based novelist Fiona McIntosh 010 Pastures new Local author Lisa Walker on turning her hand to YA fiction 012 Dreams of the subcontinent Katinka Smit meets Vayu Naidu and enjoys a literary journey through India 015 Celebrating indies Laurel Cohn reports from the 2017 Independent Publishing Conference 018 Fantastic frauds, spectacular shams History’s greatest literary hoaxes 022 Coonabarabran or bust K.M. Steele on writing about place and childhood in her debut novel 024 Extract: Peter Mitchell An excerpt from local author Peter Mitchell’s forthcoming memoir

northerly

northerly is the quarterly magazine of Byron Writers Festival.

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

LOCATION/CONTACT Level 1, 28 Jonson Street, Byron Bay P: 02 6685 5115 F: 02 6685 5166 E: info@byronwritersfestival.com W: www.byronwritersfestival.com POSTAL ADDRESS PO Box 1846, Byron Bay NSW 2481 EDITOR: Barnaby Smith, northerlyeditor@gmail.com CONTRIBUTORS: Chris Black, Laurel Cohn, Marele Day, Anika Ebner, Polly Jude, Eleanor Limprecht, Evan Malcolm, Peter Mitchell, Colleen O’Brien, Katinka Smit, Anne Stropin, Lindsay Tuggle, Gina Watkins BYRON WRITERS FESTIVAL BOARD CHAIRPERSON Jennifer St George VICE CHAIRPERSON Adam van Kempen SECRETARY Russell Eldridge TREASURER Cheryl Bourne MEMBERS Jesse Blackadder, Kate Cameron, Marele Day, Lynda Dean, Lynda Hawryluk, Anneli Knight.

LIFE MEMBERS Jean Bedford, Jeni Caffin, Gayle Cue, Robert Drewe, Jill Eddington, Chris Hanley, John Hertzberg, Fay Knight, Irene O’Brien, Jennifer Regan, Cherrie Sheldrick, Brenda Shero, Heather Wearne MAIL OUT DATES Magazines are sent in MARCH, JUNE, SEPTEMBER and DECEMBER

Regulars 002 Directors note 004 News and events northerly gets a facelift, Residential Mentorship, AGM and more 007 The Books That Shaped Me Marele Day on the literature that inspired her own writing 008 Feature poet Two poems from Lindsay Tuggle 026 SCU showcase Short fiction by Gina Watkins 027 Book review Chris Black on The Last Man in Europe by Dennis Glover 028 What YA Reading?

YA fiction reviews with Polly Jude 029 Book review Kathleen Steele on Whipbird by Robert Drewe

PRINTER Quality Plus Printers Ballina ADVERTISING We welcome advertising by members and relevant organisations. A range of ad sizes are available. The ad booking deadline for each issue is the first week of the month prior.

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

CONNECT WITH US Visit byronwritersfestival.com. Sign up for a membership. Stay updated and join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

www.twitter.com/bbwritersfest www.facebook.com/byronwritersfestival

030 Written in blood Colleen O’Brien’s crime fiction column continues 032 Workshops 034 Competitions 036 Writers groups

Byron Writers Festival and northerly magazine acknowledge and pay respect to the traditional custodians of this land. northerly AUTUMN 2018 | 01

Director’s note According to the Chinese zodiac, 2018 is the Year of the Dog, clearly a positive canine portent for the year to come. We don’t have a dog on the cover, but we hope, like us, you will love our new look northerly!

Already this year we have promoted several author events. I hope you were among the lucky ones to secure tickets for Tim Winton – we’ve been working with his publisher Penguin to bring him back to Byron for years now and the event sold out in a record twenty-four hours.

We have recently announced an excellent creative opportunity for young people: Northern Rivers’ Memory of War: Stories of Then, Told by People of Now. This Anzac project includes the commissioning of six creative projects from young people aged 14-22 years. The aim is to engage young people in the Northern Rivers with the memory of war and the Anzac legacy. Project submissions can be in any medium (e.g. essay, story, podcast, sculpture, performance art) that illustrate and respond to the title. Six successful applicants will each receive $1,000, mentor assistance and an invitation to appear at this year’s Byron Writers Festival 2018 to present their work and discuss their creative journey.

Over the holidays I fell in love with a small hardback book, The Secret Life of Cows. One of my publishing colleagues sent a copy, telling me it was her favourite book of 2017. It has since passed through many sets of hands and everyone I know who has read it has delighted in these endearing bovine stories. Based on a small property in the Cotswolds, author Rosamund Young and her brother are widely acknowledged as the UK’s first organic farmers. Here is a taster: At Kite’s Nest Farm the cows (as well as the sheep, hens, and pigs) all roam free. They make their own choices about rearing, grazing and housing. Left to be themselves the cows exhibit personalities as diverse as our own… cows love, play games, bond and form lifelong friendships. They’ll seek out willow when they are injured and stinging nettles when pregnant. They babysit for one another; invent games; take umbrage and grieve.

It’s a lovely book to keep by your bedside and dip in and out of.

Meanwhile, we’re already well into the initial programming phase, and promise another inspiring Festival.

With warm wishes for the year ahead,

Edwina Johnson Director, Byron Writers Festival

02 | AUTUMN 2018 northerly

Photo: Evan Malcolm

NEWS & EVENTS

Northerly’s winds of change Byron Writers Festival’s Communications Manager, Anika Ebner, explains northerly’s new look and why it might seem a little late to reach your mailbox.

Did you miss us? In case you were wondering, no, your January edition of northerly did not get lost in the post. We have been busy compiling a bigger, better northerly with a new look and even more pages to celebrate our love of reading and writing with you all.

Just like the blustery sea breeze for which it’s named, northerly will be a seasonal edition, delivered to your mailbox (or inbox) during the first week of autumn, winter, spring and summer each year. Every quarter, northerly will continue to bring together interviews, reviews, extracts, articles, short stories, poetry, industry tips and much, much more.

With so much digital noise in our lives these days, we wanted to refocus our attention on northerly in 2018. In slowing down the pace a little and going quarterly, it allows us to diversify and expand our editorial content even more, covering and publishing local, national and international authors and producing in-depth articles that cover all aspects of writing.

There is something so powerful about reading the printed word on a paper page; be it a letter, book, newspaper or magazine. After all, that’s why we as an organisation exist – to use the power of words to connect, inspire, nurture and delight our community or readers, writers, thinkers and storytellers.

Designed to be picked up, put down, passed around, dog-eared and scribbled on, we invite you to press the pause button and immerse yourself in the power of words for a moment or two.

We welcome readers’ feedback on the new-look northerly, so please feel free to get in touch at anika@byronwritersfestival.com or northerlyeditor@gmail.com To all of our returning and new members this year, thank you from all us here at Byron Writers Festival for your support. We couldn’t do it without you!

northerly AUTUMN 2018 | 03

NEWS & EVENTS

Margin Notes News, events and announcements from Byron Writers Festival Residential Mentorship The application window for the 2018 Byron Writers Festival Residential Mentorship is set to open very soon.

The mentorship will take place 14-18 May and will again be facilitated by award-winning local author Marele Day, who will offer one-on-one mentoring. The mentorship provides five days in a glorious Byron Hinterland location with accommodation and meals provided, in the company of three other committed authors.

Applications for this year’s Residential Mentorship open on Thursday, 15 March and close on Thursday, April 5. Successful applicants will be notified and announced on the Byron Writers Festival website on 27 April.

For full application guidelines and fees, go to byronwritersfestival. com/services/residentialmentorship.

New format for Members’ Book Club Last year saw the introduction of Byron Writers Festival’s Members’ Book Club, a forum that saw the author of a novel join in the discussion of their work with enthusiastic readers. Authors to take part in the discussions included Marele Day, Russell Eldridge and Laura Bloom.

However, the format for Members’ Book Club for 2018 04 | AUTUMN 2018 northerly

will be different in the wake of valuable feedback from last year’s participants. Byron Writers Festival will now be offering a list of local authors who can attend your own existing book group in the Northern Rivers area. More details on how to host an author in this new book club format will be made available soon.

Anzac opportunity A new collaboration between Byron Writers Festival and the Australian Government’s Anzac Centenary Arts & Culture Fund has resulted in a unique opportunity for young artists designed to foster creative and artistic excellence.

Six art projects will be commissioned from youths aged between fourteen and twenty-two, responding to the idea ‘Northern Rivers’ Memory of War: Stories of Then, Told by People of Now’. The creative proposal can be for any medium (essay, story, podcast, digital, photography, video, performance and so on).

Successful artists will receive $1,000 to bring the artwork into being, assistance from a mentor and the chance to appear at Byron Writers Festival 2018 to discuss their project.

Applications close on 25 April, for more information and application instructions visit www.byronwritersfestival. com/anzac

Walker’s double autumn launches Local author Lisa Walker will celebrate the publication of two new books in the coming months, both of which will be marked by launch events in the region.

Walker’s first YA novel, Paris Syndrome, published by Harper Collins, is released in March and will be launched by Marele Day on Thursday, 5 April at The Book Room at Lennox, Lennox Head. RVSP to lennox@ thebookroomcollective.com Walker’s new novel for adults, Melt, will be published through Lacuna in April and has its launch, courtesy of Sarah Armstrong, at The Book Room at Byron, Byron Bay on Thursday, 31 May. RSVP to byron@ thebookroomcollective.com Turn to page ten for a Q&A with Lisa about her first excursion into YA fiction, and look out for an extract from Melt in the June issue of northerly.

Members flying high A number of northerly contributors and members of Byron Writers Festival have been celebrating significant writing achievements in recent months.

Polly Jude, who took part in the 2017 Residential Mentorship and pens YA fiction reviews for this magazine, was named the joint winner of the Hachette Mentorship with fellow member Kerry Sunderland.

SAVE THE DATE! The Byron Writers Festival Annual General Meeting (AGM) for 2018 will take place on Thursday, 15 March at 5:30 at the Festival office at Level 1 – 28 Jonson Street, Byron Bay. All members are welcome to attend.

NEWS & EVENTS

Cover story The cover art for this issue of northerly is Justine by Goolmangar-based painter Jake Jaquiss. He held one successful solo exhibition in late 2017 and is involved in two forthcoming group shows in March and April in the Northern Rivers. To see more of his work visit @jakejaquissart on Instagram.

Katinka Smit, who has provided Festival interviews for northerly and was also the magazine’s intern, was recently nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize in the USA for her work of flash fiction ‘Ordinance Man’, which originally appeared in the online journal Edify Fiction.

LAUREL COHN Editing and Manuscript Development ~ manuscript assessment and development ~ mentoring ~ editorial and publishing consultations ~ structural and stylistic editing ~ copy editing and proofreading

An assessment will give you valuable feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of your manuscript, providing guidance on how to take your work to the next level of development.

“I can’t tell you enough how extremely helpful your 12 page report was to restructuring and getting things in a better order and working out who’s story it really is. And your jottings on the paper, and your yellow postits. Most of them so spot on, merely

had to follow your advice. It amazes me how you can hold the story, the characters and the message all in your head while you read it. Thank you for the prods and pushes and pointing me in a direction that worked, or at least I hope it has worked.”

Sandra Heilpern

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

Lismore-based writer Peter Mitchell recently had his poem, ‘The Book of Night’, judged as Highly Commended in the Adrien Abbott Prize 2017, judged by Mark Tredinnick.

Finally, Mullumbimby’s Emma Ashmere has had her short story ‘The Historic Present’ selected as a finalist in the joanne burns Microlit Award, with the work also set to be published in the Spineless Wonders anthology, Time.

Queensland Writers Centre also recently selected an untitled eight-word story by Ashmere for the centre’s #8wordstory competition, which resulted in Ashmere’s work appearing on three digital billboards (pictured right) in Brisbane during November 2017. Turn to page thirty-four for details of Ashmere’s forthcoming Byron Writers Festival workshop on writing flash fiction.

Members are encouraged to get in touch with northerly with news of their literary achievements. Email the editor at northerlyeditor@ gmail.com

ADFAS announces 2018 lectures The Byron Bay and Districts branch of the Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Societies (ADFAS) will kick off its calendar for 2018 on Monday, 5 March with the lecture Medieval Manuscripts in Australasia, presented by Dr. Christopher Hamel.

The following lecture, on Monday, 16 April, is entitled A Painter in Revolutionary Times: John Singleton Copley and the American Revolution 1760-80.

The May lecture, scheduled for Monday the 14th, is From Corot to Monet: Developments in French Landscape Painting.

ADFAS will be presenting eight evening lectures throughout the year for anyone interested in the

broader arts, history and culture.

ADFAS lecture nights provide a friendly social opportunity with a glass of wine and supper following.

ADFAS presentations are held at the A&I Hall in Station Street, Bangalow at 6.30pm. Doors open at 6pm for a welcome drink. All are welcome – you can become a member on the night or alternatively join us as a guest. For more information visit www.adfas.org.au/societies/newsouth-wales-act/byron-bay

Quotation Corner ‘Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveller may never reach the end of it.’

— Ursula le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan (1971)

northerly AUTUMN 2018 | 05

Photo: Anne Stropin

INTERVIEW

Soaking up place: A Q&A with Fiona McIntosh Fiona McIntosh has written an astonishing amount of books in a best-selling, late-blooming career that was born in a masterclass with Bryce Courtenay. She now teaches that masterclass, having accepted the mantle from Courtenay on his deathbed. She met with Katinka Smit to discuss the writing of her latest book The Tea Gardens, which is set in Calcutta and Darjeeling in India in the 1930s.

Your writing has very strong settings – is this where the writing begins for you?

Place for me is vital. I don’t plan a story. I need to go to places and see if it finds me. I don’t even know my characters. I think first about where shall we go in the story. India is such a colourful backdrop, and it’s a hotbed of drama in the dying days of the Raj. You can play with that.

How did you deal with the ‘dying days of the Raj’?

I showed it through characterisation – some of the ‘clinging on’ by some of the Brits, 06 | AUTUMN 2018 northerly

this arrogance that the imperial life will continue, and the culture clash, the disrespect for local culture.

There are also a couple of people who are very mindful of caste, because you need to be.

How did you get that sense of the atmosphere into the writing?

When we first arrived in Darjeeling, I made time to be alone. It was a sensory overload. It is so beautiful: the farming, the landscape, the mists and the firmament. There are colours you don’t see at sea level. It was quite a special place. I didn’t take photos, I just stared and soaked it up for about half an hour or so, and I knew then and there that crucial scenes of the story would be there, that it was where she would experience great joy, but also tremendous pain. I knew this was important. It felt like the story found me there. The character Isla felt fully formed as soon as I got to the tea gardens. I’m looking for the emotional connection all of the time, whether it’s to the landscape

or to what I’m learning about how people lived or what kind of problems were arising at this time.

And I felt like, ‘I’m Isla now, Isla is going to react like I’m responding to this’. It’s the first and only time I’ve ever done method writing like that, that her reaction must be mine, but I had to just drink it all in. I also spent a lot of time in the British Library learning about obstetrics in the 1930s, and tropical medicine, before I even got on a plane to India.

The book ends in a way that is not your classic happy-everafter. How do you deal with that in the writing?

I go with where it’s going. If you let characters go, if you let them have their way from the get go, they’ll have a full emotional life and make decisions that you can’t control.

The ending had to happen this way because it was the decision that Isla had to make.

The Tea Gardens is published by Penguin.

FEATURE

The Books That Shaped Me # # 1: Marele Day

The book that introduced me to the tough female voice Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin I first came across this story of rebellion and romance at university. It resulted in a thesis, a poem, and sparked an interest in life on the wrong side of the tracks that would later inform my crime novels. Its young female author died during surgery at age twentynine. A French-Algerian orphan adopted by a strict elderly couple, Albertine spent much of that short life in reform school or prison.

Publication of Astragal, the first of three autobiographical novels, rocketed her into stardom and acclaim. In France she was referred to as the female Genet, in America, ‘James Dean for the intelligent girl rebel’. But Albertine was always singularly herself.

Astragal opens with the protagonist’s daring escape from prison, during which she severely breaks the astragalus in her ankle. She is rescued and kept safe by a passing stranger, Julien Sarrazin, himself an excon. The couple will eventually

marry. This is not an airbrushed romance nor does it shy away from examining the complexities of falling for the person who is both saviour and captor. What shines through with unflinching honesty is youthful effervescence and worldly cynicism, and a voice that combines streetwise argot with incandescent flashes of literary brilliance.

The 2014 edition of Astragal from Serpent’s Tail has an introduction

by Patti Smith. She always carried a copy of Astragal with her.

The book that showed me the possibilities of language A Natural History of the Senses

by Diane Ackerman Luscious in language and erudite in subject matter, A Natural History of the Senses is best savoured lying on a comfortable couch in a room full of sunlight. Each chapter – smell, touch, taste, hearing, vision – is delectable and will leave you wanting more. A New York Times bestseller, it weaves together fascinating detail drawn from science, history, anthropology, geography, personal reflection and

memory. We learn that turtles can feel their shells being scratched, that Cleopatra entertained Mark Antony on a cedarwood ship with perfumed sails: ‘Her regally perfumed presence arrived before her, like a calling card in the scentdrenched wind.’ The final chapter touches on synaesthesia. Nabokov was a synaesthete and wrote with precision about the letter ‘a’ having the tint of weathered timber, ‘n’ recalling oatmeal, and ‘s’ being a mixture of azure and mother-of-pearl.

This book is testament to the evocative power of language. It prompts writers to make use of all the senses when writing, to give readers the richest possible experience. It reminds us all of what we sometimes take for granted – the ability our senses give us to connect with the world around us, to smell, taste, touch, hear and see.

Marele Day is the author of four crime novels as well as the best-selling Lambs of God. She was awarded the Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008 and is the mentor of emerging authors at Byron Writers Festival’s annual Residential Mentorship

northerly AUTUMN 2018 | 07

POETRY

Feature Poet #1: Lindsay Tuggle On Floating Bodies Her guttural silhouette in bruised relief – basalt-mouthed, truant beauty.

Sleeves reveal wrists graced in the master’s hand.

The tyranny of childhood is boredom.

Violence, when it comes, is some thread of glassy splendour – blood laced with blonde.

She wakes to remember her garnet cluster of early deaths one by flowers, the rest by roads.

In the survivalist’s diaphragm nothing is wasted.

Ribs flare with erasure, trivial breath. Winter is an anathema in this place.

Nothing much happens here.

Cosmetically, it’s abysmal.

Light blooms in neon amnesia from which we are blessedly immune.

Our blood-teared armour, warmed by breast and bone, we’re honeyed anatomies gathering elsewhere,

hourly.

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POETRY

Revival it’s taut with quiet since the circus girls’ descent. leave the porch light flickering, wait. the caravan’s almost around the corner. now we wait behind collisions of homes. fasten your buttons it’s farther again. this is not happiness, but the singing helps. the cellar cast yellow by air crashing beneath

what faith?

the craven have their own

branch strange

with hymnals.

look, don’t drown, leave part of yourself below, remember the inconsistency

of manna swallowed too soon you never know when you’ll need a revival. watch your hem

it’s muddy, and the path’s elliptical. there’s no such thing as circular, we do our best on earthen floors acoustic bare.

Lindsay Tuggle is the author of The Afterlives of Specimens (The University of Iowa Press, 2017). Her first collection of poems, Calenture, is forthcoming with Cordite Books in 2018. Her poetry has been published in Cordite Poetry Review, Contrapasso Magazine, HEAT Magazine, Mascara Literary Review, Rabbit Poetry, Red Room Poetry and The Hunter Anthology of Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry. She has been recognised by major literary awards, including: the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize (shortlisted 2015), the Val Vallis Award for Poetry (second prize 2009, third prize 2014), and the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s Poetry Prize (shortlisted 2016, long-listed 2014, 2017).

Lindsay grew up in Kentucky and now lives in Sydney. She has been a fellow at the Library of Congress, the Mütter Museum of Philadelphia, and the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Her scholarly work has recently appeared in Whitman in Context (Cambridge University Press) and The Walt Whitman Quarterly Review (University of Iowa Press), among other collections and journals. Lindsay is currently a Research Associate with the Writing and Society Research Group at Western Sydney University, where she also teaches literature. See more at www.lindsaytuggle.com

northerly AUTUMN 2018 | 09

INTERVIEW

From Paris, with love In 2018 local author Lisa Walker will have the unique experience of publishing two books in the space of two months. Her fourth novel for adults, Melt, is out in May, while with Paris Syndrome she marks her first foray into YA fiction.

Here, Lisa offers insight into how and why she turned her hand to YA, where the peculiar idea for Paris Syndrome came from and what it was like to write two novels simultaneously.

Has writing YA fiction been something on your mind for a long time or was it something that has arisen more recently?

The first novel I ever wrote, which will never see the light of day, was a young adult fantasy, but I turned to adult fiction after that. Many years ago, a publisher said to me, ‘You know, you have a great voice for YA.’ I never forgot that, and at last

10 | AUTUMN 2018 northerly

decided to give it another go. So, it’s been on the cards for a while.

Can you tell us a bit about how you arrived at the idea for Paris Syndrome?

I came across Paris syndrome a few years ago and it struck me as so quirky and bizarre, I had to write about it. It’s a form of culture shock which visitors to Paris can experience when the city

doesn’t live up to their romantic expectations. The character of Happy, a Paris-obsessed girl who has just moved to Brisbane, came to me soon after and the story grew from there. Instead of the Seine, Happy has the Brisbane River. Instead of the Eiffel Tower, she has the much smaller replica which sits outside a Brisbane café.

Initially, she thinks that Brisbane is incredibly boring, but gradually

INTERVIEW

she realises that life doesn’t only happen in Paris.

Can you describe some of the key ways that you approached storytelling, language, structure and theme differently for YA as opposed to your novels for adults?

I write my adult novels in firstperson with readable language and humour, which is typical of YA, so I found it easy to make the switch. The main difference is that the protagonist experiences life-changing events for the first time. That adds extra power to the storytelling. Things seem closer to the bone when you’re a teenager.

At 70,000 words, Paris Syndrome is a little shorter than my other novels, which have ranged from 75,000 to 90,000 words. The story therefore focuses more closely on the protagonist’s journey. There is less room for tangents.

What YA books by other authors have acted as inspiration for you?

I love authors who mix light and dark in their storytelling. Authors I’ve particularly enjoyed include Vikki Wakefield, John Green, Jandy Nelson, Melissa Kiel, Rainbow Rowell, Libba Bray and Jennifer Niven. YA fiction appears to be the perfect home for writing which is amusing yet hard-hitting. No topic is off-limits, and teenagers seem to ‘get’ quirky in a way that older readers may not.

Does YA have any duty to give context to, or introduce young readers to, certain complex social issues?

I think YA has a duty, firstly, to tell a relatable story. If that’s about surviving at school or finding love, that’s fine. Many YA books do explore social issues though, and I think that’s a good thing. The right

book at the right time can make a difference to a young person who is struggling. Paris Syndrome is a comedy, but it also explores diversity in sexuality, coping with grief and learning the difference between fantasy and reality.

You have two books coming out within the space of a few months. How busy is it going to get promoting them and is that something you look forward to?

I enjoy the change of pace from writing to promoting. I was slightly dubious about having two books come out so close together, but I’ve warmed to the idea. It means I can talk about both books at festivals and other events. I’ve drawn a line through March to May to focus on promotion. After that, I’m sure I’ll be keen to retire back to the obscurity of the desk.

Did you write both books simultaneously? If so, was that a challenge?

I started writing Melt first and then once I had a good draft of that, I rested it and started writing Paris Syndrome. It seems to work well for me, to be writing two books at different stages. It’s so important to leave manuscripts alone for a while, so you can come back to them with a fresh eye. It’s also good to have another project to focus on during the potentially agonising process of finding a publisher.

Can you envisage yourself writing more YA in the coming years?

Definitely! I’m working on a new YA book right now. It’s about a teenage private investigator living on the Gold Coast.

For details of the launch of Paris Syndrome, see page four.

northerly AUTUMN 2018 | 11

A boatman on the Ganges, under the Raj Ghat Bridge, Varanasi.

FEATURE

A passage to India for the secrets of storytelling Inspired by a meeting with novelist and storyteller Vayu Naidu at Byron Writers Festival 2017, Katinka Smit recently travelled to India on a scholarship in search of both literary inspiration and the elusive aesthetic concept of rasa. Here she recalls a journey that exhilarated the mind and overwhelmed the senses, as only India can.

It starts in one high voice, before the birds, before the light, holding out its notes like a beggar’s hands.

Across the river on the mud flats, a lone figure appears, draped in a scarf, walking towards only she knows where. It’s my first morning in Varanasi, holy city of the dead.

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Slowly, as the birds awaken and the last bats disappear, more voices thread through the song to become many, a joyous, tangeloflavoured chorus of devotion.

Hawks glissade through the constant haze of smoke in the brightening morning, diving for fish

in the river. I’m here on a university scholarship to research a story that has lazily circled my mind for five years, a research mission that also involves attending a storytelling workshop in Bangalore, to follow an older curiosity: can performative storytelling translate into writing?

FEATURE

Can writing perform and touch the heart of a reader in a similar way?

I’m after the unquantifiable, which only India can deliver.

This trip follows on from an interview I conducted with storyteller-cum-novelist Vayu Naidu at Byron Writers Festival 2017. Here was a storyteller taking performance into writing, something I’d long wondered about but wasn’t sure how to do. I had also attended her workshop, Rasa: The Science and Soul of Storytelling, which introduced basic techniques of arousing rasa and its application to storytelling.

Rasa is a difficult concept to describe succinctly, but basically it is two separate yet indivisible parts of an Indian aesthetic tradition, described as ‘taste’ or ‘juice’. One part is the durable emotional states traditionally evoked by a performer, of which there are considered to be eight or nine (the erotic, the comic, the pathetic, the furious, the heroic, the terrible, the odious, the marvellous and the quiescent), and the other is the emotional or even spiritual transformation an audience member experiences as a result of that emotional state.

This process is described as a churning of the heart that melts the heart, and is supposedly only possible in performance traditions and not applicable to literature, but Vayu Naidu disagrees. She wrote both her novels, The Sari of Surya Vilas and Sita’s Ascent, with rasa as the organising principal for the plot and character development. She looks for incidents that awaken or work towards a certain rasa and asks of the writing, what is the significant emotion of the character or scene or story? This idea had also occurred to me while preparing my scholarship application, and I’m

keen to learn more about the oral art to bring it back into my writing.

Vayu Naidu says stories open up a space that ‘touches on what it is like to be human’, and that rasa is ‘the stepping stone that allows you to see what the story is telling you’. The emotional states can be worked towards by a writer as a performer would, only using different tools.

‘The visual imagination is linked to the aural reception,’ she says, ‘and writing comes from orality, originally.’

Language began in tongues and is the shared medium between storyteller and writer, audiences and readers. ‘Rasa can be universal, it can transcend culture.’

She cites Chekhov as one example of it working in another tradition, in another language, and in literature. Our conversation and her workshop prompted me to enrol in the Kathalaya Story Institute’s storytelling course in Bangalore.

But before I get to Bangalore, I’ve got two weeks to immerse myself in Varanasi, the oldest continuously occupied city in India, and to take an overland train journey to Delhi. I’m madly taking photos of objects; broken clay pots, a straw broom propped in a corner, the centuries-old technique of the washing lines propped up on bamboo poles, the washing twisted into the rope sans pegs.

I take snapshots from a distance of people bathing in the river, the multitudinous wooden boats, crumbling Moghul architecture that the British Raj didn’t quite destroy.

My brain is busy cataloguing street scenes; human exchanges, the furious contrast between the immaculately, colourfully dressed people and the squalid filth of raw

Animals eating garbage at Nagwa Lanka, Varanasi.

sewage pouring into the small creek that feeds directly into the river, the barnyard of animals on the corner chewing through piles of plastic bags for the food waste inside and the spotless hovels that line the small slum that snakes along the river, my daily route into the main part of the city.

My scarf is never far from my nose but I refuse to avoid this place or rickshaw through it; eye contact and shared smiles are a daily pleasure, and by the time I leave, the children are shyly asking for their photo to be taken, a tuk tuk driver has taken a shine to me after a shared walk in a walled holy garden, and old men have taken to walking down the street with me, asking questions. I’ve probably drunk the Ganges at the chai wallah’s hut, sipping boiled tea from a terracotta cup, the water pump just metres away. I’m reminded how Vayu Naidu said that we each have all the rasas inside us, that the rasa of disgust can transform into the rasa of compassion. This holiest of cities has invaded my senses, occupied my body, turned and churned my heart. I thought I would be taking copious notes, but at the end of each day my mind is so full I have no room for writing. northerly AUTUMN 2018 | 13

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Vayu Naidu, who appeared at Byron Writers Festival 2017.

I meet a teenage boy on the street who takes me home to his mother. She offers me puja, and we all watch crappy Indian television, sipping chai from plastic cups on the bed in their one-roomed house.

I meet a man at a guesthouse who takes me to an out-of-the way temple, its design inclusive of Muslim, Christian and Hindu beliefs, a fertility shrine where the Shiva Lingam has grown several inches since he was a boy. He also tells me about a local Sadhu who eats the flesh of the dead. At the river, I stand near a burning body, my heart heaving with how beautiful it is, how loving a ritual this is. Further along, a dog gnaws a charred human knee. The smoke of burning bodies drapes over the city, and gods disguised as cows meander through traffic that flows around them like honey.

By the time I get to Delhi, I’m filled to the brim. I’ve scribbled scenes of villages from the train along the way, realising the story I’m after is there, where I can’t get to. I’m locked into a city schedule.

Delhi completely overwhelms me.

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Phenomenal pollution and an accidental massage in a brothel scuttle me into my hotel room for forty-eight hours. Newspapers report cow vigilantes, millions of kidnapped children and riots about demonetisation. But somewhere in those blank two days a story is seeded. It’s not the one I came for. The story I thought I was looking for feels like an empty husk, lifeless.

In Bangalore, people drink cappuccinos and carry laptops.

Men wear business suits and women casual jeans and smart tops. People stop for a coconut on the street corner where a thousand husks rot in a pile on which a monkey scampers. At the workshop we write stories and tell them, laughing and despairing at our ability and marvelling at Geeta Ramanujam, master storyteller, who captures our hearts and minds from the first word.

‘A good storyteller,’ she tells us, ‘must be a good listener.’ Naidu also urged the importance of listening, both to the story within

and to the story of others. And then Geeta says, ‘Giving up hope is part of the process of finding the story.

The process of chaos is good. Keep churning. Churning is necessary.’

We’re in the territory of rasa now.

She leads us through the types of listening, the role of the teller to help the listener see the story.

Isn’t this what a writer does? We create a world from words that a reader ‘hears’, a story that enters the heart and churns it. And isn’t this what India herself has done to me? I’ve come here thinking to fill in the details to my story like a paint-by-numbers, but stories can’t be controlled like that. In searching for one story, I’ve been swept up in the experience of another. India is telling me its own story, and I can only listen. I am a well, and the whole world has fallen in.

Katinka Smit travelled to India on a New Colombo Scholarship awarded

by Southern Cross University for three weeks in November 2017.

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Forever changes: A snapshot of independent publishing Technological innovation, legislation regarding writers’ incomes and the ever-evolving question of promotion were among the hot topics at the Independent Publishing Conference 2017, held in Melbourne in November. Laurel Cohn reports from one of Australian publishing’s key industry events.

It was a hot and steamy thirty degrees on the Wednesday, plunging to twenty degrees on Thursday. But no one goes to Melbourne for the weather. I was there for the 2017 Independent Publishing Conference, organised by the Small Press Network. The Wheeler Centre, tucked round the side of the State Library of Victoria, was abuzz with publishers, rights managers, editors, publicists, booksellers, games producers, industry monitors, academics, funding bodies and peak industry organisations. The tinned instant coffee available at the first morning tea break was swiftly replaced with plungers and the real stuff, enabling two days of talks about past, present and future trends and issues in the book world.

The what book?

Every industry has its jargon, and there’s always a new term on the horizon. The word ebook is now firmly established in our lexicon and is often discussed in relation to the pbook (print), although most of us still call that version simply a ‘book’ or a ‘real book’. Then there are abooks (audible/audio books). But have you heard of the mbook? M is for multimodal, and the cutting edge of publishing is looking at the creation of stories across multiple platforms and

modes using print text, video, audio, games, augmented reality and virtual reality. It is a nascent area of publishing, but with great potential, which is why games producers are now popping up at publishing industry conferences.

Watch this space!

Sales trends While mbooks may be the way of the future, abooks are currently booming in the US and growing steadily in Australia. Sales of ebooks, however, are falling or stagnant in the US, and are slowing in Australia. Pbooks are still the backbone of the market and sales are trending upwards, including for small publishers. Bianca Whiteley from Nielsen BookScan, a company that tracks book sales across Australia, peppered us with statistics. General non-fiction continues to be the backbone of the market here with around thirtyseven per cent of sales. Next is children’s with thirty-one per cent, then fiction twenty-five per cent and specialist non-fiction seven per cent.

There is a long-term growth shift to self-improvement and awareness categories with Whiteley suggesting that the next big trend (remember colouring books?) seems to be towards

decluttering – body, mind and homes. But putting the crystal ball aside, in 2017 there was slight growth in crime, early childhood books, fashion and beauty, fitness and diet. There was moderate growth in picture books, general autobiography, children’s general interest, anthologies/essays/ letters, and astrology and fortune telling. There was significant growth in health, dieting and wholefood cookery, historical and mythological fiction, money and consumer issues, children’s general non-fiction, popular science, self-improvement, education and teaching, and political and military biography. The categories that are in decline include computer books, motor sports and cycling, military and combat stories, erotic fiction, communication and media, and alternative belief systems.

Book fairs in Europe are the primary way Australian publishers sell overseas rights to locally produced titles, and an impressive thirty per cent of Australian authors have works in translation. Natasha Solomun from The Rights Hive and Angela Namoi from Allen & Unwin gave reports from Frankfurt, the biggest book fair in the world, and Bologna, a specialist children’s book fair. Selling well is quality commercial fiction, psychological thrillers and popular science. northerly AUTUMN 2018 | 15

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Picture books continue to be strong, although young adult fiction is more challenging. Middle grade fiction (eight to twelve year-olds) is in demand and in short supply, particularly stories featuring girl protagonists. Namoi suggested that we are seeing a shift in consciousness with the increasing popularity of stories featuring strong girls. Let’s hope.

Writers’ incomes Wenona Byrne, Director of Literature at the Australia Council, updated us on the latest data on writers’ incomes. Average annual earnings are $19,000 from creative work, but with sixty-two per cent of writers earning less that $10,000, and fifteen per cent earning more than $50,000, the median income sits at $4,500. Writers are earning less than in the past, and spending more time on their writing work.

There are two key issues being debated at the highest levels of government that could further erode these meagre incomes. Peak bodies for publishers (Australian Publishers Association), authors (Australian Society of Authors), booksellers (Australian Booksellers Association) and copyright holders (Copyright Agency Limited) have been working together to push back against recommendations put forward by the Productivity Commission that would be detrimental to our publishing industry. This campaign has been ongoing and we were updated as to the current state of affairs.

One issue concerns Parallel Import Restrictions. The publishing industry supports retaining the current restrictions, as dismantling them (which the Productivity Commission recommends) would, among other things, 16 | AUTUMN 2018 northerly

seriously erode incomes not only for publishers, but also for writers. Also potentially at stake is the space afforded Australian stories by Australians. The other issue concerns copyright and the suggestion to adopt the US ‘Fair Use’ model, which is looser than the current ‘Fair Dealing’ model we have here. A key argument from the publishing industry is that the Fair Use model would seriously weaken the capacity of creators to defend their copyright. In the US, if a litigant loses a case they don’t have to pay costs, whereas the potential for a litigant to be landed with onerous court costs if they lose a claim is powerfully dissuasive in Australia.

At this stage, Turnbull has noted the industry’s concerns and has not implemented either of the Productivity Commission recommendations concerning Parallel Import Restrictions or Fair Use, but the fight is not over yet, and campaigning is ongoing.

The collaboration now happening between the peak bodies was seen as a real positive, with publishers, authors and booksellers presenting a strong, united front, which will no doubt be of ongoing benefit.

Reaching readers Increasingly, writers are expected to do a lot of work to promote their titles. At a session on

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teaching self-promotion to your writers, Angela Meyer (Bonnier Publishing) and Blaise Van Hecke (Busybird Publishing) offered a range of tips. An online presence is seen as a must, at least having your own website, and there is great power in building an email/ mailing list, especially if you can offer something for free, such as a 3,000-word ebook. Short videos are increasingly popular, with the most successful book trailers covering something about the writer’s process, not just the story.

And don’t forget to put captions on your video so that people can follow it even when they don’t have earphones in reach. David Gaughran’s publishing blog Let’s Get Digital was recommended by Khyiah Angel (Typology Publishing) for online marketing tips and general discussion on the state of online publishing.

In terms of social media, Meyer advised writers to focus on one or two platforms that work for you and your audience, and avoid platforms that you struggle with. Instagram is the new riser, and the main way to connect with YA audiences, particularly bookstagram. Delving deeper into young reader’s habits, Adele Walsh from the Centre for Youth Literature noted that most teenagers choose books from peer recommendations or teacher-librarians, and tend to avoid what their parents choose.

Michael Earp from a specialist children’s book shop in Melbourne said that teenagers also like to browse the shelves, and when asked whether readers tend to choose stories with the same gender protagonist, Earp reflected that it is the parents that seem to have preconceived notions regarding preference for matching the protagonist’s gender to the

reader’s, whereas younger readers care less about it.

Bigger isn’t always better Nick Earls, who has published twenty-two books for adults, YA and children with major publishers, spoke about his publishing story with The Wisdom Tree, a series of five connected novellas. He knew it wasn’t going to suit his Random House publisher, and so he teamed up with small publisher Inkerman & Blunt, releasing one title per month in 2016. Publishers have traditionally steered clear of novellas because they don’t fit into the established model of producing books of a certain size with a certain spine width. Earls knew he needed to find a publisher willing to think outside the box. The books are unconventionally small in size and beautifully produced.

The series has won numerous awards around the world and has sold very well, with the size of the story, physically and in terms of reading time, finding new markets (such as hospital cafes) and offering new opportunities (inflight entertainment). It’s a great success story and a reminder that small publishers take risks; push the edges; and are at the forefront of innovation.

I came away from the conference inspired by the vibrant, committed, passionate people in small publishing houses beavering away, supporting writers and their work, and helping to sustain the cultural health of our communities.

Laurel Cohn is a freelance developmental editor with a PhD in Literary Studies. She has been working with writers for over twenty-five years. www.laurelcohn.com.au

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Glorious fakes: History’s literary hoaxes A good literary hoax can draw attention to issues of style and genre, provoke distinctly postmodern questions regarding authorship and authenticity and reveal trends in the publishing industry. Here are some of the most memorable fakeries to grace literature and publishing, from both home and abroad.

Ern Malley By far Australia’s most notorious literary hoax, the Ern Malley affair was either a case of the cruel bullying of bohemians or an

exposure of the nonsensical nature of avant-garde poetry, depending on your side of the poetry divide.

In 1943, two conservative-minded poets, James McCauley and Harold Stewart, together decided to

make a mockery of experimental modernist poetry by creating deliberately random, disjointed and what they deemed ‘bad’ poems pulled from various sources, and sent them to the magazine Angry Penguins, edited by Max Harris. McCauley and Stewart invented an author of these poems, one Ern Malley, to whom they gave a tragic backstory: he had a series of odd jobs before dying of Graves’ disease at the age of twentyfive, leaving behind his stack of unpublished poems, supposedly found by his sister Ethel.

Harris went giddy for the poems, and Ern Malley’s name appeared on the front cover of the autumn issue of Angry Penguins in 1944.

Also on the cover was a painting by none other than Sidney Nolan, whom Harris had specially commissioned to create an artwork based on the poems. Soon after publication the hoax was exposed

by Australia’s press, humiliating Harris and prompting McCauley and Stewart to come out of the woodwork to explain themselves, citing ‘the decay of meaning and craftmanship’ in poetry and claiming that there was ‘no feeling of personal malice’ toward Harris (who, at it happened, never changed his opinion on the quality of the poems).

The front cover of the Autumn 1944 edition of Angry Penguins, featuring Sidney Nolan’s artwork inspired by Ern Malley’s poems.

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Howard Hughes, seen here in 1938, was forced into the public eye in his dotage to deny knowing writer Clifford Irving.

The Ern Malley affair has rippled through Australian culture since, with Nolan crediting the episode with inspiring his Ned Kelly series and Peter Carey partly basing his novel My Life as a Fake (2003) on the Ern Malley story.

Others have affirmed the appeal of the poetry itself, with Robert Hughes writing that the experiment ‘proved the validity of surrealist procedures’, while American poets John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch have cited the Malley poems as influential. It is also worth noting that McCauley and Stewart disappeared into literary obscurity, while Ern Malley has proven to be a source of fascination and inspiration for many ever since.

Patrick White’s 21st century rejection In 2006, The Australian’s Jennifer Sexton conducted an experiment in which she sent the third chapter of Patrick White’s 1973 novel The

Eye of the Storm to twelve of the nation’s leading publishing houses and agents, having changed the name of the work to The Eye of the Cyclone and its author to an anagram of White’s name, ‘Wraith Picket’. Ten publisher/agents summarily rejected the work and two did not reply.

The episode was damning of the publishing industry in two ways: firstly, it exposed the ruthlessly commercial priorities of publishers, and secondly, no one to read the chapter seemed to recognise it as White’s work or in his style, even if the section did not represent White at his finest, nor is The Eye of the Storm his most famous novel.

However, there was plenty of backlash against The Australian’s stunt, with Crikey referring to its ‘bad faith of the entrapment, the smugness of its aftermath, and the shabby… reactionary agenda behind the exercise.’

In late 2017 a similar hoax was conducted by super-fan of French Nobel-winning writer Claude Simon, author Serge Volle. Volle sent fifty pages of Simon’s 1962 novel The Palace to nineteen publishers, resulting in twelve rejections and seven non-replies.

In response, Volle said that modern publishing was ‘abandoning literary works that are not easy to read or that will not set sales records.’

Howard Hughes’ phoney autobiography After more than a decade in reclusion, American billionaire Howard Hughes had become quite the mysterious figure by 1970, when author Clifford Irving conceived of the idea, in cahoots with friend Richard Suskind, of writing a fake Hughes-authorised co-written ‘autobiography’, on the dangerous assumption that Hughes would not take legal action

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against them due to his wish to stay far removed from public life.

The book was a sizable effort of research, while Irving also managed to con his publisher into believing Hughes was on board with the project by faking the latter’s signature on letters. The publisher, McGraw-Hill, paid Irving an advance of $100,000 and also made a check out to H.R Hughes for $765,000 – which of course went into a Swiss bank account opened by Irving’s wife under the name Helga R. Hughes.

After publication and as the book’s promotion gathered pace, however, Hughes roused himself and revealed to the media he had never met Irving, whose plan quickly fell to pieces as a result.

Irving confessed in court, served seventeen months in jail and died in December 2017. The affair was eventually turned into a film, The Hoax (2005).

The Spectra experiments Another hoax designed to draw attention to the perceived silliness of some schools of

poetry, Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments was published in 1916 by American poets Witter Bynner and Arthur Davison Ficke, writing under the pseudonyms Emanuel Morgan and Anne Knish respectively. Bynner and Ficke were taking aim at modernism, or more particularly imagism, with some of the book’s most amusing moments coming in its so-called manifesto, with statements such as, ‘Spectric connotes the overtones, adumbrations, or spectres which for the poet haunt all objects of both the seen and unseen world…’

The ‘Spectra’ movement was immediately taken seriously in literary circles, and for two years until 1918, when the poets came clean, was regarded as a legitimate school of poetry. In a further quirk, one magazine asked Bynner to review the book without knowing he was behind it. Bynner obliged and used the platform to savage various aspects of imagism.

Such was the response to the Spectrist poems, that Bynner said later, ‘Many a discerning critic of poetry is convinced to this day that, liberated by our pseudonyms and by complete freedom of manner, Ficke and I wrote better as Knish and Morgan than we have written in our own persons. Once in a while we think so ourselves.’

Atlanta Nights

The 1916 volume of Spectra.

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The Atlanta Nights hoax, which occurred in 2004, was designed to expose an unscrupulous publisher suspected of exploiting authors.

Publish America was a company touting itself as a ‘traditional publisher’, yet the suspicion was that it was merely a vanity press, reportedly paying authors as little as $1 and then charging them plenty to purchase copies of their own books.

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The front cover of Atlanta Nights as it was sold through Lulu.

Publish America had also publicly scorned authors of science fiction and fantasy. This prompted a group of writers in this genre to hatch a plan that would reveal the lie behind Publish America by writing and submitting ‘the worst book ever written’. The novel, Atlanta Nights, was written by nearly forty authors who made the ‘novel’ a beacon of awfulness in some highly imaginative ways. Not only was it littered with spelling and grammatical errors, but also the book contained two chapters that were exactly the same and one that was full of computergenerated random text.

The mess of a manuscript was duly accepted by Publish America.

The authors eventually decided not to proceed with the publication and revealed the hoax in early 2005, prompted Publish America to retract its offer after ‘further review’.

The book was eventually published through print-on-demand service Lulu, with the author name, inevitably, of ‘Travis Tea’.

The front cover of Stern magazine on 28 April, 1983.

The Hitler Diaries The apparent discovery of Adolf Hitler’s diaries made front-page news worldwide in 1983. German magazine Stern thought it had stumbled across one of the literary sensations of the century when it was shown the documents, which had supposedly been hidden away in East Germany by one Dr. Fischer after they were recovered from a plane crash near Dresden in 1945.

Embarrassingly for the historians concerned, the diaries, which were handwritten, passed handwriting

examinations conducted by experts enlisted by the Times and Newsweek. However, Stern (who had bought the diaries for US$6 million) chose not to show the text to German handwriting experts for fear of a leak. Then, following publication, the German Federal Archives (the Bundesarchiv) proved conclusively that the diaries were written using modern paper and ink, with it later emerging that they were the fabrication of career forger Konrad Kujau, who received a four-and-half year prison sentence for his efforts. Heads rolled at the Times, Newsweek and Stern.

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K.M. Steele in the Pilliga Scrub.

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The landscape of childhood: fact or fiction?

For her first novel, Return to Tamarlin, K.M. Steele delved into the mists of childhood memories and even made a point of revisiting several childhood haunts. Here, she discusses the practice of mining the events and impressions of one’s youth for literary purposes, and whether these recollections can be trusted.

‘It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity...’

– Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands

After years of writing fitfully or not at all, I wrote three first-draft novels, one of which was Return to Tamarlin, when I moved to 22 | AUTUMN 2018 northerly

Scotland in 2001. All three are set in Australian locations. It seemed that moving to another country allowed me to explore my homeland with greater clarity and gave me the freedom to consider Australia as an exotic location: a mindset I was never capable of assuming before I travelled.

The first draft of Return to Tamarlin bears no resemblance to the finished story; however, locating the narrative in the Coonabarabran area has not changed. As a place of my childhood, the Pilliga Scrub remains a strong influence on my

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inner, albeit at times flawed, vision of Australia.

My experience is not unique.

Patrick White returned to Australia from the creative milieu of London specifically to recapture childhood places and memories, and in turn, write authentically. Later, when he moved back to inner Sydney from Castle Hill in 1964, he said the move may have been partly due to an ‘unconscious desire to bring my life full circle by returning to the scenes of my childhood...’ Salman Rushdie also drew on the strange familiarity of fragments of his childhood memories to reproduce an India in Midnight’s Children that, by his own admission, may never have existed in the real world. Nevertheless, if ‘the past is a foreign country’ then surely childhood is another realm of existence altogether.

I’ve driven to Coonabarabran from Mackay; from Brisbane; from Sydney. I’ve approached it from three different roads when returning for family events, but the feeling I get when I’m near the Pilliga is always the same, and utterly different to how I feel about any other place on earth.

It is home. I feel the country, my heart calls out to it, even inside the air-conditioned comfort of my car.

Despite numerous return journeys to the area, I never questioned my feelings and beliefs about the landscape I took for granted. After all, I knew it like I knew the back of my hand, right?

It wasn’t until I was working on the final drafts of Return to Tamarlin in 2010 that I decided to go to Coonabarabran with the express purpose of visiting the caves in the Pilliga, where I had played and picnicked with my siblings and cousins. I decided I

would not return to the family farm because I preferred my memory of the property to remain intact. It was important to my narrative to preserve the farm I remembered from the 1970s, and besides, I wasn’t sure if I could cope with seeing the property changed beyond recognition. The caves were a different matter. I wanted to test my childhood impressions. I was curious and honestly expected to find them diminished to my adult eye.

The visit to the caves was a revelation and informed and strengthened the final draft of the novel. I was amazed at their sheer scale; shocked at my childhood blindness and taken aback at the unreliability of memories. The visit was also confronting to my inner child because the caves are no longer privately owned.

They are sacred land, open to the public, and lovingly maintained by the local indigenous owners.

Throughout my childhood, the caves belonged to neighbours. To my knowledge, no one visited them in 1970s, except by invitation.

In fact, I remember hiding in those caves one summer afternoon, after my older sister and cousin heard a vehicle leave the highway and young men slamming car doors and yelling below. The older girls made us scramble into the back of the caves. I remember pressing against the wall, the older girls’ fear thick in the air. We didn’t make a sound until the car drove away, but that terror of strangers who might entrap the unwary has never faded. It was a feeling I tried to recapture when the sisters take their picnic to the Limeholes in Return to Tamarlin.

When I walked around the base of the caves, I was transported

A sandstone cave in the Pilliga Scrub.

back to my six-year-old self with the smell of pine needles; the sight of yellow pom-pom wattles and crimson kangaroo paws, and the feeling of dry heat pressing down from above and rising up from the ground. I could almost see my cousin, Rodney, and me; almost hear our cries ringing out as we played once more under the trees near the base of the cave.

On the path to the caves, I read the signboards and was amazed at the plethora of flora, fauna and indigenous artefacts I failed to notice when I was six. When I climbed to the highest ledge, the view over the Narrabri Plains was simply stunning.

There is no doubt that the visit to the caves added depth and authenticity to my novel. It also alerted me to the vagaries of memory, and the possibility that we all hold an ideal landscape from our childhood within our hearts and minds that encompasses both our flawed internal vision and the real.

K. M. Steele will embark on a mini booksigning and reading tour covering the locations in Return to Tamarlin. She’ll appear at Lightning Ridge Library on April 10, Walgett Library on April 12 and Coonabarabran Library on April 13. Check local library websites for reading times.

More information on Return to Tamarlin

by K. M. Steele is available at www.amazon.com/author/kmsteele and www.facebook.com/KMSteele1967

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Extract: Fragments Through the Epidemic by Peter Mitchell In 2014, Lismore-based writer Peter Mitchell was the recipient of a writer’s grant from the Artist with Disability program (Australia Council), which helped him complete his ficto-memoir, Fragments Through the Epidemic.

In providing an extract from the book to northerly, Mitchell writes, ‘Fragments Through the Epidemic is an evocation of the first ten years of living with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). This excerpt is taken from the final chapter and describes when I was in 17 South, the AIDS ward at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Darlinghurst.

‘The first section describes the moment I was diagnosed with a life-threatening, ‘opportunistic’ infection, a nonHodgkin’s lymphoma. The second section is very different. I remember talking to the social worker immediately after the diagnosis, but have no recollection of the conversation. Consequently, it is a fictionalised version of the exchange.’

Mitchell is also the author of poetry chapbook The Scarlet Moment (Picaro Press, 2009). His memoir, poetry, short fiction and literary criticism have been published in national and international journals, magazines and anthologies. In 2013, he was awarded the Dorothy Hewett Flagship Fellowship for Poetry (Varuna Writers’ Centre).

Day Three – Saturday 20 June, 1992 1 All I had for breakfast was a soothing cup of tea. Sometime after the nurse’s round had finished, Doctor M suddenly arrived with a team of junior doctors, senior nurses and medical students. He pulled the curtain around the bed in a gesture of privacy.

Fear palled around me, their presence an unknown threat.

For half a minute, he spouted medical jargon about me as if I wasn’t there. ‘We’ve done more testing,’ he continued, turning to me, ‘and found evidence of a nonHodgkin’s lymphoma.’

I stared at him and blinked.

His words translated the pandemonium of colour on the rear of my tongue. The mound of cells now had a name: Cancer.

But more: the cells were living and

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breathing. Mount Vesuvius was a sentient being with an identity: non-Hodgkin’s.

‘You might be okay for two or three years, but it’ll come back.’

For a second time, I blinked. A new vocabulary entered my world.

What was a ‘lymphoma’? Who was ‘non-Hodgkin’s’?

‘And every time it comes back, it’ll get worse,’ he said, looking at me.

Each statement he made, his voice became louder as if his ego grew.

I remained silent and looked at the team. Each man and woman shuffled their feet, their discomfort palpable, their faces a sandstone wall: hard and cold.

‘It’ll come back in shorter and shorter time spans and it’ll kill you,’ he said, emphasising ‘it’ll’.

A basket of words appeared in my imagination. It sat at the doctor’s feet as if offering food for thought. I bent down and picked out ‘testing’ and shoved it down his throat. For

a second time, I chose ‘evidence’.

He coughed, his fingers attempting to dislodge the words. I gathered ‘cancer’ and ‘non-Hodgkin’s’ and ‘worse’ and ‘kill’ and jammed them down his throat. Each word was limned with thorns and salt, blood streaming from his mouth.

He chopped the air with his right hand as if cutting through the discomfort. He flicked his head, dismissing the medical team. They filed out, pulling the curtain back and looking away.

I sat on the plank of bed, tears waterfalling. What was this sentence of death? I turned and faced the other men in the other beds. It seemed as if their eyes smiled at me, saying, ‘it’s your turn now, your turn.’

2 Doctor M stopped a few metres from my bed and stood next to a woman who faced me. ‘You’d better go and talk to him,’ he said, crooking

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his right arm over his shoulder, his thumb pointing in my direction.

because our mortality is shoved right in front of our faces.’

‘Okay,’ said the woman, glancing at me.

‘Yes, it is very confronting,’ I sniffed, my tone emphasising ‘is’. ‘If only … .’ My shoulders sagged and I collapsed into the pillow. ‘I feel so helpless.’

‘I told him the results from the second biopsy.’

‘Which are?’

‘A non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma on the posterior of his tongue.’

‘Hmm,’ she said, ‘I’ll talk to him right now.’

Doctor M nodded and walked out of the room.

‘Hi,’ said the woman.

I gazed at her.

‘Do you mind if I sit here?’ She pointed to the end of the bed. ‘I’m Sarah Ainsworth, Doctor M’s Social Worker.’ Sitting down, she pleated her hands in her lap.

‘Again that’s normal. Because let’s face it, it’s an event few of us consider in the ordinary course of our lives.’

‘You make it sound as if it’s an everyday occurrence.’

‘It is. And yes, I know it’s a part of my job and I’ve had these conversations previously, but it’s never easy for me. But through these kinds of talks, I was forced to consider my own mortality. And I feel it’s an honour talking about this.’

‘What do I do now?’ I asked, my tone inflamed anger, the words red.

‘I want to go back to before,’ I said, ignoring her last statement.

‘Before the diagnosis when my life was a flowering line of daisies going on forever.’ In my imaginary projections, I saw an eighty-year old version of myself dancing through a field of daisies.

‘I intended asking you what do you think it means for you right now?’

‘Okay, let’s consider another question. How do you feel?’

‘I don’t know.’ I shrugged my shoulders. ‘It’s a death sentence.’

I stared at the ceiling, my thoughts tumbling around a graveyard. ‘I don’t know. If I had’ve had some warning, I might feel differently. Doctor M’s bedside manner is like a train crash.’

Tears creeked down the dry skin of my face.

‘Okay, what do … ?’

‘I think it’s normal to think that.

Many people tell me similar things when they’ve been told the results of a biopsy.’

‘I don’t care what other people say.’ I wiped away more tears.

‘Well, what do you think it does mean for you?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said a second time.

‘Am I gonna end up in a coffin?’

‘That’s a possibility, I guess.

It would be dishonest not to acknowledge that. But I think it’s jumping the gun. A cancer diagnosis is always confronting

Sarah smiled. ‘I realise his approach is tough. But it might be called the tough love approach.’

‘Hmm,’ I said, raising my eyebrows. I paused, considering how I felt. ‘I feel alone. Yes, all alone in the world. I want to be in my mother’s arms right now.’

‘So she could hold and cuddle you.’

I agreed.

‘A normal reaction. Everyone wants warmth and security during these moments.’ She paused then asked, ‘Do you feel like a shag on a rock?’

Nodding, I imagined a cormorant on a rock, wet, bedraggled, facing the ocean.

‘With big waves crashing all around you?’

‘And black, hang-dog clouds,’ I said, smiling.

‘It sounds like a normal scenario to me. And I’m not making fun of your situation,’ she continued, her right-hand palming the air. ‘We’re making a story about you, one that thousands of other people also share every day.’

A wry smile creased my face.

‘Fair enough. You’re still doubtful.

But do you see the point I’m making? That the clouds will clear, that the waves will subside and you’ll make it back to the shore.’

She raised her eyebrows as if waiting for a response.

‘I suppose so.’ Fear and doubt still tinged my sense of self.

‘Okay, you sound as if you’re in a different frame of mind.’ She stood up. ‘At least for the moment.’

Handing me her card, she said, ‘Ring me on the extension here if you need to talk. I suggest you probably will.’

I read the card and looked up.

‘I’ll get information about nonHodgkin’s lymphomas. If you read more, you’ll become more acquainted with your unwanted friend on the end of your tongue.’ She turned and walked out of the room.

I rested my head in the pillow, stared through the ceiling, my future a line of exclamation marks blurring into the horizon.

northerly AUTUMN 2018 | 25

SCU SHOWCASE

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

Ms Petunia Gina Watkins

This is the house.

I trace the cursive letters on the piece of paper I found on the street today. It simply reads Mum – 7 Cherrywood Road. This is the secluded edge of town, where a few deteriorating houses sit hidden behind thick trees.

The cottage’s pale-yellow paint peels off like bark. The Victorian-style fence around the house is surrounded by weeds. I would assume no one is living here except there is an array of lilac, red and white petunias growing in the garden and hanging pots.

The house must belong to the local woman known only as Peculiar Petunia. People in town criticise her for spending all her time in her house, tending to her flowers. They think she killed her husband and buried him behind her property. People are quick to fabricate stories about those they don’t know. I feel sorry for Ms Petunia; no one has seen her since her son died.

For some reason, I was driven to follow where the note would take me. Here I am at Ms Petunia’s house, but there seems to be no one here.

A pot smashes. I turn to see a woman with white hair standing at the top of a ladder. She wasn’t there a second ago.

‘Excuse me,’ I call out.

‘Is that you, Harry?’ Ms Petunia climbs down.

I run over to steady the ladder. Ms Petunia’s clear blue eyes are almost translucent.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ I say.

Her soft smile slowly fades. ‘My son Harry is coming to visit me today. He’s going to fix the roof,” Ms Petunia mutters and walks to the garden bed.

The flowers are a touch of colour and beauty amongst decay.

‘Dear, could you help me cut down a branch?’ Ms Petunia says.

Suddenly, the foul odour of decomposing flesh hits me. There must be a dead animal around here.

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‘Sure,’ I say, trying to ignore the odour that is making me gag.

I follow Ms Petunia to the back of the cottage. That’s when I see it: someone is lying on the ground, but all I can see from here are the feet wearing red sandals.

My eyes drift down to Ms Petunia’s feet. My stomach sinks when I realise she is wearing the same sandals. All this time, people have been gossiping about her while she was rotting away. She died nameless and alone.

Sympathy washes over me, but why am I not afraid?

‘What is your name?’ I say.

Ms Petunia’s forehead crinkles as she tries to think.

Her confusion seems to pass and she looks up at me.

‘I’m June,’ she whispers. ‘How did I forget that?’

June trembles at the sight of her body on the ground. ‘That’s me, isn’t it?’ She grips my arm for support.

‘Do you remember anything else?’

June nods slowly. ‘My son didn’t visit me that day.

I thought he’d abandoned me like all my friends did.

Angry at him, I tried to fix the roof myself. I fell…’ June stares at the trees, hypnotised by the falling leaves. A tear spills down her cheek.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. I grasp June’s hand. She turns around, startled.

‘You misunderstand, dear,’ June pats my hand. ‘I’m upset because Harry is the one waiting for me.’

‘I think it’s time to go find him.’

June smiles at me thoughtfully. ‘I may have been here forever if you never came along.’

I smile back at her. ‘It was nice to meet you, June.’

When I glance back at the cottage, the petunias have wilted.

Gina Watkins finished her Bachelor of Arts degree with majors in Writing and Media Studies in 2017. Gina is an aspiring author who finds inspiration everywhere around her. Gina is a blogger and devoted reader who spends most of her time absorbed in fictional worlds.

BOOK REVIEW

Dystopia revisited The Last Man in Europe

by Dennis Glover Review by Chris Black

Most of us have read Orwell’s 1984 at some point in our lives – for me it was a year ten textbook in the eponymous year itself. And with the slightly frightening political climes we find ourselves in these days, the novel was back on the bestseller lists last year.

Dennis Glover’s The Last Man in Europe is a fictionalised account of George Orwell’s early life and writing career, right through to his dying days grinding out 1984. Wracked by tuberculosis and other health issues throughout his life, Orwell literally tortures himself to finish this book and deliver the final draft to his impatient publisher.

What Glover delivers is a delightful and incredibly detailed insight into the man behind several of the ‘great’ novels of the twentieth century. While fictionalised to some extent, there is clearly an enormous wealth of research behind this book and the great affection Glover has for his subject is evident. He’s not afraid to show the less endearing aspects of Orwell’s domestic life, but it reads like the values and issues close to Orwell are not only well understood but also close to the author’s heart.

Covering the two world wars, Orwell’s fighting and political roles in the Spanish Civil War, and the turbulent times of the great depression, this novel builds a gritty and nuanced portrait of the man behind the dystopian novels that made Orwell’s name. We learn how the ‘doublespeak’ of 1984’s Ministry of Truth was planted and then flowered in Orwell’s mind, and how unhinged

individuals were able to become so powerful within governments that had inadequate checks and balances.

Sound familiar, citizens of 2018?

As with other historical and fictional accounts of this period, we are reminded just how complex the social and political times were in the first half of the twentieth century. We learn how the lines between socialism, totalitarianism and populism are often clouded and how even those closely aligned to one regime were often tempted to – and did – change horses. And while largely focused on the men of the times, The Last Man in Europe provides stinging insights into the roles women were expected or forced to play in these dark times.

I can’t recommend Glover’s debut novel highly enough, and will definitely be going back for another read. But first, I’m going to get a copy of 1984 to relive my teenage self, (striving to understand the wider political world) and appreciate anew the words of a great writer who lived through two World Wars and felt compelled to warn us about the perils of a possible future. Living those times now is indeed frightening and sometimes very confusing – but perhaps less disastrous than Orwell’s dire predictions. Perhaps his insights helped save us from the worst? Thanks to The Last Man in Europe, we have a much greater understanding about where these ideas came from.

Black Inc. / 296pp / $29.99 northerly AUTUMN 2018 | 27

YA BOOK REVIEWS

What YA Reading?

Reviews by Polly Jude

Initiate: Palace of Fires

by Bill Bennett

Queens of Geek

by Jen Wilde

Living on Hope Street

by Demet Divaroren

Dark arts, deals with the devil, arse-kicking she-devils dressed in leather (seriously, what else would they wear?), Initiate: Palaces of Fires has got it all.

Queens of Geek follows super geeks Charlie, Jamie and Taylor as they hit SupaCon USA in a big way. Charlie is there because her YouTube channel has just gone viral and she’s the next big thing.

Taylor and Jamie are there as moral support and to follow their fandom dreams of meeting their favourite stars.

Set in Melbourne, Living on Hope Street deals with many of the issues associated with low socioeconomic living such as poverty, domestic violence, racism and mental health.

Since Lily’s dad died suddenly in a tragic car accident, they’ve been on the move. Every time she felt settled, her mum, Angela, would announce that it was time to move on.

When Lily discovers a terrifying truth, it all starts to make sense.

Three hundred years ago, Lily’s relative broke a solemn promise signed in blood. Years later, Lily finds herself in the terrifying world of dark magic and unleashed evil and now it’s time for Lily to fight to save what she loves most.

Initiate: Palace of Fire offers readers a fast-paced and terrifying adventure. Australian filmmaker Bill Bennett takes us on a terrifying journey that will have you more than just a little bit afraid of the dark.

Penguin / 377pp / $19.99 28 | AUTUMN 2018 northerly

Charlie, a Chinese Australian, explores her bisexuality, while Taylor is autistic and facing her anxieties on the huge scale that is SupaCon. Narrated from both Charlie and Taylor’s perspectives, Queens of Geek gives us insight into these funky girls as they find a place in their weird and wonderful world.

Queens of Geek is a romance with a funky, SupaCon-obsessed background. Jen Wilde writes in a fun and fast style that makes for an easy and enjoyable read.

Swoon Reads / 288pp / $16.99

When Kane and Sam’s dad, Dean, violently attacks their mum, everything is about to change.

Kane is searching for a way to protect his family and Sam is busy trying to survive the bullies at school.

Ada is from the other side of town.

She’s wealthy and goes to a flash private school. But she doesn’t fit in and as she explores her sexuality, she ends up living on Hope Street too with her grandma, Mrs Aslan. As a Turkish migrant, Mrs Aslan, has seen both the best and the worst sides of Hope Street.

Fast-paced and edgy, Living on Hope Street will appeal to older YA readers and parents alike.

Allen and Unwin / 256pp / $19.99

BOOK REVIEW

Rewriting family history Whipbird

by Robert Drewe Review by Kathleen Steele

Take a family reunion; add a trophy vineyard, vanishing, priceless art and a mystery guest intent on causing trouble and you have Whipbird, the latest novel from eminent Australian novelist, Robert Drewe.

Considering Drewe’s previous novel, Grace, was published in 2005, and he is responsible for The Savage Crows (1976) and the magnificent short story collection, The Bodysurfers (1983), it’s safe to say fans have been eagerly awaiting a new novel.

Whipbird centres on the celebration of the 160th anniversary of the arrival of the first Cleary ancestor, Conor, to Australia. When the extended family gathers for a huge reunion at Hugh Cleary’s new vineyard, Hugh has a version of Conor’s history that has shifted somewhat from the actual facts. Conor, whose ghost/ spirit is present at the gathering, offers comedic relief with his own version of events. For example, when Hugh describes Conor as ‘first in a line of gallant military heroes’, Conor’s memories of his part in the Maori Wars in Taranaki include fleeing ‘with the shotgun pellets of the tattooed demons... peppering my bony arse...’.

The cast of Whipbird is huge. The sheer numbers of the Cleary family would be too much for many writers to juggle, but one of Drewe’s strengths is portraying characters through finely observed detail.

His deft handling of his ensemble means the reader quickly recognises the idiosyncrasies of individual cast members, and places them within their sphere of influence in the family. However, there are times when the sheer number of issues absorbed by the family sees the cast at risk of sliding into caricature.

There are some cast members who do not seem to deliver as much as they could. Conor is reincarnated through Hugh’s brother, the ageing ex-rock and roll

star Sly, who has Cotard’s Delusion and believes he is already dead. Sly is a good vehicle for observing the family through the eyes of the long-dead, Conor, yet his presence in the novel, and his previous life as a rock and roll outlaw, does not shed light on the dynamics of the family. Despite Sly’s final act, he does not clarify the drive behind the destructive rebellion of some of the younger members of the group. As with any large family, the clan is also rife with rumours, misfits and old scores that some want settled, and the combination of alcohol and ‘close quarters’ over the course of the weekend uncovers old wounds and rifts. Drewe handles the disintegration of the hosts’ carefully orchestrated plans with sure humour, but there are so many threads that some are left hanging.

Drewe’s publicist describes Whipbird as both a humorous and sensitive exploration of the modern Australian family, and a pull-no-punches attack on ‘everyone from investment bankers and real-estate agents to sea-changers and tree-changers, vegans and Paleo practitioners, First World smugness, global warming, retirement, divorce, death, Sudoku and artisan brewers’. The list is exhaustive and raises the one issue I have with the narrative. There are too many competing themes and ideas at work, and it seems to this reader at least, that treating subjects like global warming and artisan brewers to an equal satirical flaying devalues the real concerns held by many Australians about the big problem of environmental degradation. Despite this, fans of Robert Drewe will recognise the glee with which the author strips the establishment and all those who worship at its clay feet down to absurdity, and appreciate the fine narrative skill and incisive wit underpinning Whipbird.

Penguin / 320pp / $32.99 northerly AUTUMN 2018 | 29

WRITTEN IN BLOOD

Doing time: Historical crime fiction Continuing her column that analyses and celebrates the best in crime fiction, Colleen O’Brien selects some choice cuts from the ever-popular world of historical crime novels.

If, like me, you love crime novels and at the same time can’t put down a good historical story, then imagine the delight in reading a historical crime novel. When they are good they have all the elements of a great crime novel – strong plot, character and theme – with the historical overlay of the time in which they are set. Some writers go to great lengths to evoke the period and setting and to bring to life the characters of their time.

Ye olde worlde Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael novels take place during the English war between Stephen and

Matilda in the 1100s. The standard was set in 1977 with the first in the series, A Morbid Taste for Bones. It stands out in the genre because of the quality of Peters’ writing, something that is often lacking in historical crime. She is so revered that the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award is much coveted.

While fun to read, the following writers become repetitive and their characters one-dimensional.

But they are still a great read if you don’t try and wade your way through all of them. Michael Jecks’ novels about the Keeper of the King’s Peace, Sir Baldwin Furnshill, are set in the 1300s. In the same category are Bernard King’s novels about Crowner John in 1100s Devon, Karen Maitland’s Company of Liars which takes place in the 1300s during the plague, Paul Doherty’s Hugh Corbett who solves crimes in England in the 1200s and Brother Athelstan in the 1300s and Candace Robb’s Owen Archer (and his apothecary wife) series set in 1300s England.

Peter Tremayne’s Sister Fidelma series is set in seventh century Ireland and England. They have some of the problems of the previous novels, but I found the history more interesting as it deals with Saxon-era Christianity. Rory

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Clements’ John Shakespeare (the brother of William) novels are set in the late 1500s and are a rollicking read. Oliver Potzsch’s The Hangman’s Daughter, set in Bavaria in the 1600s, features witchcraft mania and the Thirty Years’ War, and is a wonderfully well-written mystery. Ariana Franklin’s novels about Adelia Aguilar are set in 1100s England and deal with anti-Semitism and the effects of the Crusades. They are two of my favourites. Sylvian Hamilton’s novels about Sir Richard Straccan, ex-crusader, are set in 1200s England and like many novels of this era deal with religion.

C.J. Sansom’s series featuring Matthew Shardlake is set in the 1500s. These novels are my favourites and easily match Ellis Peters’ work. Susanna Gregory’s series featuring Matthew Bartholomew is set in 1300s Oxford. While the novels are mixed – ranging from good to great – they are interesting in their discussion of medieval medicine and education.

Ancient world Lindsey Davis’ Falco novels, set in ancient Rome, are wonderful reading as they are written with such humour. Steven Saylor’s Roma Sub Rosa series is set in B.C.

WRITTEN IN BLOOD

Rome and features Gordianus the Finder. It’s always fun to read about politics and debauchery.

Gary Corby’s series set in ancient Greece has Athens’ only PI, Nicolaos, running foul of politicians and Persians. Paul Doherty, as well as his mediaeval series, has written a series set in ancient Egypt featuring Amerotke. While there is undoubtedly some poetic license, they are still a good read.

The four novels by Simon Levac, set in 1500s Aztec Mexico, have a fictitious slave as the investigator and is a fun read. Yaotl is slave to Tlilpotonqui, the chief minister to the Emperor, Moctezuma II. Demon of the Air won the Debut Dagger Award in 2000.

Victorian era Not generally recognised as crime novels are Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites and The Good People which are set in 1800s Iceland and Ireland respectively and deal with crimes by females. The first is fabulous.

The second is still good, but the characters aren’t as well developed.

Michael Cox’s The Meaning of Night is set in London and on a country estate. Goodreads says of the novel: ‘The atmosphere of Bleak House, the sensuous thrill

of Perfume, and the mystery of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.’

Judith Cutler’s Shadow of the Past is the second of three in a series set in rural England.

Tobias Campion is the vicar at Moreton Priory and with his friend, Hansard, solves a murder and a disappearance.

Kylie Fitzpatrick’s The Ninth Stone is set in London and India and is about jewel thieves and murder with two women as the investigators. There are two more novels in the series. Alex Grecian’s novels feature D.I. Walter Day in London and the Black Country, and are great, as are James McCreet’s Mr. Williamson and Noah Dyson books set in London. Caleb Carr’s novels in 1896 New York feature Dr Laszlo Kreizler and John Schuyler and are a cut above the rest.

Post-World War One Tom Robb Smith’s Child 44 is set in Stalinist Russia and features Officer Demidov as he pursues a serial killer.

Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series is set in London.

Maisie works her way from housemaid to Cambridge University, and after World War One

she sets up on her own as a private investigator. John Lawton’s series set in London during World War Two is about a police officer solving crimes during the blitz, where contrary to common perception, crime doubled.

Of course I must mention Kerry Greenwood’s series featuring Phryne Fisher in 1920s Melbourne.

Even if they do become repetitive, she is still a great character and a good read.

I could go on, but I have to stop somewhere, if only to give us all time to read these great books and more.

northerly AUTUMN 2018 | 31

WORKSHOPS

HSC WORKSHOP: EXTENTION 2 ENGLISH WITH SIBONEY DUFF THURSDAY 22 MARCH

WRITING FOR CHILDREN WITH ZANNI LOUISE SATURDAY 24 MARCH 10.00AM - 4.00PM

WRITING FOR SOCIAL ACTION WITH AIDAN RICKETTS SATURDAY 21 APRIL

10.00AM - 4.00PM

Byron Writers Festival Office

10.00AM - 4.00PM

SAE Institute, Byron Bay

$115 / $95*

Byron Writers Festival Office

$45 This is the second in the series of HSC Extension 2 English workshops run by Siboney Duff for 2018 HSC students. This full-day workshop moves on from the initial processes explored in Workshop 1 and delves into the drafting and editorial stages of the work. Participation in Workshop 1 is not a prerequisite.

Students will learn how to assess their creative works-in-progress for thematic sophistication, textual integrity, and narrative drive, as well as considering their final Reflection Statement and exploring how best to give the HSC examiners what they want. They will explore the editorial process and learn how to undertake a Four Stage Editing Protocol, looking at overall structure, characterisation and setting, and dramatisation and exposition.

*Byron Writers Festival members or students

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$115 / $95* This engaging writing workshop with published author, Zanni Louise, is all about the magic of children’s books. You’ll learn tools to write compelling stories for children, from toddlers to young adulthood. You’ll start developing strong characters, and plot, and will have the opportunity to workshop your stories with the group. We will also look at how to polish your manuscript, and we’ll explore publishing opportunities.

Zanni Louise is a local children’s author. Collaborating with highly acclaimed illustrators, she has published two picture books with Little Hare. Zanni’s books have sold multiple international rights, and have been listed for literary awards.

Zanni is one of the StoryBoard authors, touring northern NSW with Byron Writers Festival. Zanni has run writing workshops for children and adults for a number of years.

Social change writing is a form of strategic communication that requires an understanding of the dynamics of social change.

Winning hearts and minds requires more than facts, data and a persuasive argument. Whilst empiric rigour is essential in social change work, the task of shifting opinion and mobilising people to action often requires more skilful use of frames that resonate with people’s already deeply held values.

In this workshop Aidan will introduce you to strategic thinking tools involving the use of complexity thinking and non-linear change strategies together with practical exercises in developing values-based framing. The exercises will assist participants to reframe advocacy arguments of their own into alignment with widely held values.

WORKSHOPS

THE NEXT DRAFT STRUCTURAL EDITING FOR WRITERS WITH DR LAUREL COHN THREE SATURDAYS: 5 MAY, 26 MAY AND 16 JUNE 10.00AM - 4.00PM Byron Community College $290 / $260* Most writers know their manuscript will require a structural edit, but have little understanding of what this means. While editors play a crucial role in preparing a manuscript for publication, writers can take their own work to the next level of development with a structural edit of their manuscript.

This three-day course explains structural editing, how to go about it, and how to survive it.

Participants will learn strategies and tools to apply to their manuscript, with the course format allowing for discussion and feedback along the way.

The course is designed for writers of fiction and non-fiction with a complete draft of their manuscript who are willing to explore the challenging inner terrain that underlies critical engagement.

SHORT & SHARP: WRITING FLASH FICTION WITH EMMA ASHMERE SATURDAY 2 JUNE 10.00AM - 1.00PM

IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU... OR IS IT? MARKETING AND PROMOTION WITH JESSE BLACKADDER SATURDAY 23 JUNE

Byron Writers Festival Office

10.00AM - 1.00PM

$60 / $50*

Byron Community College $60 / $50*

Flash fiction is springing up everywhere – on phones, bus shelters, postcards, SoundCloud, and digital billboards. But what is it? And how does it differ from the good old short story?

Also known as microfiction, sudden fiction, or postcard fiction – these very short stories hover between 500 and 1000 words.

But there’s much more to crafting piquant flash fiction than just keeping an eye on the word count.

In this three-hour hands-on workshop, you’ll dive into the basics of this short sharp form – and leave with new ideas and stories up your sleeve.

We’ll also discuss publication opportunities – so there’s time to polish your work for the inaugural Byron Writers Festival Flash Fiction Competition.

A course for introverted authors who hate self-promotion and extroverts who love it. Jesse Blackadder will lead you through the tools of promoting yourself without losing your friends and your self-respect along the way.

The course will cover author websites, social media, public relations, speaking gigs, festival appearances, GoodReads, gaining reviews and testimonials, and the pros and cons of using a publicist.

Jesse is the award-winning author of four novels for adults and three for children. She’s appeared at festivals around the world, performed for audiences ranging from school kids on a barge in Dublin to a group of tradies and scientists sailing to Antarctica and been interviewed twice as part of Richard Fidler’s Conversations.

For workshop details and to register visit byronwritersfestival.com/what’s on northerly AUTUMN 2018 | 33

Competitions BEST OF TIMES SHORT STORY COMPETITION

The Best of Times Short Story Competition is held twice a year, with entries for the 2018 autumn competition due by 30 April. Humorous short stories are invited on any theme with a wordcount of up to 2,500. Prize money for first place ranges between $300 and $500 depending on number of entries, with second place taking $100. Entry is $10 per story. For further information including submission requirements visit www.bestoftimes. com.au

WB YEATS POETRY PRIZE

There is a fifty-line limit for the 2017 WB Yeats Poetry Prize, which invites entries in an open style. Winner takes $500, with second and third winning $75. Entries are via email or post, with a deadline of 31 March, 2018.

There is a fee of $8.50 for the first entry and $5.50 for further entries.

Full details are available at www. wbyeatspoetryprize.com

THE STRINGYBARK OPEN-THEMED SHORT STORY AWARD This competition is open-themed so long as it satisfies three conditions: the story must link, however tenuously, to Australia, it must be written for reader over sixteen years of age, and it must be no more than 1,500 words. Total prize money comes to $1,175 in cash and books. Entry fees start at $12.50 per story and the deadline for entries is 18 March. For full terms and conditions go to www.stringybarkstories.net

SUTHERLAND SHIRE LITERARY COMPETITION

The inaugural Sutherland Shire Literary competition aims to promote the diverse cultural heritage of the Sutherland Shire whilst contributing to the rich tradition of literary practice

34 | AUTUMN 2018 northerly

in Australia. Australian residents over 18 years of age are invited to submit their individual, original works in the categories Traditional Verse, Free Verse and Short Story. First place in each category takes $1,000, while there is a special prize for Sutherland Shire residents. Closing date for entries is 30 April, and for more information visit www.sutherlandshire.nsw.gov.au/ literarycompetition

THE MOTH INTERNATIONAL SHORT STORY PRIZE

The Moth prize is open to anyone aged eighteen and over. There is an open theme, with first place taking out €3,000. Word limit is 5,000 and entry fee is €12 per story. This year’s judge is award-winning author Kevin Barry.

This Ireland-based competition closes for entries on 30 June. For full details visit www.themothmagazine.com

BOREE LOG AWARD FOR BUSH VERSE

The Boree Log Award invites entries of bush verse that are in perfect rhyme and metre, are a maximum of eighty lines in length and have an Australian bush theme. Entry is $7 per person (at a maximum of four entries per person). First prize receives $100 plus a trophy and certificate. Closing date is 15 May. For further information head to www.hillsfaw.files.wordpress. com/2017/02/boree-log-2018.pdf

QUESTIONS WRITING PRIZE

The 2018 Questions Writing Prize aims to recognise and reward talented young writers aged between eighteen and thirty. Submissions should be between 1,500 and 2,000 words and can be fiction or non-fiction on any topic. Prize money of $2,000 will be awarded to one winner or shared among several winners, while the winner(s) will also have their work published. Entry is free. Deadline for

entries is 1 May, for further information visit www.questions.com.au/writingprize/index.php

BRONZE SWAGMAN AWARD

The forty-seventh Bronze Swagman will take place in 2018, and invites entries of traditional Australian bush verse with no limit on length and to an Australian theme. Cost is $20 per entry form with three poems allowed per form. Winners, runners-up and highly commended entries will receive trophies and publication in an anthology. Deadline for entries is 30 April and for more information visit www.bronzeswagman.com

FAW TASMANIA 2018 NAIRDA LYNE AWARD

The 2018 Nairda Lyne Award, organised by the Fellowship of Australian Writers Tasmania, is seeking original, unpublished short stories suitable for readers aged between eight and twelve years old. Stories should not exceed 1,000 words and there is an entry fee of $5 per story.

First prize is $100 and the winner’s name will be inscribed on a plaque at Launceston State Library. Deadline for entries is 31 March, 2018. For further information go to www.fawtas.org. au/competitions

ADELAIDE PLAINS POETS INC. POETRY COMPETITION

This competition invites entries of poems to the theme of ‘Truth’ and features an open class (ages eighteen and over) as well as classes for primary school and secondary school students.

Poems should be no longer than sixty lines, while there is an entry fee of $10 for the first poem entered and $5 for those entered thereafter. Entries close on 6 July. Total prize money available comes to $700. For full details go to www.carolyn-poeticpause.blogspot. com.au

KYD UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT AWARD

Organised by the journal Kill Your Darlings, this award will assist an earlycareer author in the development of an unpublished manuscript. The award is open to writers of fiction and nonfiction. The winner will receive $5,000 and a mentorship with either Hannah Kent (fiction) or Rebecca Starford (non-fiction). Submissions close on 31 March. For further details visit www.killyourdarlings.com.au/awards

CARMEL BIRD DIGITAL LITERARY AWARD

Set up by publishers Spineless Wonders, the Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award is open to collections of short prose with a total word count of no more than 30,000. The writing may be fiction or creative non-fiction and be comprised of short stories, micro-fiction or a novella – entries close on 30 April. Winner receives $3,000 and two runners up $1,000. For full terms and conditions visit www. shortaustralianstories.com.au

UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA VICECHANCELLOR’S INTERNATIONAL POETRY PRIZE

This prestigious international poetry competition offers a first prize of $15,000, with the runner-up receiving $5,000. Poems should be no longer than fifty lines and 1,000 words in total.

There is an entry fee of $20 per poem, while the head judge for 2018 is Wendy Pope. For full details regarding entry conditions go to www.canberra.edu. au/about-uc/competitions-andawards/vcpoetryprize

FUTURE LEADERS WRITING PRIZE The Future Leaders Writing Prize is designed to recognise and reward talented young writers and to encourage expressive and creative writing. Year 11 and 12 students in

Australian secondary schools are invited to submit a piece of writing of between 800 and 1,000 words. The writing can be fiction or non-fiction and on any topic. The winner will receive $1,000, and when there is more than one winner the prize money will be shared. Winners will also have their work published. Entry is free, with the deadline for entries 31 May. For full details go to www.futureleaders. com.au/awards/index.php

ARE YOU COMING TO THE 2018 BYRON WRITERS FESTIVAL? Get ready for early bird tickets – on sale 31 May 2018 to the general public, with a special priority booking period for members only, commencing 24 May 2018.

THE SHEILA MALADY SHORT STORY COMPETITION

This Gippsland-based competition aims to celebrate and breathe new life into the works of Shakespeare by inviting writers to send in their own creations. These creations should be short stories of up to 2,000 words and according to a 2018 theme of ‘For the love of…’ First prize wins $300 and theatre tickets, while there are special prizes for those local to Gippsland and those aged under eighteen. The closing date for entries is March 20 and there is an entry fee of $5. See more information at www. stratfordshakespeare.com.au/shortstory-competition

THE VALERIE PARV AWARD

The Valerie Parv Award is open to aspiring or emerging writers of romance. Entries should be the first 1,000 words of a manuscript alongside a 1,000-word synopsis. A maximum of two entries are allowed per person.

First place wins a one-year mentorship with Valerie Parv herself, while entry is $44 for members of Romance Writers Australia and $110 for non-members.

The competition opens on 9 April and closes on 30 April. For further details visit www.romanceaustralia.com/ contests/aspiring-contests/thevalerie-parv-award

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Writers Groups Alstonville Plateau Writers Group

Meets second Friday of each month, 10am - 12pm. All genres welcome, contact Kerry on (02) 6628 5662 or email alstonvilleplateauwriters@outlook.com

Ballina/Byron U3A Creative Writing

Meets every second Wednesday at 12pm, Fripp Oval, Ballina. Contact Ann Neal on (02) 6681 6612.

Bangalow Writers Group

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

Contact Simone on 0407 749 288

Bellingen Writers Group

Meets at Bellingen Golf Club on the fourth Monday of the month at 2pm. All welcome, contact Joanne on (02) 6655 9246 or email jothirsk@restnet.com.au

Byron Bay Memoir and Fiction Writing Group

Dunoon Writers Group

Writers on the Block. Meets second Tuesday of each month, 6:30pm – 8:30pm at Dunoon Sports Club.Contact Helga on (02) 6620 2994 (W), 0401 405 178 (M) or email heg.j@telstra.com

FAW Port Macquarie-Hastings Regional

Meets 1pm on last Saturday of each month, Maritime Museum, Port Macquarie. Contact Joie on (02) 6584 3520 or email Bessie on befrank@tsn.cc

Gold Coast Writers Association

Meets third Saturday of each month, 1:30pm for 2pm start, at Fradgley Hall, Burleigh Heads Library, Park Avenue, Burleigh Heads. Contact 0431 443 385 or email info@goldcoast-writers.org.au

Kyogle Writers

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

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

Byron Writers

Lismore Writers Group

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

Contact the library on (02) 6685 8540.

Casino Writers Group

Meets every third Thursday of the month at 4pm at 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) 6653 3256 or email quendrythyoung@bigpond.com

Coffs Harbour Writers Group

Meets 1st Wednesday of the month 10.30am to 12.30pm. Contact Lorraine Penn on (02) 6653 3256 or 0404 163 136, email: lmproject@bigpond.com. www.coffsharbourwriters.com

Coffs Harbour Memoir Writers Group

Share your memoir writing for critique. 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

Dorrigo Writers Group

Meets every second Wednesday from 10am-2pm. Contact Iris on (02) 6657 5274 or email an_lomall@bigpond.com or contact Nell on (02) 6657 4089

36 | AUTUMN 2018 northerly

Meets second Tuesday of the month from 6pm to 8pm at Communities Hub Art Space on Keen Street. Cost is $5 for Hub members, $7.50 for non-members. For more details phone 0410 832 362.

Middle Grade / Young Adult Fiction Writers’ Group

Meets monthly at 2pm on Sundays in Bangalow.

Contact Carolyn Bishop at carolyncbishop@gmail.com or 0431 161 104

Nambucca Valley Writers Group

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

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

Taree-Manning River Scribblers

Meets second Wednesday of the month, 9am-11:30am, Taree. Call first to check venue. Contact Bob Winston on (02) 6553 2829 or email rrw1939@hotmail.com

Tweed Poets and Writers

Meets weekly at the Coolangatta Senior Citizens Centre on Tuesdays from 1:30 to 3:30pm, NSW time. Poets, novelists, playwrights, short story writers are all welcome. Phone Lorraine (07) 5524 8035 or Pauline (07) 5524 5062.

WordsFlow Writing

Group meets Fridays during school term, 12:30pm-3pm, Pottsville Beach Neighbourhood Centre, 12a Elizabeth St, Pottsville Beach. Contact Cheryl on 0412 455 707 or visit www.wordsflowwriters.blogspot.com

Support northerly in 2018 northerly is a the official magazine of Byron Writers Festival. Published quarterly in March, June, September and December, it is widely distributed to members, community organisations, libraries, universities, schools, festivals, publishers and bookshops throughout the Northern Rivers and beyond.

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

Advertising rates (full colour, inc. GST) $100 $500

Back cover

$350

Inside back/front cover

Inside 2 column

Byron Writers Festival members receive a 25% discount on all advertising rates. To discuss your advertising needs, contact us on (02) 6685 5115 or email northerlyeditor@gmail.com.

Supported by Australian Government’s Anzac Centenary Arts and Culture Fund

CALLING YOUNG CREATIVES 14-22 YEARS Your opportunity to win $1000 a nd an appearance a t Byron Writers Festival 2018.

Byron Writers Festival’s Anzac Project is inviting creative responses to the title Northern Rivers’ Memory of War: Stories of then, told by people of now.

Find out more at byronwritersfestival.com/anzac

Department of Communications and the Arts